As March comes to a close, we wanted to reflect on our celebration for Women’s History Month. The Women’s Employee Resource Group, led by me, planned a smattering of events to celebrate and educate on a wide variety of women’s accomplishments and issues.
We learned how women have shaped history in Pub Trivia: Women’s History. We heard about women’s unique experiences and their diversity of person and thought in The Moth Podcast Stories Screening. We saw how women face adversity and defy the odds in a Feminist Film Clips Screening & Discussion. We opened our minds and left informed and inspired after Elizabeth Pearson’s Workshop: Equity vs Equality – spot differences and advocate. Finally, Recharge women shared their women’s creative gifts in Open Mic: The Women’s History Month Show.
In addition to events, we supplied themed Zoom backgrounds, posted a weekly “Question of the Week” in our community slack channel, and shared music by female artists – all to keep the company thinking about women’s issues and accomplishments in fun and engaging ways. We also shared a weekly bulletin highlighting noteworthy women and key facts. (Shoutout to Amanda Hawley for leading that effort!) To close this blog, we want to share those noteworthy women and key facts here for you all. May it inspire us to care about women’s issues all year round.
Fun Facts:
- Wyoming was the first state to grant women the right to vote in 1869. It was not until 1920 that women were granted the constitutional right to vote, with the 19th Amendment.
- Women’s eyes are able to see more shades of color than men, according to the National Library of Medicine. Some sources say up to 20% more!
- The average woman earns just 82 cents for every dollar earned by a man. This disparity is even greater for women of color, with African American women earning just 60 cents and Latinas earning only 55 cents for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men.
- Until Congress passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974, women couldn’t get credit cards in their own names. Often, they had to bring a man along to cosign for them. Legal work done by late SCOTUS Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg laid the foundation for the ECOA, as well as many other basic rights women have today.
- In 1970, women made up 8% of STEM workers and 38% of the workforce. By 2019, women made up 27% of STEM workers and 48% of the workforce.
Featured Women in History:
A huge thanks to the women of Recharge who made the events of this month possible including Amanda Hawley, Nicole Harvey, Sam Uzzell, and Fiona Stripe. Huge appreciation also goes to all other contributors of the month’s initiatives including Lizzy Desrosiers, Lizzy Mann, Shonel Symister, Lindy Crea, Hang Mai, Meiling Yang, Evangeline Davis Couling, Katrina Nguyen, Callie Hawley, and Oisin O’Connor.
