When I was a teenager in high school I took several of the mandatory math classes. My preference was music and language but I had to take math if I wanted to graduate. Back then we had grade thirteen (yup I’m aging myself)  I did pretty well in grade nine math but it wasn’t my favourite class for sure. Grade ten math was a nightmare. Apparently I liked nightmares back then because I  was given the opportunity to repeat the nightmare for another year. For two years I tried to understand what the teacher was trying to teach. Here’s what I learned from this man who called himself a teacher.

1. If you weren’t a jock you didn’t count

2. If you were a female in his class you had one purpose: to be beautiful. (strike two on that one)

3. If you tried to ask questions you were called stupid or idiot or dummy and stood the chance of having the chalk eraser thrown at your head. ( I know because it happened to me until I learned to stop asking)

4. If you didn’t understand the work you sure as hell didn’t ask the teacher for help.

5. If you didn’t ask for help and didn’t understand you sure as hell had better not let the teacher know that he had failed at his job.

Bottom line: I stopped going to class and I failed grade ten math twice. Same teacher same class same failure.

In that class I came to believe that I didn’t know much about math which was ironic because my first full time job was at a bank. I stayed there for many years and moved up in the ranks fairly quickly. Actually I did understand math: I didn’t understand those teaching methods in grade ten: big difference.

Now about 40 years later here’s something you all should know.

The CBC did a documentary in March of this year called “The F Word” In it they quote the statistic that women comprise 53% of the population in the world and earn 1% of the wealth. Do the math ladies! That means 47% of the world earns 99% of the wealth!

I am pretty certain my math teacher from way back when would think that this statistic would actually be ok but I sure don’t. I hope you find this startling too: startling enough to want to change the numbers. You ready to be a change maker?

Women in business will be the ones to start up our ailing economy and here’s a cool and fun math kinda graph to show you how that all works. from Open Forum.

Women support local: women shop local: women support other women in business who support other women in business: well you see where I’m going with this. Women don’t just make money and hoard it they share it out: they support their communities and their communities don’t just survive they thrive. Want to be part of a movement like that? Want to be a woman who helps to change her entire community? If you’re not sure how to start but you know you have a great idea consider hiring a life coach to get you started on the right track.

Do the math ladies.What’s the elephant in the room? Women and wealth.  We ARE the 99%: change that.