Cue that Helen Reddy song (you know the one, or the other one) by Beyonce – Women’s History Month is officially upon us.
The advent of March suggests that lots of digital ink will be spilled in an effort to celebrate the centrality of females to the modern-day workforce. It’s perhaps inevitable that at least some peans to the “Sheconomy” will be performative and somewhat hackneyed.
Nevertheless, the body of existing data — and there’s a lot of it — demonstrates that, much like a great value stock or an investment-grade bond, women in the workplace are a steadily-appreciating asset yielding high returns to companies, shareholders and the broader economy.
It’s one of the reasons why number crunchers everywhere have spent the better part of the last two decades extolling the economic virtues of working women of all levels and income brackets, which Nielsen data estimates will comprise 75% of total discretionary spending by 2028.
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It’s also why this week’s Business Sunday profiles several of Dallas-Fort Worth’s highest-profile female executives (all hail the “Queen of Highland Park!) who are prime examples of why the Sheconomy is more than just a catchphrase.
To be sure, there’s more work to be done. Goldman Sachs found that while there’s been undeniable progress, “opportunities and leadership roles across industries remain limited. Using the previous few decades as a guide, it would take another 131 years to fully close the gender gap globally.”
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And as Sasha Richie notes in her profile of ATI Materials CEO Kimberly Fields, a mere eight of D-FW’s 150 largest public companies are female-led, a representative sample of the broader S&P 500 with 11%. Regardless, Fields has become a mover-and-shaker in her male-dominated industry, and explains how she used equal combinations of grit, intelligence and charm to muscle her way into the upper-echelon of a competitive field.
“Women listen and they engage differently, and people get relaxed,” Fields told The Dallas Morning News. “And from a leadership standpoint, it’s about helping your teams engage, get to their potential and get passionate.”
Those qualities are part of what Morgan Stanley highlighted in a widely-circulated 2019 analysis that posited women “are positioned to drive the economic conversation from both the inside — as a workforce propelling better company performance — and outside, as consumers powering discretionary spending and GDP.”
The data also yielded a surprise finding: amidst widespread hand-wringing over falling birth rates and the ludicrously parlous modern dating scene, single working women are best positioned to help close the fiercely-debated male-female pay gap.
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Morgan Stanley found that 45% of prime working-age women (between 25-44) will be single by 2030. As worrisome as that may seem to some, the firm’s economists found an upside: “Rising labor-force participation rates should put upward pressure on women’s wages and help increase overall consumer spending.” Coincidentally, ATI’s Fields is also a single mom.
Whether single, partnered or married, the women who run things here in D-FW are a great example of how the world is gradually embracing the Sheconomy era as it approaches its zenith.
As a society we’d do well to heed the words of Goldman Sachs executive Marc Nachmann: “Workplace equality is as much a smart economic strategy as it is the right thing to do.”
Read more on The Dallas Morning News
