The Era Of The Empowered Woman

We are living in the dawn of a new era, where we all get to bear witness to the true abilities of an empowered woman. Last month marked a historical first – the inauguration of the first female cabinet member to grace one of the most intimate boys clubs ever, the United States Presidency.

While this is a sign of great possibilities, it’s still important to remember she is the only one in over 230 years. The fact that Kamala Harris is not only a female but a woman of color denotes progress; however, the “club” is still slighted towards elite, white men.

The Constitution didn’t reflect upon women as people until 1920 when it was amended to include our right to vote. This was, of course, after a great upheaval in the form of the Woman’s Suffrage Movement. Even the wording of the Constitution is demeaning to women because it reads “citizens’, yet women were deliberately excluded from politics for 5o more years after black men were granted the right to vote. That didn’t stop nor deter these women though, instead, it fueled them.

What is Empowerment?

By definition, empowerment is the granting of political, social, or economic power to an individual or group. The very premise of this definition is that empowerment is something outside of self.

True empowerment, however, is something that comes from within. As Elenore Roosevelt famously stated, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” This highlights two types of empowerment: external and internal.

External

External empowerment can come in a variety of forms. External empowerment is just that, empowerment from forces outside of ourselves, i.e. our environment. Our earliest encounters with external empowerment come from our interactions with our parents and primary care-givers. These interactions help form the foundation that determines just how empowered we become.

For some girls, having a role model is simple, easy, and built-in via their own mothers. Mothers who lead by example are the best at fostering this ironclad will that empowered girls seem to share. It’s as though bearing witness to our own mother’s strength is exactly what fosters our own.

“I was raised to be an independent woman, not the victim of anything.
Kamala Harris

Representation matters. When girls grow up witnessing other girls and women stand in their own power, it demonstrates for them what is truly possible. This is why female empowerment is an imperative initiative because every kid should be allowed to look out into the world and have an Idol that they can relate to.

Thankfully for me, I had a mother who was self-empowered. She became an orphan when her mother died when she was just 13 years old. As a ward of the state, she lived a life of abuse, oppression, and trauma – most of which occurred at the hands of men. And it’s through these adversities that my mom taught herself how to tap into her internal strength. She was an alchemist who learned how to turn her pain into power.

Internal

Resilience is a trait that serves as a reminder that our true source of power comes from within. Resilience theory explicitly states that exposure to adverse events in life leads to an even higher level of functioning than before, for certain individuals.

Where there is a will, there is always a way. Lucky for us girls, interior strength is genetic. There are the obvious components of internal strength that every woman possesses. An example is our ability to give birth without quite literally dying from pain. Females possess more pain receptors than men, making us more adept at knowing how to control and handle pain.

Then there are the more subtle leanings that women possess that make us more resilient than men. If resilience is bred out of vulnerability, and it is, then women are inherently more resilient by the very structure of our society. In fact, this inherited ability can be traced all the back to the womb. Girls simply cope with stress better than boys.

What Makes a Woman Empowered?

Women'S Power, Specialist, Businesswoman, Woman, Female

An empowered woman is one who feels safe and secure with herself despite being female. Empowerment is something that is fostered through life experience. External and internal forces create the perfect atmosphere for her to propel past societal expectations, paving the way for others to follow. Finally, an empowered woman is generous with her gifts, for she knows the power of giving.

We are at a pivotal time, unlike ever before. Women now make up the majority of the population, and officially exceed men in higher education too. Pioneering biological research shows that women differ from men but in the most complimentary of ways.

“It’s time for women to stop being politely angry.”
Leymah Gbawee, Nobel Peace Price Winner

Empowerment leads to self-sufficiency and independence. These are two of the most sought after traits in American society, for both men and women. One of the major side-effects of empowerment is the desire to give back. Empowerment is contagious, as is evident in the numerous examples of empowered women throughout history who have an insatiable passion to give back.

Empowering girls and women should be personalized to cater to the female-specific characteristics. The approach should be to embrace and enhance our femininity through education and inspiration. The goal is to allow them to see their womanhood as a gift rather than a curse.

