To increase the leadership opportunities for women to make needed changes in society, we must put a stake in the ground now to change the conscious and unconscious bias by men and women, towards women and their ability to contribute meaningful success to ideation and innovation. This is critical to increase the gender equity for women that translates into greater innovation, collaboration, and societal global wealth. This bias even comes unwittingly from women themselves, who don’t realize the power they have to use global collaborative innovation with other women as a growth strategy to achieve internal satisfaction and external success.
Change is needed to develop training for women and girls that helps them recognize they have everything they need to be successful to break down barriers. It comes from their inner perception and the lens they use when they look in the mirror at themselves. What do they see? Who are they? Is there an inner incongruency of the inner self and how they show up in society similar to Imposter Syndrome? Do their behaviors mirror how they feel deep down within themselves? Do women and girls take time to be quiet, without distractions, to sit with themselves alone and openly think: “What is important to me? How can I change the vibration level of my energy to attract more abundance and the life I love? My happiness is my responsibility and choice. It is an inside job.”
The bottom line is to take responsibility every day to make choices for our lives that are consistent with our inner core values.
What if women made a concerted effort to think of “we” rather than “I” to create a global tidal wave of a sea change in the “field of possibilities” for all women, no matter their zip codes?
How would our world change? What new ideas could be co-created? What new innovative products or services would be offered that could bring our global citizens together who are honest brokers of ideas and could make a societal impact?
It really is simple! Women have the numbers! There are *385 billion women in the world and 285 million global women business owners. Women live longer, are major purchasers of products and services, excellent communicators, and lead many campaigns for human rights that change perceptions and create new laws protecting citizens whose freedoms are at risk.
Women are the center of the circle of change. They are the key to our society’s future for innovation, gender equity, and wealth. It is a simple continuum: Begin with girls 9-12. Introduce them to using curiosity to be aware of their environment and possible gaps of missing solutions. > Ages 13-18, encourage them to join the Girls STEAM Institute® Global Team Challenges, develop a business idea, and pitch their business ideas to a panel of judges for feedback about the commercial viability of their ideas. > Women business owners’ mentor young future entrepreneurs and fund the needed startup capital to bring these ideas to market. > These young female entrepreneurs are trained by the seasoned women entrepreneurs and become vendors in the supply chains of the seasoned women’s businesses. > When the seasoned women entrepreneurs decide to sell their companies, the younger women entrepreneurs with supply-chain experience become the new owners of the seasoned businesses and maintain the corporate goals for diversity in their supply chains.
Major factors for this continuum model to be realized, that increase net worth and wealth for women, require personal development and leadership programs to prepare young girls to develop self-awareness and self-sufficiency, resulting in self-confidence, using curiosity and empathy to make a difference in society that encourages global collaborative innovation.
*World Economic Forum – 2023
