Green Money Visions for Women

After an exuberant weekend filled with women entrepreneurs marketing their companies and networking, marching side-by-side with all ages of people to celebrate Women’s Rights to cheering on female athletes with 40 other women, I found myself resting in an MRI machine having an update on a small pituitary tumor found in 1994. The MRI operator said, “Try not to move during the 30 minute scan,” little did he know I was so tired I found the inside of the loud clanging tubular machine peaceful after such a full weekend.

As I lay encompassed by this modern technology thinking, “Who was brilliant enough to invent such a machine to see the inside the human mind?” I reflected and relived the moments of the weekend. You see sometimes I am so busy I do not allow myself time to relish in business successes because I’m already planning the next event for women entrepreneurs. The ‘quiet’ of the machine gave me just the time I needed to relive each day, the women I met, and the inspirational words of all the female speakers.

A conversation about pay inequality flooded into mind first – most likely making my brain image quite pink! The dialogue reminded me no matter how hard women entrepreneurs work at their companies; they are not satisfied with the amount of money they make. I can attest to this after 22 years as an entrepreneur. I know if I compared my salary the past two decades as a business owner to what I would have earned in a career in higher education, the retirement fund would be larger and I could pay off my son’s college loans sooner.

The reality is our salaries as women entrepreneurs are tied into the salaries of our hard working professional female sisters who work for someone else. If they are paid less money compared to their male counterparts, women business owners follow their example and their pay history by charging less. It might not make sense to the outside world that believes women business owners can charge any pay rate we want; but we follow suit with society’s norms.

There are many equality issues facing women today and pay equality is one of them. If we can’t change the laws because we don’t have a voice at the table where laws are made, then we must do what we can on our own. I believe strongly by women committing 100% to put their money in the hands, bank accounts, checking books and Pay Pal accounts of other women in we can “make” pay equality our issue and change the world in our own way.

Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is to encourage you to recommit to spending your money in 2018 with women first and foremost to help eradicate pay inequality and level the financial playing field for our generation and hopefully the generation to follow. Women TIES is built on this premise and a reason we have a directory where you can find women to do business with across the state or in your own region. We aren’t just another business organization trying to help women network, we have a much stronger feminist focused mission aimed at helping women make more money; but I need you to live the “Women TIES Mission” to make these changes work.