To capitalize on the momentum of the Women's March, feminism must be much more inclusive

qz.com - America, as characterized by some of the first words Donald Trump spoke as president of the US, is a dark place of misery, ridden by poverty, crime, and lack of opportunity—a theater of “American carnage.” Yet Saturday (Jan. 21), in Washington, DC, and all around the country, America was quite the opposite: colorful, energetic, and determined. Women of all ages and ethnicities took to the streets to march, chant, and laugh. They came out by the thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions, by bus, by train, and by plane; some even ran to the march. And they made it clear that they’re not going to quietly tolerate the new administration’s threats.

A large part of Saturday’s massive turnout was, surely, motivated by the election of Trump, a man who bragged about assaulting women, and ran a presidential campaign rife with sexism and general intolerance. But it also seemed to represent a new wave of feminism that’s been building for the past few years but has yet to find a suitable outlet.

The last large women’s protest in DC took place in 2004, when over a million people showed up to contest the curtailing of abortion rights. Despite the prominent role gender equality has claimed in the public discourse over the past few years, there has been little public celebration of it.

Investing in Intersectionality

We talk a lot about investing in women, but one issue that is often neglected—or not even identified—in discussions about gender equality is intersectionality. First coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectionality is the idea that different systems of oppression interact. Basically, different types of oppression come as a package deal for an individual facing them. For example, white women face many obstacles and disadvantages compared with men, but black women face marginalization from both racial and gender-based discrimination—and are therefore likely to be disadvantaged even more than white women. Intersectionality acknowledges both the fact that traits like sex, gender, race, nationality, disability, orientation, class, age and other factors all affect a person's opportunities or obstacles in life; as well as the fact that discrimination happens through the combination of and relationship between these various identities, and the systems that oppress individuals belonging to them.

While we're talking about getting more women on boards and in the C-Suite, while we're advocating for women and girls around the world, and while we're celebrating women's successes every day; it's important to remember that women's empowerment is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor—and our discussions, as well as our investments, need to reflect that.

As soon as you start looking for examples, intersections become obvious. From the challenge black women face in the tech industry, to the high violence rates faced by aboriginal women or transgender women (and particularly transgender women of color), to the poverty and class stagnation faced by women from lower-class backgrounds; women's rights are tied to so many other rights.

Think of it this way: The problem of women's disenfranchisement around the world, from boardrooms and venture capital to politics and social movements, has been a failure of inclusion. Does it really make sense, now, to turn a blind eye to the inclusion of people of different races, orientations, nations, religions, beliefs, ages, abilities or other categories? In addition to a moral failure, we fail to consistently combat the root of the problem as it's existed for women for millennia. Inclusion needs to be intentional, and it needs to be intersectional.

As with anything, access to capital and education is crucial in the fight for equality, and that goes double (or triple, or more) for women facing enforced status quos, discrimination, cultural obstacles and more.

That's why we try to stay vigilant to fight for and celebrate women—of all kinds, in all places, facing all situations—at Women Investing in Women Digital. We plan to discuss specific investing and entrepreneurship opportunities as they relate to intersectionality and various communities in the near future, and we thank you for adding your own diverse voices to our growing conversation, and if you'd like to learn more about just a few intersectional efforts, see below for just a few intersectional organizations you might want to follow and support.

Investing in Intersectionality

Digital Undivided: An accelerator and outreach program supporting startups led by black and Latina women.

Women Enabled International: An advocacy and education group promoting and protecting the rights of all women and girls, especially those with disabilities.

GLAAD: A communications hub, media outreach effort, support network and more promoting understanding and rights for all LGBTQ individuals, including women.

Women's Refugee Commission: An international organization working to protect and empower refugee women and girls.

American Civil Liberties Union: A nonprofit organization that uses lobbying, education and the law to defend poor people, individuals from marginalized communities, minorities facing harassment, women facing gender-based violence or discrimination, women seeking reproductive health care and many more. They also fight for equal economic opportunities for women.

Disability Visibility Project: An online community dedicated to "recording, amplifying and sharing disability stories and culture."

Asian Women in Business: A nonprofit organization supporting Asian women entrepreneurs and professionals.

Diversity is good for business

bdlive.co.za - GALLUP, Harvard, and McKinsey are among organisations that have compiled studies that show the advantages of a gender-diverse executive and workforce.

Increasingly, corporations and politicians are realising the benefits of increased diversity. Diversity makes the business and political world go round. It simply "makes bottom-line business sense", writes Sangeeta Bharadwaj Badal, primary researcher for Gallup’s Entrepreneurship and Job Creation Initiative, commenting on a recent Gallup study, which found that hiring a demographically diverse workforce can improve a company’s financial performance.

Men and women have different viewpoints, ideas, and market insights, which enables better problem-solving, ultimately leading to superior performance.

Despite the overwhelming evidence in its favour, however, gender equality is taking one step forward and two steps back.

A study by tax and assurance company Grant Thornton unearthed distressing results: little progress is being made globally to highlight gender advancement in business leadership. And in SA, only 23% of senior management positions are occupied by women, while just less than 40% of companies have no women at all in leadership positions.

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NPR Interviews Young Visionary Behind #1000BlackGirlBooks

Marley Dias loves to read. But the New Jersey 11-year-old—who, among other things, has traveled to Ghana to help feed orphans and received a grant from Disney—has made it her latest passion to collect children's books featuring black female protagonists so she and other students can have role models in fiction that include people like themselves.The project, #1000BlackGirlBooks, saw its beginning when Dias commented to her mother that she was "sick of reading about white boys and dogs." Determined to show that there are wonderful black girl protagonists—and to introduce the books to schools and show that reading is enhanced by including diverse perspectives—Dias set out to collect 1,000 such books by the beginning of February. She's currently at 4,000 books and counting.

Dias spoke with NPR's Morning Edition about her effort and the importance of students being able to identify with protagonists.

"I think it's important in general for kids to be reading books with diversity. When you read about a character that you can connect with, you'll remember the things that they learned, so if I like hair bows, and the character I'm reading about likes hair bows; I'll remember what he or she learned in that book because I have something in common with them," Dias told Morning Edition's David Greene.

Read an excerpt and listen to the interview, and click through to check out the rest of the article, including book recommendations from Dias.

NPR Ed - (Excerpt) Black girls, like Marley, were almost never the main character.

What she was noticing is actually a much bigger issue: Fewer than 10 percent of children's books released in 2015 had a black person as the main character, according to a yearly analysis by the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And while the number of children's books about minorities has increased in the past 20 years, many classroom libraries have older books.

Last fall, Marley decided to do something about it. She set a goal of collecting 1,000 books about black girls by the beginning of February, and #1000blackgirlbooks was born.