The 5 pillars of female empowerment encompass the essential areas that every female need in order to thrive. These pillars are educational, financial, social, political, and health, as they pertain to the female gender in specific.

Educational

When girls’ education is given the same amount of investment as their male counterparts, the benefits extend far beyond their personal lives. Data clearly shows a correlation between educated girls and the decrease in societal poverty. “High-quality female education empowers women, reduces poverty, and unleashes economic growth”

Education is the foundation for anyone to thrive in society. Thankfully, the educational institution has evolved over time to be gender inclusive. In the not-so-distant past though, girls’ education was a considered privilege, not a right. Whereas women once had to fight for the right to equal education, we now surpass men in higher education achievements across the board.

Yet the educational instructions are still very much lacking the emphasis on feminine principles to this day. One way this is obvious is in the lack of female faculty in higher education. Women consist of the majority of the population of people who obtain higher education, yet women are consistently overlooked for tenure, appropriate compensation, and representation in high-ranking leadership positions, such as presidency and membership on governing boards.

Additionally, the emotional aspect of living and thriving is still shunned by much of society. This means that our educational foundation still disregards the more right-brain, feminine components that we all possess. Not only should young girls be taught about their emotional bodies, but young boys also need to understand the importance of creativity, visual imagery, and intuition.

Fostering emotional intelligence should not be geared towards one gender over the other. These essential areas are stereotyped as being “female” traits, but we all have them. Much like we all possess left-brain abilities, such as logic, speech, and analytics. Like the two sides of the brain, these two components complement one another and should both be celebrated. Unfortunately, our society still prefers science and math over art and emotional acuity.

Finally, women have been disenfranchised for all of history. While education might seem to be the easy route, many girls lose their way due to the embedded side-effects of systemic oppression. While drop-out rates have declined for both genders, similar factors are cited for both genders, except one: teen pregnancy. Both male and female students suffering from low-income, single-parent households are at a higher risk of dropping out. Thirty-three percent of girls, however, drop out due to pregnancy.

Education is not segregated by sex, but age rather. This means boys and girls are clumped together in a male-centric education and expected to thrive equally. Both boys and girls need deeper instruction on female physiology, but the research simply does not exist.

Teaching girls that they differ from their male peers is essential to their understanding of these differences. Our inherent differences are obvious, yet girls are made to feel less-than because of these differences. Our culture shames girls for bleeding, making the stigma unavoidable. Girls should be given permission to feel comfortable about their physiology, instead of inferior because of it.

Social

We’ve come a long way from the obvious domineering control that once was the accepted norm. Whereas women were once quite literally considered property, we now have certain “inalienable-rights” bestowed upon us per the U.S. Constitution.

In the not-so-distant past; however, women were not allowed to open a bank account or take out a loan without a male co-signer. Just 33 years ago, Ronald Raegan signed the Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988 granting women the right to equal credit and lending opportunities.

Women are more in control of their own lives now than ever before, but we still have far to go. The system is still set-up by and for men. So while we might now enjoy the benefits of having our own property, income, lending, and investment potential, it’s still more in theory than application.

In 2018, women consisted of only 2.2% of the $130 billion dollar total in venture capital money invested over the year. Sadly, this is a decline from the previous year which was recorded at 2.53% for female founders. This staggeringly low number illustrates the systemic bias that is still very prevalent today.

Female entrepreneurs generated $1.7 trillion dollars in sales in 2017 alone. Women own more than 11.6 million firms and employ 9 million people in the United States. One in every five firms that make over $1 million dollars in revenue are female-founded.

Additionally, women are not only more likely to start a business, but also to start businesses out of need and necessity. Much like women are more likely to choose a career in healthcare or education, they are also more likely than men to start a business in health and education too.

Women contribute immensely to society but benefit only marginally. In such an atmosphere, it’s taxing to attempt to develop one’s autonomy, let alone self-confidence. Representation matters and women are simply not represented properly throughout societies alike.

Women act individually to enhance the collective, unlike most men who act individually to benefit themselves. It’s time for girls and women to be portrayed for the true value they bring. And the best part of honoring and uplifting women is that everybody wins! It’s time to challenge dated ideals and false constructs that deter and ultimately hold us all back.

