On 8 March 2023, International Women’s Day, Forbes held its 30/50 Summit in Abu Dhabi. Mika Brzezinski, the summit chair, brought four guests on stage live for MSNBC’s Morning Joe: Hillary Clinton, who co-moderated, Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska, Billie Jean King and Gloria Steinem.
Progress that has stalled
Hillary Clinton started with numbers. Covid hit women and girls hardest, with more domestic violence, more child marriage and more unemployment, and organised pushback against women's rights has grown. The day before, the UN Secretary-General had said that at the current pace, pay equality would take 250 years. In the United States, women founders received 1.9% of venture capital the previous year. Clinton also mentioned the Dobbs decision, gender apartheid in Afghanistan and the repression of women in Iran.
The women of Ukraine
Speaking in Ukrainian, Olena Zelenska described the network of first ladies and gentlemen she started a year before the full-scale invasion. After February 2022 its members moved faster than some governments: they took Ukrainian children with cancer abroad for treatment and helped displaced Ukrainian women in their countries. "We're not just a soft force, we are a force," she said. She spoke of Yana, a 30-year-old volunteer tactical medic killed shortly before, and of a teacher who gave an online lesson from a snowy street, her laptop on a parking barrier, because the only Wi-Fi she could find was near a supermarket.
Follow the money, share the work at home
Billie Jean King, on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Sexes and of the WTA she founded, told women to "follow the money" and talk about what they earn. She asked employers to hire on potential, since women often skip a job when they meet nine criteria out of ten. She also told how Marc Benioff fixed pay gaps at Salesforce overnight once two employees showed him the figures. Gloria Steinem said that as long as fathers don't raise children as much as mothers do, children will keep growing up thinking that only women can be loving and patient, and only men can achieve things outside the home.
Finding your voice
How do you speak up when it really matters? Clinton's advice: be better prepared than anyone, practise (in front of a friend, or your pet), and find allies. King said she was so afraid of public speaking that she nearly failed reading in fourth grade. Tennis forced her to learn, because the winner has to thank the umpires. Steinem asked the audience to value laughter, "the only emotion that cannot be compelled". Zelenska had the last word: equality should be normal, not something people remember once a year.