Happy Monday!
There was a great interview with Christine Lagarde this past week titled “Women in the Workforce Key to Healthy Economies” and it can be found here:  http://www.npr.org/2014/03/28/294715846/imfs-lagarde-women-in-workforce-key-to-healthy-economies
The interview is based on a recent IMF study: “We found out that half the women in the world are not working either because they don’t want to, or, much more often, because they simply can’t work. So, women are underutilized. The second finding is that women are overexploited. That is, in those places where they work, they generally work in the informal sector. And those employees who either do not get paid, or get paid a lot less than they should be paid, are women. We found that if females were working in the same proportion as men do, the level of in a country like Egypt would be up 34 percent, up 27 percent in a country like India but also up 9 percent in Japan and up 5 percent in the United States.”
GDP up 5% in the US would solve a lot of economic issues. So the question remains, why does this issue remain so intractable?
Huge thanks to Pamela Brylski, her team and Rice University on their very successful  “Communication in the Workplace” event – we had over 60 people in attendance and the content was very insightful. More huge thanks to Somer Washington, her team and Natalie Jenkins Sorrell for making “Lunch with an Investment Officer” a success as well. Those who attended really benefitted from Natalie’s insight as well.