Where Do Women Stand?

[00:00:00] Katie Stoller: If you are younger in your early 20s kind of starting and listening just know None of that matters. It’s all noise and as the stats are showing Shifts are happening. So it is possible to break through Welcome back to the whim. 

[00:00:20] Jessy Grossman: podcast everyone. This is Jesse Grossman your host. I’m so excited to be here with you For another week, let me tell you this week’s episode, it’s a solo episode, but again, it’s not with me because I’m still on maternity leave enjoying my little boy, Mikey, and instead you have the brilliant Katie Stoller.

So this week it gets personal. It’s sort of hard not to talk about this topic without getting personal. So Katie shares. Basically like where women stand in this country, we talk a lot about influencer marketing, but we are women in influencer marketing as a [00:01:00] group. And so diving into what that means, what it means to be a woman in 2025, I think is hugely important and that’s what we’re doing today.

Well, that’s what Katie is doing today. And I’m so excited that she was brave enough to bare her soul a bit and just. Be really honest and straightforward about her thoughts about where women stand in the workplace, where women stand in the world with things like Roe v. Wade being overturned and the future of our nation as a place for women to feel comfortable is really in question.

There are a lot of people who are spewing opinions left and right. She brings a lot of like. Really interesting percentages and facts into the conversation and then, of course, shares her opinions on them, but I’d love to hear what you guys think after listening to this episode. So, as always, but especially with this 1 comment on our Instagram comment on our YouTube video.

If you’re tuning into the. The video version of this episode. I love to hear your opinions on what you think Katie has to say. And if you [00:02:00] enjoy these types of conversations, we’d love to keep having them. So thank you to Katie for guest hosting this week. And without further ado, let’s jump into it.

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[00:03:10] Katie Stoller: Hi everybody. I’m so excited to be here today. This is Katie Stoller. I know a lot of women in the Wim community and listen. May have heard me before. I’ve been on the podcast a couple of times.

I have been part of Limit since the early Facebook days when we were a little Facebook group that has now turned into such an amazing organization. Justin had asked me to do an episode today and we kind of chatted about it. Topics I’m really excited about this topic and I think it is incredibly relevant for the world that we’re living in.

So I hope you enjoy everything we’re going to go over today and I’ll do a little thing at the end, but for anyone that wants to look me up to make sure I’m legit, you can check me out on LinkedIn and my name again is Katie Stoller. That’s pretty much where I hang out most of the time on social media.

So what I wanted to go [00:04:00] over today on my first solo episode, it’s a big day for me, was to go over kind of what’s going on being a woman in the world today. And the whole reason this conversation got me excited and has sort of sparked interest is the past few presidential elections got me, really, really pumped up knowing that The opportunity to see a female president was possible.

I know as a child, many women can relate. It was just a bunch of old white men sitting in those textbooks in those, you know, posters in school and I always questioned, like, I don’t understand why you have to be a man to be president. I don’t get this. And quickly, you know, learned as I went through school that like, no, you don’t have to be a man.

There just only have been men. And it always kind of bothered me as a young child. But, as I grew up and learned more about [00:05:00] the world, it increasingly bothered me. So with Hillary Clinton, it was just so exciting to see this woman get to that level. And also such a letdown to not have it. Take its way to fruition and then with our most recent election regardless of your politics Seeing Kamala’s campaign just soar, and be so out there, and so part of the zeitgeist, and then to kind of have it crashing down was very, very sad for a lot of women.

So that kind of got me started thinking about this topic of like, kind of like a state of the union of women these days. I’m an elder millennial as I like to call myself and I’ve been through so many different phases of being a woman, especially a woman in the professional workspace and business.

I’ll give a tiny little bit about my background, but I worked in top PR agencies for over a decade. I was at Ogilvy, Ketchum, and [00:06:00] Golan, always on the brand side, working in traditional PR and then transitioning many years ago into the influencer marketing world. So PR is a very heavily female-influenced industry, especially as social media started.

I feel like, you know, there was kind of like the YouTube Gamer male group, but like everything else was very much dominated by women, mommies, bloggers, couponers, state home moms, fashion, beauty, all of that. And just consumerism in general. So I never felt like I was, you know, I wasn’t like in finance or them or something where I felt very different, but you know, you do see how people get promoted and raises and it does.

It always felt a little bit like inequity in the workplace, and then double that by everything you hear in the world, on the news, in books, in movies, and just, it can feel daunting to be, to live as a woman in this world. I wrote in my [00:07:00] notes, like, Cue Taylor Swift, The Man, that entire song is about just like working so hard and just never getting to the point of.

Male counterparts. So, you know, as a millennial, I’ve been through times where people, where things feel good and, you know, maybe we’re making some headway and then times when it just feels like impossible. Like this glass ceiling is just daunting and we’re never gonna break through. But bringing it back to this conversation today, I wanted to have this conversation and I don’t want this to come off at all as like a male bashing session or Women are better, or anything like that, boys rule, girls drool, whatever, any of that situation.

