indieDwell and Gender Equality

UN Sustainable Development Goal 5.5: Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision making in political, economic and public life.

The current state of history with the Corona Virus impacting communities across the country reveals cracks hidden by what was a solidly performing American economy. Gaps in housing availability and affordability; lack of health care, child care and sick leave for many workers; and, high levels of employment in at-risk categories like hospitality, retail, and food service became more acute as the virus spread. The virus also highlights that gender inequalities persist.

As the United Nations notes, “women play a disproportionate role in responding to the virus, including as frontline healthcare workers and carers at home. Women’s unpaid care work has increased significantly as a result of school closures and the increased needs of older people. Women are also harder hit by the economic impacts of COVID-19, as they disproportionately work in insecure labor markets.” But the underlying economic conditions for women have existed in this state for some time.

Women represent 39% of the workforce yet hold only 27% of the managerial positions. And while women have made important inroads into political office across the world, their representation in national legislative bodies at 23.7 per cent is far from parity.

At indieDwell, we actively address gender equity in meaningful ways. Our Board of Directors recently selected Christina Ortiz Bluth as the new CEO of the company, promoting her from the COO position. Women run less than 7% of the 500 largest companies in the U.S. We also have women in leadership positions in finance and human resources as well as in the trades. We have women leads in safety, on the drywall team, and the framing team. Some of the female trade leads came in unskilled, received training on the job and earned promotions. The company also includes women on the board of directors.

We’ve also taken the additional steps to third-party verify our gender equity efforts by earning Good Well certification, which insures we have no gender pay gaps, offer equitable executive compensation, equitable management compensation, and that all our team mates earn a living wage. In July 2019, we certified as a B Corp, which verifies our commitments to corporate accountability, ethics, and transparency and paying competitive wages and benefits, including the provision of paid family leave for men and women.

We’ll talk more about this subject in weeks to come. Next week we’ll discuss our efforts toward responsible development and consumption, UN SDG 12.