Health

We all know that women bear the brunt when it comes to care-taking. Women consistently ensure the health and wellbeing of those around them. Even as little girls, we learn to foster this innate drive when we get our first babydoll to care for. Unfortunately, this passion doesn’t translate into caring for ourselves in quite the same way as we develop.

Both genders are taught that being selfish is a very bad thing. It’s ingrained in us that health is something that applies to the general population as much as it does to our very personal physical apparatuses. Public health is preached more than private health. The onset of Covid highlights this perfectly, in that all of the professionals that are considered experts are boasting “we’re all in this together” and to wear a mask and social-distance for thy neighbor, while none of them discuss the importance of self-care as a means to an end.

More than 770,000 injuries and deaths occur every single year as a direct result of medical errors, which makes it the third leading cause of death in the U.S. This number merely reflects those errors that we know of because many go unreported for a variety of reasons, according to Dr. Danielle Ofri. These numbers show the imbalance of promoting medical interventions over daily self-care.

Health empowerment begins with proper education. In the WHO Constitution, health is described as “a state of complete physical, social, and mental well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” In this context health empowerment is something that pertains to the fundamental knowledge of the human body and how it thrives, first and foremost.

We all stand upon a foundation that has taught us to value modern, Westernized healthcare over our ancient, holistic approach to health. Women and men have been guided away from their internal wisdom towards a scientific and methodical approach to wellbeing. While that has served us to an extent, it has also left us quite detached from ourselves too. As soon as something goes awry, we seek the opinions of indoctrinated strangers in an attempt to fix it. Western medicine is a beneficial deterrent because it provides us with the ability to save lives in an emergency, but literally kills when it comes to drug interventions and miseducated professionals.

True health empowerment is knowing that we all have the ability to heal any and all dis-ease from our bodies with the proper prescription of a healthy diet. Diet, however, in regards to our physical, social, and mental well-being, just as WHO states. Our diets consist of not only what we eat, but also the other forms of energy we take in on a daily basis. We are made up of energy, as science has demonstrated. Our bodies know exactly what to do to heal, as we witness in the miracle of a simple scab or even in instant healing and remission.

As recently as 2016, the National Institutes of Health had to issue a directive to specify sex as a biological variable in all their funded preclinical research on vertebrate animals and human cells and tissues. This means that women and our biology have quite literally been ignored for the entire history of the medical institution. Gender exclusion even applies to lab rats, as males subjects are favored over females.

So not only is the general public being grievously misinformed about what health is and how to maintain it, but women especially are suffering the cost of this lopsided indoctrination that all of our medical professionals receive. Moreover, female research should be a priority because it doesn’t just impact each woman individually, but also society collectively because of the major role women play.

Obviously, we cannot speak on women’s health without addressing the power and control that men still hold over women’s reproductive health too. Unfortunately, the states are anything but united when it comes to rules that govern what a woman can and cannot do with her own body. An independent poll spoke for the people of which 77% of Americans agreed that abortion should be safe and legal. Yet, 274 state policy provisions have been introduced in 2021 alone. Naturally, most of these rules and regulations are introduced by the men who create and carry out the policies. Hence the need for more women in positions of leadership.

Political

Women now make up the majority of the American population, yet female representation in the political sphere is still negligible. As it stands, women consist of:

24% of the U.S. Senate
27% of the House of Representatives
30% of the statewide elected executives
31% of state legislative seats
23% of Mayors in cities with populations exceeding 30,000
0% of the Presidents of the United States

Sadly, these numbers clump all women into one big category diminishing the fact that for women of color, these seats are even harder to come by. While the last two Presidential elections have made great gains in the arena of female representation, the U.S. ranks 75th globally in women’s representation in Politics.

If women are the backbone of society, and we are, why is it that we still lack leadership roles that directly impact society at large, namely women? Women have demonstrated that our primary focus is to be of benefit to the community, time and time again. We do this by actively choosing the “low-paying” jobs that bring rewards beyond monetary value, such as teachers, social workers, hospitality staff, and medical professionals alike.

