Category: Inequity

Fortune Magazine reports women received 2.2% of venture capital in 2017

Female founders received 2.2% of venture capital funds in 2017 according to research published by Fortune Magazine, and that actually represents a bump on previous years.

Data collected by PitchBook shows that all-women teams received just $1.9 billion of the $85 billion total invested by venture capitalists last year. By way of comparison, all-male teams received about $66.9 billion, or nearly 80% of the dollars invested, and the remaining funds were raised by mixed-gender teams, and/or teams where the gender of the founders wasn’t specified.

There is no way around these numbers without recognising that VC and the land of start-ups remain not merely dominated by men so much as drenched.

https://womensagenda.com.au/business/entrepreneurs/fortune-magazine-reports-women-received-just-2-of-venture-capital-in-2017/

These are the big lies about women’s economic security: Are you angry yet?

Lie 1: Unpaid work is just cooking and cleaning – it has no economic value

Waring, who starred in the documentary Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex Lies and Global Economics, believes there’s great irony in putting a dollar value on “unpaid work” when international rules like gross domestic product and national accounts gravely undervalue the significance, impact and opportunity that this work provides to society.

In an attempt to give “authority” to the argument that unpaid domestic work – largely undertaken by women across the globe – is economically significant, Waring sought to estimate its monetary value. “[But I] realised that by inviting estimations of unpaid work, I was inviting us to give market values [according] to a system that said ammunition and wars are valuable, everything that devastated our seas and our air are valuable … I now don’t think that at all.”

“When you start putting dollar value on a polar bear as a species or the time people spend caring for kids, you strip away what we’re actually talking about.”

If Sweden and Germany can roll out “very generous” parental leave schemes that oblige both mothers and fathers to take time off, and New Zealand can establish universal basic income for its senior population to age with dignity, Waring challenges Australia to reflect on bigger ideas too.

Lie 2: Superannuation is universal

Australia’s superannuation industry systemically rips off women, said Denniss.

With the national gender pay gap averaging above 15%, Denniss said superannuation magnifies inequality between men and women even further.

Waring believes there’s a possibility for Australian women today to bring about legislative change through a class action lawsuit before the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) committee.

Any Australian citizen who has exhausted all domestic legal remedies can access CEDAW to trigger an international human rights obligation, she said.

https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/big-lies-womens-security-angry-yet/

Volunteering doesn’t make the world a better place

[D]oes volunteering really help, or does it simply prop up broken systems? Is there a better way?

“It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a cake stall to buy a bomber.” This is as true now as it was in the 1970s. Why?

A lot of the volunteering we do is inefficient. Schools ask that parents bake cakes to be sold to the children of other parents who have baked cakes. Most school events involve sausages on white bread and fizzy drinks, which is not recommended as a healthy diet. Chocolates are sold in staffrooms to raise money for the children’s hospital. Rubber wristbands are sold by charities to raise awareness of illnesses. A fundraiser for the environment can sell unhealthy food one week, and a fundraiser for health can damage the environment the next. This is inefficient. Any effort to help one system should not be feeding into the brokenness of another.

Volunteering is not valued. . . . Volunteering is expected of people who are regarded as having the time to do it, that is, people who do care work at home, looking after their families, primarily women. Because women do care work their labour is not valued. If a job is valued it is rewarded with pay.

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/volunteering-doesnt-make-the-world-a-better-place-20180104-h0dd25.html