Ignoring #metoo can add up big
Full gender equality could boost GDP by 13%
If there’s one glimmer of a silver lining in this challenging and tumultuous year, it’s the fact that more people are becoming aware of the inequities and abusive power dynamics felt by women in so many professional, social and cultural circles.
This growing awareness has exposed the “as a father of daughters” syndrome. You’ve seen it: A man speaks up against sexual misconduct by saying he can’t keep quiet as a father of daughters. The implication is that he wouldn’t have spoken up ... if he didn’t have daughters.
Now, this is a totally natural human reaction. To name just one personal example, I’m embarrassed that I didn’t pay nearly enough attention to disability rights until it affected someone close to me. But while it might be natural, this syndrome demonstrates how limited our empathy can be and how short term our frame of reference tends to be. As Morgan Housel, finanicial journalist and venture capitalist, recently wrote, “Seven billion people on this planet share a flaw: They’re out of touch with almost everyone else.”
So, how do we make sure that the effect of this moment doesn’t fall into the short-term camp and disappear after a few more news cycles? If you aren’t the parent of a daughter and don’t have a #metoo moment to relate to (though I know very few women in this camp), why should this matter to you? And what can you do?
A group of economists recently released a paper addressing the “Lost Einsteins” — individuals from the groups that together make up the majority of the American population (women, African Americans, Latinos, Southerners and low- and middle-income children) who are far less likely to grow up to become patent holders and inventors. We’re missing out on their potential for a myriad of reasons — lack of access to resources and opportunities, lack of examples and mentors, the economic necessity to pursue different paths, discrimination. But we’re not missing out because they don’t have aptitude.
Behind the #metoo movement is that same loss.
For all of the brave women who have spoken out — after either staying in roles where they were subject to harassment and abuse or moving to other roles to escape it — so many others have left the workforce, shifted to femaledominated service industries to their own economic disadvantage, given up on pitching their great new startup for funding or stopped pursuing their talent or creating their art.
As an investor focused on undervalued opportunities — but living in San Francisco, a market that can be an echo chamber and is home to many overvalued companies — I’ve been encouraging others in my field to think about investing based on the solutions and innovations we can’t afford to lose rather than just what we have to gain. Our brains are wired this way, anyway: Humans are more averse to losses than we are eager for gains.
Maybe the #metoo movement has resonated with you because you have a daughter. But even if you don’t, can you instead be motivated by the belief that we can’t afford to lose out on 50 percent of the world’s talent and potential? McKinsey Global Institute estimates that if women attain full gender equality, the United States could add up to $4.3 trillion in annual gross domestic product by 2025. Bringing sexual harassment to light and working to eliminate it is just one small but completely necessary step making this progress on gender parity. Can we afford not to add up to 13 percent to our GDP?
I’m part of the 8 percent of female general partners in venture capital. I’ve stayed in spite of all of the daily microaggressions that women encounter (and count myself lucky that I have not been the victim of serious sexual harassment). As a recent commonplace example, a co-investor asked me if I was going to “stand in for his wife” in a meeting with a portfolio company. I had to remind him that the only reason he was invited to the meeting was me — because the fund I co-founded had invested in the company. His wife was pretty irrelevant to the meeting.
When you look back on your career, will you have helped realize some of the $4.3 trillion that our economy is currently on track to lose because of gender inequity? And if you had a hypothetical daughter holding you accountable for her future, would you make the same decisions today?