In fact, the number of women in the workforce surpassed men prior to the lockdowns of 2020. Unfortunately, having little political representation where policies are created and enforced has created an even greater divide than before. If women had been more involved politically during the onset of the pandemic, I’m certain the outcome would have been different. But we will never know because women simply don’t have a voice in politics.

When women are allowed to participate; however, research shows that their primary focus differs from their male counterparts. Women officials have different attitudes on several important public policy topics. For example, compared with men, women are generally less militaristic on issues of war and peace, more often opposed to the death penalty, more likely to favor gun control, more likely to favor measures to protect the environment, more supportive of programs to help the economically disadvantaged, more supportive of efforts to achieve racial equality, and more likely to favor laws to regulate and control certain vices (e.g., alcohol, gambling, pornography).

For centuries, women have been demonized for a variety of reasons. These systemic biases play out in different ways, such as lack of support from the masses due to their hidden biases. Women fall victim to this societal programming, just the same as men do. Data shows that 90% of men and 90% of women are biased against women. Policies and practices that were put into place to intentionally benefit the men who wrote them are just as prevalent today as they were 232 years ago.

“On a moral plane, there’s a sense that the Constitution sets forth our human rights and to not have the human rights of women in there is a gross omission.”
Jessica Neuwirth, President of the ERA Coalition

Women in both public and private political spheres will be the solution to this on-going problem. In 2021, women still don’t have Constitutional equality. 94% of Americans support constitutional equality for women, yet 80% believe we’ve already achieved it. American sets itself apart by being one of only three countries to offer constitutional protection to gun owners. Yet, of the 131 nations that have passed laws to ensure gender equality, the United States is not one of them.

Economic

On February 7, 2019, the White House launched The Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative to bring women’s economic empowerment to the forefront of the U.S.’s Government’s Development Agenda. Standing on three pillars, the goal is to empower women to participate fully in civic and economic life. These pillars consist of ensuring women have the proper skills and training to secure work, promoting entrepreneurial ventures, and removing gender-based legal, regulatory, and cultural barriers to participation.

The focus of this initiative further illustrates the need for more women in politics because until the laws change, women will remain stifled financially. The gender pay gap data helps to make this apparent, but even this is misleading in that it’s based on a white mans earning capacity, compared to that of a white women’s. Yet, women of color are paid even less pay than their caucasian counterparts.

Women started a net of 1,821 business each day in 2019, and own 40% of all U.S. businesses. Of these new businesses, 64% were started by women of color. The reasons women are starting their own businesses are to combat the blatant gender discrimination in corporate America, which is often coupled with outward racism. Women are 15% less likely to be promoted than their male colleagues, despite doing equal, and many times more work. Additionally, less pay, flexibility, and autonomy were also cited as top reasons why women are going into business for themselves.

While many women aren’t even aware of it, they are being held to a greater cost of living than men are. Pink-tax is not a tax that simply applies to feminine hygiene products, although that’s blatant discrimination too. Pink-tax also refers to the higher tax rate that women are held to just for being female. From diapers to shavers, bike helmets to toys, if it’s pink – it’s more expensive.

Even as it pertains to obtaining an education, women are at a disadvantage. Women hold 58% of all student loan debt, and it takes an average of two years longer to pay off. Examining the debt ratio of men to women explains exactly why 56% of all women are living in poverty. Native American women are impacted the greatest, and given the history of Native Americans and our colonizers, it’s obvious why.

Just how is a woman expected to get ahead or thrive in a society that doesn’t even value her contributions? Only by establishing an equal playing field can we progress.

Empowered women seem to share the knowledge and awareness that they are great, despite the general consensus. From this empowered foundation, she begins to strengthen her own resolve, and by doing this, she naturally empowers those around her simply by persisting. Even when she’s told to stand down and fall in place, a truly empowered woman continualy goes for what she knows in her heart to be fair.

01/02/202109/17/2021

The Impact of Covid on Women

No matter who we are or where we come from, we have all felt the wrath of 2020. Last year came in with a bang. Just three months into the year, we were inundated with fear-inducing information about a new disease that was sweeping the globe. Shortly after, we were all placed on a world-wide lockdown. Twelve months later, we still have more questions than answers and many of us are still feeling the turmoil caused by the pandemic.

