THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ Co-Founders, Megan Boswell and Corinne Neil recently joined James Kademan , host of the Authentic Business Adventures Podcast series for a rolicking and candid hour in the studio to share their start-up story, their decision to be female-focused despite lots of advice to do otherwise, and how a night out with the gals for a glass a wine can be rich ground to uncover your next business idea. READ MORE & LISTEN IN…
Forget the flexible desk… how about a flex apartment, co-working, and fitness membership in countries around the world AND a platform to promote your independent work style from wherever you are. THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ and Behere are making it possible to live + work in inspiring cites around the world one month at a time. Together, these two organizations are building community and empowering a dynamic freelance lifestyle.
THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ is a powerhouse talent collective of WOMEN CONSULTANTS who offer professional services to businesses. The platform offers a searchable online directory and targeted resources to help create an ecosystem and an infrastructure for the future of work. Behere is the platform for women to live in cities around the world, without long-term contracts or obligations. The members-only platform provides access to carefully curated furnished apartments, workspaces and fitness studios for the growing population of women seeking alternative frameworks to live, work and travel.
THE JILLS Co-founders, Megan AC Boswell and Corinne Neil, caught up with Behere Cofounder and CEO, Meesen Brown to chat about female forward businesses, flexible workstyles on an international scale, and the future of work, and some of the best countries for living and working. READ MORE…
This past week had us at one of our most favorite events of the year - the annual WARF UpStart Alumni dinner. We’re graduates of this free entrepreneurship program for women and people of color, and the very first iterations of THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ came to fruition while we drafted and revised our Business Model Canvas throughout this 10 week program.
UpStart was an important step into entrepreneurship for us.
Something big is going down. You can see the cracks and feel the reverberations. Change is in the air, as women use, make, create, and build technologies to power a pay gap paradigm shift.
Now, the stats are still lousy when it comes to pay equity. According to the AAUW report, The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap, "in 2015, women working full time in the United States typically were paid just 80 percent of what men were paid." The reports also suggest that progress toward pay parity is slow and that it has stalled in recent years suggesting equity may not be achieved until the year 2159! The report also identifies larger gaps in pay for women of color and notes that as a women ages the pay gap grows.
Dismal.
However, in her article for the Harvard Business Review, How Technology Can Help Close the Gender Gap, Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and Co-Founder of Ellevest, offers hope. Krawcheck deftly draws conclusions about how access to information (specifically information on companies' gender practices) , online social networks and communities, and value-driven decision-making are bridging the pay gap and leveling the playing field for professional women. She suggests there is a lot happening that is moving women in the right direction for pay equity.
Good news for us all. The timing, it seems is at a critical pace for women to know about, explore, and utilize the infrastructure and the ecosystems that are currently creating a much needed equalization of power in the workplace and beyond.
Throughout the article, Krawcheck details numerous technology resources that women can access to help close the gender pay gap (which you should totally check out) and she identifies the growing number of options for women in the workforce as making significant impact on the gender pay gaps. She highlights the increasingly viable option of entrepreneurship for women and notes the importance of being able to hire on a project by project basis as a contributor to the success of startups and young companies. Krawcheck also predicts a very near future "in which professional women work for, buy from, and invest in companies that align with their values." Vicki Saunders' organization SheEO is one that is already creating this future with their approach to investing - Radical Generosity - where up to 1000 women contribute $1,100 to create a million dollar fund to invest in women-led ventures. Nicole Yeary, also exemplifies these ideals with her Chicago-based company, Ms. Tech, whose member platform 'helps business women do tech, and tech women do business'.
Women empowering women, does indeed seem to be a theme for bridging the pay gap.
And this is, indeed, why we founded THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™. Because forming an ecosystem and shaping an infrastructure where women entrepreneurs can help women entrepreneurs lift and link each other, complete projects together, find community and get stuff done... well that has the potential to change everything.
JOIN THE JILLS. FIND A JILL. REFER A JILL. And start to power a cycle that spurs a workforce revolution and help us all work toward bridging the gender pay gap.
