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This Week in Business and Brands: Women Working Wonders, Female Founders and More
We’re shaking things up with this week with a news roundup that examines the role of women as consumers, actors and inventors in our modern world, in honor of International Women’s Day which was celebrated this past Wednesday.
The news coverage on March 8th was an opportunity to brush up on the role that women play:
- The Guardian gave us a glimpse of what women are doing in the workplace with beautiful images from around the world.
- The Center for American Progress, calculated that if U.S. women were to not work for 24 hours, it would put a $21 billion dollar dent in the country’s gross domestic product.
We checked in on the innovations catering to the female market, especially when driven by female innovators:
- With concerns of rider and driver security on the rise, new ride-sharing companies are employing female-only drivers to cater to female riders. We love how the services are reinforcing their differentiation with truly valuable experiences: Boston’s Safr has an SOS button for riders and drivers, L.A.’s See Jane Go offers a car payment program to its drivers, and Australia’s Shebah donates to charity.
- The founder of Thinx who made period underwear seem cool is taking on new cultural taboos.
- Ellevest, the new investment platform for women, is changing the conversation about women investing, and CEO Sallie Krawcheck discusses here the gender investing gap.
We were fascinated to see the evolving mindset of women around the world analytically documented:
- Google’s review of what women watch on YouTube reflects a broad shift towards entrepreneurship, education and empowerment among working-age women worldwide.
- Check out the leaderboard of the most popular ads among women with empowering messages for some inspiring stories.
And advertisers have taken note, with less pandering and more genuine messages:
- A United Colors of Benetton campaign started in India and was adopted globally to encourage women to take their half. “United Colors of Benetton has an incredible message to share with the world for Wednesday’s International Women’s Day. It’s asking women all over the world to unite and fight to be seen as an equal gender.”
- Nike released a “Believe in More” campaign in Turkey, Russia and the Middle East to help inspire women to get active, regardless of obstacles and barriers. The Middle East release coincides with Nike’s launch of a Pro Hijab line.
- A great campaign by GE supports women in science. “The 60-second spot is part of GE’s audacious plan to employ 20,000 women in STEM roles by 2020 and to have 50/50 gender representation in its technical entry-level programs by the same time.”
- Getty Images’ director of creative insights, Rebecca, writes about how we depict women and how this is about to change.
We’ll leave you with these inspiring profiles of female role models pushing design forward in the US.