As time continues to pass, more data is being collected in an attempt to better understand the dynamics that play into this global pandemic. By taking a deeper look at the numbers, facts, and figures, we are able to detect where the gaps lie. Unfortunately for us women, the gaps are blaring and obvious because we are living them.

The Impact

Women are often overlooked in regards to larger-scale issues. The lockdown of 2020 is no different. Before the quarantine, women were notoriously doing more for less. After the quarantine, women are being overwhelmed with responsibilities at a much higher rate than men.

Women are impacted by the epidemic of 2020 in a multitude of ways. To better understand why we must first know how women are impacted at a higher rate than men.

Professionally

Women have broken all molds that were previously held specifying what they can and cannot do. There is not a job on the planet that a female hasn’t done; however, women naturally tend to gravitate towards certain jobs over others. This has been the justification for the discrepancies in higher unemployment rates in the past several months. Women make up the bulk of the workers in all hospitality, medical, educational, and social service professions. Coincidently, these are also the jobs classified as “low-paying”.

Pre-Covid, a woman made 81 cents to a man’s dollar. No matter her educational achievements, a woman is still subjected to less pay than a man. Unfortunately, this pay only decreases once her race is factored in.

80% of the 865,000 workers that left the workforce in September were female, making them four times as likely as men to leave their jobs. In 2019, there were 10 million women with young children in the workforce. Unlike men, women are being forced to choose between their work and their children.

Post-Covid, women are leaving the workforce at a rate, unlike any other time. Women from all walks of life are affected the same right now. Executives to waitresses are having to leave their jobs because of a lack of childcare. Women, especially women of color, are more likely to be laid off or furloughed as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.

Women were already making less than men on average before the lockdown, but afterward, women are taking home even less due to unemployment. Those who still have qualifying “essential” jobs are paid less than their male colleagues. 70% of all healthcare professionals are women. Research shows that female doctors are more likely to work harder and longer hours than male doctors, while being paid less.

White male physicians are paid the most, with black males taking second place. White and Black female physicians are paid the same relative to one another, but they are still paid less than either of their white or black male counterparts.

Personally

Women have always been slighted when it comes to compensation for their contributions, but 2020 highlighted this imbalance for everyone to see. Stemming from the archaic belief that women are property, female labor has long-been denounced and denied. Women, who were once forbidden from working outside of the home, are now being forced to work both inside and outside the home, with no pay incentives.

During the Covid-19 epidemic, mothers are three times as likely as fathers to be responsible for the majority of the housework and childcare. Women are also naturally twice as stressed out about their job performance suffering as a direct result of having no childcare and taking on more than men.

The emotional strain women feel is greater than that of men amidst this pandemic due to the imbalance of societal resources. The U.S. is the only one of the 22 high-income nations that do not have a permanent, national guarantee of paid leave for women. Likewise, when schools were forced shut, there was no plan to combat the increased burden of stress either. This is because women and their unique needs are not even an after-thought for the men in charge.

It’s striking to see just how many of those in charge of making key decisions, in response to the pandemic, are men. It’s no surprise that women’s opinions do not carry the same amount of weight as men’s, simply because men make up the majority of all major decision-making bodies. Women consist of only 10% of Heads of State or Government, and this discrepancy is felt most by those affected the greatest: women.

Who is advocating for the women, who are quite literally the glue that bind us all together, most especially during a pandemic? Men would never feel comfortable with an all-female decision making-body governing their every whim; why are women made to?

The few women that are allowed to participate on leadership teams are predominately white, which only adds to the discrepancies. Compared to the 13% of White respondents, 37% of African-American respondents and 39% of Hispanic respondents claim to have to skip paying bills due to the set-back.

The most appalling proof of the fact that women are impacted the greatest by Covid-19 is the dramatic increase in the already frightening rates of gender-based violence. The UK has reported femicide rates higher than they have been in the past 11 years, double the average for a 21-day period. Mexico has reported an 8% increase in femicides, with nearly 1,000 women murdered in the first three months of the year. Domestic violence rates tripled from February 2019 to February 2020. Within weeks of the stay-at-home orders being issued, Portland police saw a 22% spike in arrests due to domestic violence alone.

