The Green Sheet Online Edition

July 14, 2014 • Issue 14:07:01

Readers Speak

A profile appreciated

I just wanted to take a minute to thank the whole team at The Green Sheet for such a great article done on Fusion. The response since that issue came out has been incredible from ISOs and other companies looking to partner with us. The way the article was written was perfect and really expressed the culture of Fusion, which is very important and made us stand out from the rest of the companies in our industry. Once again, job well done. We look forward to working with The Green Sheet in the near future.

John Lomax Fusion

Parity for women in payments

As this year's president of Women's Network in Electronic Transactions (W.net), my top priority is to begin the process of driving parity for women in our industry. The gender gap and glass ceiling have not seen significant improvement in recent years, and remain a reality today for women in the payments industry and beyond. Working women continue to face disparity in pay, as well as exclusion from new opportunities, networking, mentorship, business deals and other activities that open the door for career development and promotion all the way to the executive suite.

Here are some interesting facts about the U.S. workplace:

• Female full-time workers make only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men; a gender wage gap of 23 percent, per the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
• The more education a woman has, the greater the disparity in her wages (women earn 72.3 percent of men's wages for professional, managerial and executive positions), according to WorkplaceRantings.com.
• It takes women, on average, three years longer to receive comparable promotions than their male counterparts, per WorkplaceRantings.com.
• Women hold 4.8 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions and 5.0 percent of Fortune 1000 CEO positions, according to Catalyst Inc.

And here are some statistics about our own payments industry:

• Less than 16 percent of top 20 merchant acquirer executives are women (The Strawhecker Group).
• Only 18 percent of attendees at last fall's Money2020 conference were women (Money2020).
• Less than 21 percent of attendees at the ETA Transact 14 conference were women (Transact 14 attendee list).

So I challenge all of you to make parity for women in payments a priority for your organization. Although the task may seem daunting, an easy way to begin is by offering W.net membership to women at all levels in your organization. You might also want to take advantage of custom programming W.net can bring directly to your company and utilize our job-posting board to attract more women to your organization. I want to know your opinions and ideas on what can be done to help drive parity for women in payments, too. Simply submit your thoughts to "Readers Speak" here at The Green Sheet. I'm looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Lisa Shipley Transaction Network Services

Send us your thoughts

What do you have to say about our profiles, women in payments and other issues of concern to payment professionals? We will welcome comments, questions and suggestions at greensheet@greensheet.com.

Editor

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