This quote changed my life when I went to the Enactus World Cup held in South Africa in 2015. There was this panel of incredible female speakers having live discussions about UN's sustainable development goals - with number five being 'gender equality'. They all spoke of the issue on gender pay gap where one speaker said that, in order to solve the problems on gender inequality, we must remember that men and women are equal, but in the same time they are not the same. And it is a good thing that men and women are not the same because these differences are what make the world such an interesting place.
At that moment, I felt truly proud to be a woman and began embracing the differences between men and women.
Yes the gender pay gap still exist …
The gender pay gap is defined as 'the relative difference in the average gross hourly earnings of men and women within the economy as a whole'.
After coming back from South Africa, I began my research on the matter to grasp a more in depth understanding of it.
The findings of my research showed that the reason why men received a higher pay than women are due to the following reasons:
There is a large proportion of women doing part time work
There is a lack of women in senior leadership roles in companies
There is a low proportion of women in high paying jobs
There is a lack of female entrepreneurs
There is still discrimination
I was simply dumbfounded by my research because I found it hard to believe that in 2016, gender wage gap still exist, and there is not one country in the world where women earn the same as men.
Yes the gender pay gap still exist …
There were many factors which contributed to the existence of the gender pay gap, but I just could not believe that there are still so few female entrepreneurs in the world in comparison to men; and I also cannot believe that there are so few women in higher paying roles.
Having spoken to over 300 women aged 15-25, I realised that a majority of women do have aspirations to one day attain higher roles in life, but they often felt that these aspirations were mere dreams and they were impossible to achieve. These women often said they lacked the skills, confidence and motivation to actually take the risk and go for higher paying positions.
And in result, they chose lower paid jobs...
This did not sit well with me and I was determined to change the mentality of these women, so I am introducing to you all - Ms independent.
An organisation dedicating it works to close the gender wage gap by empowering and equipping women with the tools and skills needed to become company leaders (managers, directors, CEOs, investors and entrepreneurs), as well as raising awareness of the other various ways which we as a community can do to close the gender pay gap further!
Ms Independent is different - we also work with other men to raise awareness of the gender pay gap.
We ultimately want to empower women to become the very best career women they can be, but will not disempower men.
I am still on my road to success, but I want to be on this journey with you. With all the women around the world.
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