During last night’s U2 concert at the Rose Bowl, Bono dedicated the song “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” to all of the women everywhere who persist.  As I listened to that song and watched images of amazing women who contributed to equal rights for all flash across the screen, it was impossible not to feel inspired to speak up myself …

Women are woefully underrepresented in my industry.  In most of my meetings, I am the only woman in the room.  Same thing on phone calls.  As part of my job, I am on the board of directors of ten companies, and I’m the only woman on NINE of them.  And it’s not like I have a highly physically demanding or dangerous job like a police officer or Navy SEAL.  I sit in an office all day drinking unlimited Diet Dr. Peppers from the workplace fridge and eating miniature Special Darks from the candy jar in my co-worker’s office.  In two words, not tough.

So it’s crazy to me that I see so few women on a daily basis even though women make up approximately 51% of the population in the United States.  And it’s even crazier to me that when I’ve participated in discussions about remedying this imbalance, some men have asked for “hard data” to prove that boosting the number of women would be good for business.  What?!?  It seems like common sense to me that having the input of a group that makes up over half of the population would be key to gaining market share. And to be honest, asking for “hard data” seems to assume that more women aren’t around because they just can’t (or don’t want to) do these jobs as well as men, which is underestimating what could otherwise be a vast talent pool, with skills a company needs to round out its work force.

And that brings me to the $64,000 question that always comes up in these conversations … between an equally qualified man and an equally qualified woman, would you ‎hire the woman for the job simply because she’s a woman?  Frankly, I’ve been surprised by the number of women who, when faced with this question, are reluctant to say they would.  I get that women want to be hired for a job based on their merit and not their gender, but to me, women have unique skills that are not measured in the existing interview process, and to get them, you have to make the affirmative decision to hire the woman.  For example, I think women contribute emotional intelligence, which helps in everything from negotiations with counterparties to managing customers and clients to understanding that markets (and companies and people) are not always going to behave rationally.

So give women the opportunity to show what badasses they can be and how they can enhance an organization.  After all, who else but a woman could wear this leather, faux snakeskin dress from Alexander McQueen?  Women can be hard-core and risk-takers and trail blazers … assets to any endeavor.