Earlier in March, Genevieve Bos, founding publisher of PINK magazine visited us in Dell’s Round Rock campus, in celebration of Women’s History Month.
She talked to a crowd of both, Dell men and women, about informal networking as the number one resource today’s professional women cite for advancement. She also provided interesting statistics about women’s increasing participation in the global workforce and public institutions that I thought I would share in this forum:
- Women aged 15 and older now represent 48.9 percent of the global employment population.
- Women’s share of legislator and management positions globally is 39 percent.
- Women represent 59 percent of the U.S. workforce.
- Consumer spending by women is $3.7 trillion while business spending is $1.5 trillion
- Women account for 66 percent of all home-computer purchases in the U.S.
What these numbers tell us is that the female workforce is at a pivotal point in history.
At Dell, we recognize that the women in our company have been and continue to be key contributors to our remarkable growth; One-third of our global workforce is female. That is why we take Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day as an opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of women throughout history and to provide our women with new opportunities for development.
Dell’s celebrations of women are taking place around the world. This week in Dell India, for example, employees gathered for a panel discussion with outside experts about ways to increase diverse gender representation at the top. Our team in Europe is conducting employee brown bag sessions to speak openly about women’s issues throughout the month. What’s more, Dell was recently selected as one of the top 50 companies for female employees by Aurora and The Times in the UK.
Those are just a few examples of what we are doing to continuously adjust our thinking as it relates to what success looks like for our women. The fact is that as our company continues to grow around the world, we will need to adjust to the changing needs of our growing workforce.