I want this to be a little bit eye-opening, all based on the fact, that women are, in my opinion, and as you’ll see backed up by a lot of data that I’ve pulled, having like a renaissance. Like, women are on the upswing. And as the data shows, I’m just really excited to see Five, 10, [00:08:00] 15 years from now, kind of how the tides are going to turn because it’s all arrows are pointing in that direction at this point.

And as a mom, I know there are probably some moms listening as someone with, I have a son and a daughter, but specifically for my daughter, the idea that she’ll live in a more equitable place is just very, very, very exciting, whether that be in. Mainstream life and the normal way she goes about her day, but also in business, because you know, that’s something that’s been very important to me.

I love being a mom and I love all aspects of my life, but being in business is incredibly important to me and being in that space. So having the chance to have a more equitable future for our children is very exciting. Quick question for you guys. 

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[00:10:20] Katie Stoller: a t. I hope you guys love it as much as I do. So let’s get into the data because I think it’s really interesting. So I don’t know how many of you are familiar and I’m not too, too familiar with him. I want to kind of get more into his content, but his name is Scott Galloway.

He goes by Prof G and he is a marketing professor at NYU amongst many other things. He’s written books. He’s a serial entrepreneur. I think he’s done stuff with venture capital. I’m just like a really kind of interesting person. He was recently on a podcast. And I was listening to it and stopped like dead in my tracks at some of these stats because it is the exact opposite of what [00:11:00] you would think if you’re just listening to the news and being bombarded by the messaging we’re bombarded with all the time.

It was. Literal like shock and shout out to the podcast. It was girls who got to eat. I love that podcast. It’s a dating and relationships kind of like comedy podcast, super popular, but they interviewed him, the host of the show, and some of these stats came out. So I’m going to read a couple of them because I wonder if you’ll be as gobsmacked as I was.

He starts on a positive note for women, but he says that no group globally, so this is not just us has ascended faster. Than women in the last 30 years. Women, as I was saying, are on the upswing. Like, it has been a really quick trajectory of how fast women have kind of like broken free from some of the constraints that we dealt with back in the ’70s, ’80s, and even ’90s.

Women are globally seeking tertiary [00:12:00] education. More than men currently. So that’s already happening. A lot of these stats aren’t like what’s gonna happen. It’s actually like starting, which makes me excited. So there will be three female college graduates for every two male college graduates within the next five years.

So that’s just showing that women are double downing on education and the more women going into education and getting degrees to me is showing the path of them to taking over businesses, to having leadership seats, to having more women at the table in boardrooms. And that just gets me so excited. And okay, this is the kicker.

This is the one that really kind of stopped me because we hear the opposite all the time. But women under the age of 30 right now. are actually making more money than that. That is just so opposite, I feel like, of what we’re told. Everything is like, you know, 70 cents to the dollar, and like, we work just as hard and get paid less.

And for women [00:13:00] over 30, I think that’s still very true, and it’s, you know, a little tragic that we got ourselves into that position to begin with. But the fact that women under 30 are just like killing it and have somehow closed that gap, and I’d love to do more research on how that happened, is just very, very inspiring.

And then one final kind of stat on this is that more single women are homeowners than single men. So that’s another interesting tidbit is that we always hear you just think that men Make more money. So therefore they’re buying more things and we already know especially as marketers There are probably a ton of marketers listening to this podcast as it’s super relevant for anyone in marketing, but women Run consumerism in this country women make I think it’s something like 80 percent of household buying decisions It might even be more than that and now this younger generation is actually Making the biggest purchase of their life sooner and that just gets me excited.

I feel like [00:14:00] Chef’s kiss to the young millennials in Gen Z because I feel like they’re doing They’re getting on this path sooner. They’re doing it smarter and they’re doing a great job. And then it’s more stats kind of on, I don’t want to say the downfall of men, but I think it’s interesting to just kind of see how things are shifting and the pendulum.

We always say like in politics, you know, the pendulum spins one way and then it has to sort of correct itself by swinging back the other way. And some of the stats on men are scary. And I, again, I have a son, so like I’m not, you know, pushing down the man and. Excited about these. I think we need to do a better job as a society of lifting both genders and making everything equitable is the key word where everybody has.

Sort of an equal playing field, but something is going on with young men these days. I think that’s pretty obvious. Some of these stats are a little dark, but men right now are three times more likely to become homeless and have issues with homelessness. [00:15:00] Men are three times more likely to get addicted to drugs gambling or other substances.

Where it becomes a full-blown addiction. And then men are 12 times more likely to be incarcerated than women. So something is going on with this shift and again, it’s not, I’m not happy about it. I’m so happy that women are, you know, on this upswing, but it’s interesting to think, you know, the state of our country right now is, is kind of like diverging between the two genders.

