CLICK on the attachment to read more about how on TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19TH, we are inviting you to leave your checkbook and credit cards at home as a symbolic gesture that we no longer "buy" the glacial pace of change for working women around the world.
Instead of shopping, go for a walk in the park, write a letter to a friend, enjoy a museum, or help someone in need -- and join us at one of the "buycott" events that will be held in New York, London, San Francisco and many other cities.
SPREAD THE WORD and visit <>www.85broads.com to read about the launch of the campaign which was featured in the September 20th issue of BusinessWeek.
Email <>buycott at 85broads.com for more information.
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LATEST NEWS ON THE BUYCOTT as seen in Newsday, September 26, 2004
Visit <http://www.85broads.com>www.85broads.com for more information, details and upcoming events!
Power of the purse? Group's planned Oct. 19 protest aims to underscore the purchasing strength of women customers
Patricia Kitchen
September 26, 2004
It had to happen. Women finally had to put statistic No.1 together with statistic No.2 -- and take some kind of action:
Stat No. 1: 85 percent of all purchases in this country are either made or influenced by women.
Stat No. 2: Just eight CEO-ships, 13.6 percent of board seats and 15.7 percent of top executive jobs in the Fortune 500, are held by women.
To which companies say, "Yes, yes. But we need more time to move women up."
To which Janet Hanson replies, "Time's up."
She's the founder of "85 Broads," a group started in 1999 for women executive alumnae of Goldman Sachs, at 85 Broad Street in Manhattan. The organization has 4,300 members, including women students and graduates of select business schools around the country.
The group is promoting a "buycott" on Oct. 19, when women are encouraged to leave their checkbooks and credit cards at home and, that's right, not buy anything all day. (Well, OK, you are allowed to buy necessities, such as food and medicine.)
The message, says Hanson, is that having eight women chief executives "does not reflect the purchasing power of half the population." But that's not coming from a place of hostility. Indeed, she says she likes the "passive" nature of a buycott, as opposed to the more vocal protests of "my generation that burned stuff."
While she says the effort is symbolic and "we don't think we'll see a downward move in the GDP," she is hoping that some company top dogs will listen up and start looking for ways to say "thank you" to their women customers. And that, she believes, might include inviting more qualified women into the board room and the executive suite. Or asking employees for help in showing women customers more respect. Or becoming part of community projects that help women in third-world countries.
Besides her years at Goldman, Hanson is the majority owner and chairwoman of Milestone Capital Management in Manhattan, and serves as a managing director at Lehman Brothers, advising that company on issues of inclusiveness.
By next year she would like to see "a great passion around how good it feels to include everybody at the table." And that means more respect, too, for those just entering the work force -- young women, and men, with "intellectual firepower," people who quietly "vote with their feet" when confronted by traditional corporate barriers to learning opportunities and the chance to effect change.
Encouraging women to "use their collective economic power" is terrific, says Carol Frohlinger, co-chairwoman of the Where Are the Women project of Women on the Job, a Port Washington-based education and advocacy group. That's a project designed to get shareholders asking about the dearth of women on company boards. See www.where arethewomen.org.
She hopes that other women's groups will pick up the buycott call. And will she be leaving her credit cards in her wallet that day? You bet. But she wonders how the day's initiative will be sustained. People have short attention spans, she says. They might listen up for the short term, but move quickly on to something else.
What's needed is systemic change in companies, says Frohlinger, a consultant in Dix Hills and co-author of "Her Place at the Table -- A Woman's Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success," (Jossey-Bass, $27.95). For instance, some employers think they are being accommodating by allowing working moms -- and dads -- to skip those 5:30 p.m. meetings. But if a mom opts to dash off to pick up the kids at daycare, she also "opts out of the loop."
Certainly, no one wants a buycott to have a negative impact on the economy, says Mary Lou Quinlan. And, indeed, economists don't expect it to. But she says that to make any impact as a "cash-register wake-up call," the Wal-mart crowd of women consumers will have to be enlisted, too. "That's where the real money is," says Quinlan, founder and chief executive of Just Ask A Woman, a Manhattan-based marketing consultancy. And she believes even the threat could make "a dramatic public point." You can count her in, too, as a buycotter for that day.
On the other side, Nancy Ploeger, president of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, writes in an e-mail that she has some worries: Such an initiative could work against their sister entrepreneurs, she thinks. "There are many women business owners who depend on daily to keep business up, pay their employees, rent, etc. If I were them, I'd find a different route."
And why such a broad stroke, asks Linda Caplane, a self-described "avid shopper" and marketing and business-development director in Manhattan. Why not pick on "companies that are the most restrictive to women, rather than doing it in a general way?" Still, she's all for the initiative and will be hanging on to her money that day, even planning to bring her morning bagel from home.
Lakshmi Reddy, 35, of Manhattan, is a little skeptical about the outcome: "I don't necessarily think some gentlemen making these decisions at high levels will be affected by this." But still, to be supportive, she'll be on board, too.
Her view is that the best way for women to get ahead is to "just keep pushing and working," something she learned growing up with four brothers. Plus, she's spent the bulk of her career in the corporate world in marketing with a couple of financial-services giants, where she worked hard and got promoted. She says, "I don't believe in the affirmative-action type thing."
But despite her promotions, she found "I wasn't learning a lot" and that "there wasn't much farther I wanted to go in corporate America." So, she's just started a new business, Avanti Strategy, doing marketing for restaurants and real estate projects.
Indeed, says Hanson, she's seeing many of 85 Broads' younger members stepping off the corporate track, looking for more meaningful work. "Don't assume the youngest talent is going to play the game you played," is the message she sends to business managers. And that's why it's even more crucial for companies to start this dialogue.
As for women disheartened at the glacial pace of advancement, this buycott is a way, she says, to "take control in a positive way."