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The Double X Economy and the cost of sexism. Listen to the podcast interview with Professor Linda Scott

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The Double X Economy and the cost of sexism. Listen to the podcast interview with Professor Linda Scott

Jana Hlistova

May 26, 2024

Transcript

Welcome to our #238 weekly newsletter.

“For women taking control of their financial future”

-Jana Hlistova

From The Purse

In this week’s newsletter, we highlight a short excerpt from the interview with Professor Linda Scott on The Purse Podcast.

Linda Scott is Emeritus DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Oxford, as well as a visiting professor at Brown University where she teaches gender and economics.

We talk about sexism, the gender pay gap, the UK Equality Act, women in leadership, male allies, female entrepreneurship, why women stabilise economies and how do we put a stop to sexism?

Listen to the full interview on The Purse Podcast.

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And you can review the news in brief so you stay on top of global financial, economic and investing trends.

I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter.

Until next week,

Jana

The Double X Economy and the cost of sexism

We interviewed Professor Linda Scott on The Purse Podcast: we talk about the Double X Economy, sexism, women in leadership, male allies, women in entrepreneurship and why women stabilise economic growth.

We interviewed Professor Linda Scott on The Purse Podcast.

Linda Scott is Emeritus DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Oxford, as well as a visiting professor at Brown University where she teaches gender and economics.

She is the author of The Double X Economy, a 2020 book that deeply documents the worldwide and historical pattern of women’s economic exclusion and makes a passionate argument for the economic and humanitarian reasons to eliminate this destructive inequality.

Recognised as an outstanding work of science and economics, the book has been translated into 14 languages. Scott continues her work as a gender consultant for a wide range of major world institutions, such as USAID and the World Bank.

Here is a a short excerpt from the interview:

Jana: “…And I think women reach a point where they think, you know what? I'm just going to start my business. I'm fed up of this. I'm going to do things my way. I'd rather take a 50 percent pay cut, start my own business, get away from all the nasty sexism, politics, what have you, but be in control of my destiny, then hang on within this very toxic culture….”

Linda’s reponse:

Right. I think in the research they don't ever ask that question, but it is my opinion that that is the primary driving factor.
Women do show entirely different reasons than men do. Or substantially different reasons than men do for starting a business I think. And I can completely understand why women want to do that.
However, I teach a course on gender economics and entrepreneurship at Brown University and have done that for quite a while. And.. I saved the entrepreneurship until almost the end of the class. And the reason I tell them on the first day is all the sexism, economic sexism, we're going to learn throughout the course of this term is going to come home to roost every bit of it when we get to entrepreneurship.
… You not only get discrimination in terms of investment, discrimination in terms of customers, in terms of suppliers, you still have to deal with sexism in your own workplace. And it's very, very high risk for anyone, male or female.
Now nations really need for women to start more businesses. (The) UK being very much in that category.
And so, it does have a very, very negative impact on economies because it very much retards growth, but also when they innovate, they tend to innovate more to the market.
And, mind you, then the number one reason why startups fail is because the market doesn't want whatever it is.
But women are more likely to innovate in a way that their thing is they look to the market and they say this fits in the market, right?
And so there it's a very different kind of fit. And they're more realistic about, both the upsides and the downsides of entrepreneurship and investment than men are.
So we do, we go more to a high risk strategy- intrinsically, when we go always after the male model of entrepreneurship, if we include in a dignified way, the way women run those startups.
…It's much more stable way for an economy to be built.
It also is the case that because of the variety of innovation that women bring to entrepreneurship.
The IMF shows that, economies as a whole are much more resilient in a downturn if they have a good base of female owned businesses.
And the thing is about the women and senior leadership, there's also a lot of research there to show that product performance, financial performance, all kinds of things are, better when you have mixed teams.
But it's also true that accountability and transparency is better.
Risk management is better if you have mixed teams.
And I don't think this is because women are, somehow being more noble…They are more attuned to the long term, they're more attuned to the environment, social damage, things like that.
But it's really because you have the mix, right?
Because the men bring something that's valuable.
Sometimes you have to take risks, right?
So the men bring something that's valuable, but the combination of them kind of brings some fresh air in, let some sunshine in, makes people do their due diligence with more emphasis.
And so I think that's why. You know, as a whole businesses do better and societies do better where those are more balanced…”

Listen to the full interview here on The Purse Podcast.

Financial news

China’s economic miracle is ending, leaving President Xi Jinping w/a challenge none of his predecessors faced: how to govern after the boom
US liquidity has increased for the third week in a row. This also explains the recent winning streak on the Nasdaq 100 and the crypto rally.
US 2 year yields jump as Fed minutes show higher rates still on table.
Pound surges as summer rate cut hopes vanish. Traders have drastically reduced bets that the Bank of England could begin cutting interest rates over the summer after inflation figures came in higher than expected in April.
UK inflation falls by less than expected to 2.3%, reducing chance of June rate cut. Drop in April is smaller than forecast but level is still lowest in almost three years.
UK house prices in first annual rise since June; rents up 8.9%. Average home prices climbed by 1.8% in March, the first annual increase since last June, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Solar stocks are rallying, with a boost from China. China's Solar Industry Group calls on members to crack down on low-price competition to stop a price war. Invesco Solar ETF (TAN) jumped almost 9%.
Nvidia rises $1,000+ per share in All-time high following blowout numbers and 10:1 stock split announcement.

Crypto: bitcoin, ethereum, DeFi

ETH ETF is approved by the SEC. Ether turned positive, is now trading for $3,792, a more than 20%+ seven-day jump. after SEC approves 8 Ethereum ETFs including BlackRock and Fidelity. But ETF issuers must have their S-1 registration statements go effective before trading can begin. It is unclear how long this process will take but some analysts are speculating that it could take weeks.
Analysts at Standard Chartered predict a surge in Ether prices to $8,000 by the end of 2024 if an ETF is approved.
Bitcoin rode off the back of the ETH approval rumours on Monday and passed the $70,000 mark for the first time in more than a month.
Number of new Bitcoin wallets drops to lowest level since 2018. Only an average of 275,000 addresses were added to Bitcoin network each day in the past week, compared to 625,000 6 months ago. Bitcoin nevertheless rises by 2% in the ‘Everything rally’ to ~$67.5k.
Other coins and tokens have risen over the past week, with Chainlink, Avalanche, and Bitcoin Cash making gains of 4.8%, 3.1%, and 3% respectively.
Dogecoin is the best-performer out of the top assets, having jumped by 7% in one week.
Yuga Labs will 'no longer touch' CryptoPunks amid new collection backlash. ‘Super Punk World’ is a 500-piece collection developed in collaboration with artist Nina Chanel Abney, who has been criticised for ‘diluting’ the CryptoPunks brand.

The Purse Podcast

We cover the following in this conversation with Professor Linda Scott:

What is sexism?
UK: The Equality Act -how effective is it?
Financial services industry: the 'Sexism in the City' report
How sexism shows up for women:
- the gender pay gap, the motherhood penalty, women in leadership and as women entrepreneurs
Men becoming allies
Startups: female founders vs male founders.
Investing in AI vs fixing organisations for women
Economies grow by investing in women.

Please listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify+

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We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with Jana via the The Purse website or tweet @jointhepurse and janicka. We do no provide investment advice. Please do your own research or speak to a financial adviser.