Financially

Until you have been humbled by experiencing poverty first-hand, you truly cannot empathize with someone who has. For women, obtaining any amount of wealth has always been more difficult than it has been for men. Unfortunately, the level of lack felt by women was compiled and exacerbated as a direct result of this pandemic.

A simple look into the not-so-distance past reveals the long-standing trend of treating women as property, which also meant that they had no rights as functional, contributing adults. Many laws have been enacted to help overcome these barriers, but many obstacles for women still exist.

One of the best examples of the blatant oppression of women is the gender pay gap. Fifty-seven years after The Equal Pay Act, white women still only earn $0.81 to a man’s dollar. Couple that with other obvious gender-biased laws, such as “pink-tax”, and it becomes easy to see that women are still being outwardly oppressed.

Women have a higher cost-of-living than men, yet we earn less for doing more.

Almost a full year after the initial government lockdown, women and their needs are still not given proper consideration. The biggest financial impact has been felt by women. Not only do some women have to choose between their children and career, but they are also taxed with finding a way to still make ends meet with no job. Those who qualify for unemployment only take home a fraction of their already slighted pay.

Melinda Gates donated $1 Billion to Women’s Initiatives in 2019, the very same year the coronavirus pandemic planning efforts took place, also funded by her and her husband. In 2020, she states on the record that the economic impact the pandemic caused was unforeseen. Her statements directly reflect her privilege as a wealthy, white woman.

This further reiterates the need for not just women at the table, but more specifically, women of color. A further look at the data and statistics show that Black and Indigenous women are impacted the greatest by the pandemic. Unfortunately, they make up the largest percentage of single-parent and impoverished households too.

Single mothers are by far the greatest population of people impacted by the financial upset caused by the lockdowns. The government has all gone virtual, making the already tedious task of applying for financial benefits even more grueling and time-consuming.

Women’s resources are even more limited than before Covid-19, but now women are literally in danger with absolutely nowhere to turn. During the civil unrest, entire police precincts were out of commission. Not surprisingly, these police forces were mostly found in areas with the highest concentration of people of color.

The Solution

The obvious solution is to incorporate more women into leadership roles. Women makeup over half of the population, yet represent only a fraction of all positions of power and influence.

The evidence is clear; women are good for business. Women are better leaders, scoring at a statistically significantly higher level than men in the vast majority of leadership capabilities measured by Harvard Business Review. Unfortunately, the rate of female leaders has remained steady domestically at only 2-4% and has even started to decline globally.

A report released by Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkley showed that companies with more women on their boards perform better on environmental, societal, and governance issues. Women just make sense. Sadly, it’s going to take a collective shift in how women are viewed and treated before true progress can be made.

Research shows that upwards of 90% of the entire population hold some sort of bias against women. Men are more likely to be seen as brilliant. This tells us that representation matters, but until we address our hidden beliefs about women, no progress can be made.

Wake up.

Once you become aware of the issue, you can no longer ignore it. You have to learn to become mindful of the role you play in either the solution or problem. Self-discover to disclose biases you have obtained by simply growing up in a patriarchal world. We all have them, but not all of us are aware of them, let alone strive to overcome them.

Learn to recognize them when they arise and release them without judgment. With concerted focus over time, you will begin to alter these biases and replace them with more conscientious beliefs.

Stand Up.

As you learn to discern between your unconscious and conscious biases, you also start to become aware of your limiting beliefs. Self-exploration is anything but easy, but it leads directly to self-mastery. It is in this process of evolving that we learn the most about ourselves.

Once you begin to stand in your truth, you naturally become an advocate for others. In social situations, amongst friends or co-workers, you’ll find yourself starting to stand up for your newly-held beliefs.

Speak up.

Do your part by combatting stereotypes about girls and women. Lead by example. Start at home; begin with you.

The only way for a movement to gain enough traction to create lasting change is by increasing awareness about the problem. This can only be done by talking about it. Next time you notice female-discrimination, call it out. Now that you know better, do better.