One out of seven men cannot say that they have one friend and one out of four men can’t say that they have a best friend. So I think that plays a lot into the women in influencer marketing. Group, I mean, I found some amazing, amazing friends who have become completely off-professional turf friends. And we just do such a good job of building community and amping each [00:16:00] other up and being forces for help with each other.

There’s, there’s such this shift from, especially when I was starting in the world, you know, in 20, in the early 20s. Teens, 2010s. It did feel a lot more competitive and I don’t know if it was because I was younger and trying to kind of like figure out my path, but there’s just this lack of competition these days.

I feel like there are just so many women in it for each other and wanting to help and men too. I mean, I have some amazing mentors who are men who have done amazing things for me. But those stats really stuck out to me with the friendships. It’s just there, and maybe some of it has to do with social media and technology advancing, but it does seem like men are more isolated.

I see it in kind of like my world of my friend’s husband and my, you know, males in my life of just not being as easy as connecting as it is for me and my friends and my Female colleagues, so I wanted to talk about all this and kind of get it all on the [00:17:00] table, which I feel like I did, we got the stats out there and I wanted to come to this conversation with at least kind of a key takeaway, not necessarily a solution because I mean, who knows what the solution is, we don’t know what’s going to happen, you know, just in the next 4 years, like, things are going to change and then.

The following election cycle after that, who knows? So to speculate is kind of a waste of time, but I think that the key takeaway for me, and I hope everyone kind of gets something out of this and kind of how they’re going to move forward in the world, but the key takeaway for me is about you can’t let And I don’t want to just pressure the media, it’s not just the media, but you can’t let outside voices, you know, the 70 cents to a dollar and, you know, men are 90 percent of Silicon Valley.

And all these stats we hear all the time, which some of them probably are true, but you can’t let that cloud you and put this a barrier in front of you, because there are also stats that are saying women are freaking killing it out there. And for me, I, you know, I, I just heard so much throughout my life [00:18:00] about the glass ceiling and all these barriers that I do think it had an impact on me not striving and not manifesting and not trying even in some aspects because it was like, what’s the point?

You know, I’m just this small girl from Chicago. Like who’s to say I’m going to go off and become a CEO or a CMO or have a seat at the table? And while I’ve sort of like, Carved my path, and I’m very happy with kind of where my career has gone. Who knows how much faster it could have happened?

Who knows how much more money I could have made? Like, I do feel like those outside voices did play a role in kind of some of my decision-making. So, if you are younger, in your early 20s, kind of starting and listening, just know none of that matters. It’s all noise. And as the stats are showing shifts are happening.

So it is possible to kind of break through and then I also want to make a note to about like underrepresented communities right now. I’m just talking like straight up. Male versus female, which is not the [00:19:00] best descriptor because there are so many things that, you know, go into that. There’s ethnicity, where you live, education, sexual orientation, and minorities have an even more difficult time.

As I started this conversation out, if you look at the list of presidents, it’s a bunch of old white men. And I think lifting women is so important and coming together in community as women is so important, but also like really recognizing that it’s even more difficult for black women, for brown women, for LGBTQ community.

And the more we can do to lift those communities, the more equitable everything gets. Like, the goal is just to raise everyone so that we’re all on this even playing field. That’s kind of my takeaway. And, you know, like I said, the solution is, Lord only knows. We don’t know what’s gonna happen. But I think there’s just this ringing of optimism that I have that there will be a female president [00:20:00] before I die.

Hopefully, I live a long life and we have a couple and my daughter gets to have every opportunity that I had I feel very grateful and very privileged for all that I’ve had and had access to, but that she gets even more and she doesn’t have those outside voices saying men will always earn more.

Men will always get promoted before you. Men will always have a seat at the table that you won’t have access to. We gotta like end that because I do think that that has affected many of us and many people probably listening have felt similar. So I’ll end with one kind of silly anecdote, but I said I have a little son who’s almost six and a daughter who just turned five, and when I asked my son You know, who he wants to be president during the election cycle.

He, we were a big Kamala family. I always like kind of wear Kamala swag. We had a Kamala sign in our yard, but he always said Kamala. When I asked my daughter, who’s just a little bit younger than him, who she wanted to win for president, [00:21:00] she always said the girl. Didn’t need to know the name. Didn’t need to know anything else about her.

She just wanted the girl. And I hope we all can channel little Brooke and channel that energy to raise women up. Give them seats at the table, give them the highest seat at the table, which is the presidency one of these days, and just leave this conversation with sort of a hopeful, a hopeful mentality.

[00:21:24] Jessy Grossman: If you enjoyed this episode, we gotta have you back. Check out our website for more ways to get involved, including all the information you need about joining our collective. You can check out all the information at iamwim. com. Leave us a review, a rating, but the most important thing that we can ask. What I’m asking you to do is to share this podcast. Thanks for listening. Tune in next week.