Living in Shanghai, China for three years, I witnessed some of the world’s most complex and distressing social, environmental, and economic challenges. While working for UN Women China, I came to understand the “gender multiplier effect” and its importance to greater economic growth, healthier families, and the elimination of poverty. The “multiplier effect” describes what can happen in an economy or community when what seems to be a relatively irrelevant factor is changed and, consequently, an even greater change takes place.
A story best illustrates the gender multiplier effect. I met Connie Han when I was working with the World Academy for the Future of Women, a nonprofit organization supporting the leadership development of university women in rural China. Connie was a senior member of the leadership development program. She had never been outside of Henan Province; however, she knew that moving to Shanghai would provide more economic opportunity than staying in her village. I offered to bring her to Shanghai for a job shadow experience.
That week in 2012, Connie took her first airplane ride, tried for the first time a variety of international foods, and visited offices of multinational corporations. She had several job offers, which she turned down until she found a program that provided international sales training. At present, Connie leads a sales team for an industrial equipment company that sells mining equipment. She manages sales with India and Africa for her company. She is also expecting her first baby!
Mentoring Connie inspired me, so I launched a program that added an additional year to an existing leadership program offered by the World Academy. This third-year program, called the Academy in Action, initially provided 40 young women job-seeking skills, job shadowing experiences, and internships. The program gave Academy members the tools needed to pursue their passions and to transition from being university students to leaders in their careers and global citizens.
With encouragement and mentorship, the first cohorts of young women gained the skills, experience, and confidence necessary to succeed on their own. They achieved financial stability and independence. Some are now working in technology, healthcare, and higher education, among other industries. Individually, Academy in Action participants changed their own futures and positively impacted their families. Collectively, they showed others from their villages that they can achieve economic empowerment too.
I certainly did not initially fathom that giving Connie her first experience outside her rural province would be so empowering and result in a sustainable program that continues to help other Chinese women today. The gender multiplier effect that started with 40 women in China, if paid forward over 15 years, will impact over 465,000 lives!
Even though women make up a little over half the world’s population, their contribution to the economic growth of society is far below its potential, resulting in serious economic consequences. The gender pay gap, if changed, would have a tremendous multiplier effect on the economy. A 2017 study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that a nation’s poverty rate of working women would be cut in half if women earned as much as men. The research also found that equal pay would add an additional income of $512.6 billion to the U.S. economy if men’s wages stayed the same.
ActionAid, an international organization that aims to reduce poverty, estimated equal pay would boost women’s earnings in developing countries by $2 trillion. Additionally, increasing participation of women in the labor force can also reap many economic rewards. If as many women worked as men, the International Monetary Fund estimated that GDP would increase by 5 percent in the U.S., 9 percent in Japan, 12 percent in the United Arab Emirates, and 27 percent in India.
There is a significant multiplier effect for societies and communities of eliminating the gender wage gap. The National Partnership for Women and Families found that “the gender-based wage gap results in staggering losses that make it harder for women to pay for food and shelter, child care, college tuition, birth control, and other health care.” If the wage gap were closed, on average, a working woman in the U. S. would be able to afford more than one additional year of tuition and fees for a four-year public university, 74 more weeks of food for her family, nearly seven more months of mortgage and utility payments, or 14 more months of child care.
A similar “ripple effect” comes with education. According to a study by UN Women using data from 219 countries, child mortality decreases by 9.5 percent for each additional year of education received by women of reproductive age. Educated women have smaller families, healthier children, and are more likely to educate their children.
Worldwide, women hold relatively few positions of power in terms of corporate leadership. A study of women in the workplace by Lean In and McKinsey & Company identified another multiplier effect, which could have a dramatic impact on the representation of women in the workplace. Women are 18 percent less likely to be promoted than their male peers. If entry-level women are promoted at the same rate as their male peers, the number of women at the Senior Vice President and C-suite levels would more than double.
If a balance in leadership worldwide is realized, strategies creating a gender multiplier effect will be required. One such strategy is already in place through ATHENA International. Since the inception of the ATHENA Leadership Award in 1982, more than 7,000 exemplary leaders in over 500 communities have received the prestigious award. They have been given in communities in the United States, Bermuda, Canada, China, Greece, India, Russia, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Recipients of the award become mentors who “lift as they climb,” extending a hand to other women and the next generation of leaders. There is a significant gender multiplier effect when over 7,000 leaders seek opportunities to mentor and inspire other women to achieve excellence in their professional and personal lives.
The gender multiplier effect exemplifies the impact a single, positive action can make. When individuals and organizations strive for advancing the interests of women, they simultaneously strive for advancing the interests of families, communities, and global economies. The results can be profound. How powerful the results would be if many other organizations invested in sparking their own gender multiplier effect!
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