Spending power

[newplanneeded]

Observing various workplace initiatives to help women succeed in the male doninated industry I’m in - it‘s all just lipservice and nothing really is changing. I‘m so tiered of it.
Management level and high salary jobs are men, the further down the career ladder (and salary bracket) the more women.

For a while now I’ve started to completely change my spending power as it is clear from my POV that a different distribution of wealth is a major factor to achieve equality between genders. Now, if I need to pay for any service, i‘m seeking a woman to do the job. In addition, my clicks / likes/ engagements / reviews in the online world equally are a form of currency.

Please help me to create the list of services and online places to elevate women.

1.	recent househunting. every estate agent i made appointments with, I asked for a female estate agent if possible. gave a positive review online for the one that helped to find the home

2.	house buying - tried to find a female surveyor but couldn’t find one. 

3.	house buying -  hired a female solicitor. wrote a positive review on google for her
4.	planning a (fancy) anniversary restaurant visit. whilst researching restaurants realised that most celebrated chefs are male. from the few female chef options - thats where i booked. wrote an email to Michelin Guide saying that the lack of women they honor is embarrassing.

5.	Online currency - IMDB is (used to be?) much more frequented by men. made an account and give 7+ star reviews to all the tv shows / films I like that have a female lead or pass the Bechdel test. 

what are yours? I especially want to find more in the online space, like IMDB (which is a respected platform for the film industry) with voting power?

Yes, i've heard of micro loans before, thank you for reminding me.

If you get the opportunity to book speakers or conference guests for your work, look for women. You can often find organisations on twitter that will help you find them.

Think about how you use language. In another life, I wrote about food and restaurants. It's really common to have husband and wife teams running restaurants. Call them wife and husband teams. Or put the woman's name first if you don't like using wife/husband (I don't love it but will do it sometimes to make the point).

Train yourself to say 'she' instead of 'he' - so when your friend says, oh I had a good chat with the doctor, say oh what did she say? This one is hard and I'm an ancient hairy-pitted feminist.

Mentor women. Support their ideas in meetings. Give credit where it's due. And as you say OP, spend your money with women.

Watching with interest. I'm v keen to support female-led businesses and will try to be more conscious in searching them out.

Constantly baffled at the way the universe does everything it can to preference and facilitate success for men, no matter how average they are.

Train yourself to say 'she' instead of 'he' - so when your friend says, oh I had a good chat with the doctor, say oh what did she say? This one is hard and I'm an ancient hairy-pitted feminist.

I had a hilarious conversation the other day. A huge owl was outside the office so loads of staff were looking. Some bloke from another department said, "wow he's amazing" and I said "yes I love watching her look around". He said, "how can you tell it's a female owl?". Idiot.

I use Lend with Care as well - you can filter for just women.

They ensure that the children of those who receive funding are in education, so hopefully helping the next generation of women as well (In addition to checking that people aren't borrowing too much, interest rates are reasonable, they have a sound business plan, etc)

@MrsTerryPratchett

Train yourself to say 'she' instead of 'he' - so when your friend says, oh I had a good chat with the doctor, say oh what did she say? This one is hard and I'm an ancient hairy-pitted feminist.

I had a hilarious conversation the other day. A huge owl was outside the office so loads of staff were looking. Some bloke from another department said, "wow he's amazing" and I said "yes I love watching her look around". He said, "how can you tell it's a female owl?". Idiot.

That's brilliant. What an erse (not you MrsTP)