Josie Cox
Author, "Women Money Power" | Business Journalist
Josie Cox is an author and journalist covering the intersection of business, economics, and gender. Her work exposes the social and political hurdles women are still working to overcome in the generations-long marathon toward gender equality. From big picture issues such as the inextricable link between reproductive freedom and economic potential to smaller yet equally concerning matters such as workplace microaggressions, Cox shows us there is still much work left to be done. She brings to the stage urgent discussions about the role we all play in creating a more equitable future.
Cox’s first book, Women Money Power: The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality, traces the fight toward closing the gender pay gap throughout history and assesses the tremendous work that remains. It has been called “a deeply researched story of how generations of workplace promises failed, and why progress is not only infuriatingly slow but often sabotaged and squandered.” A narrative history told through profiles of women who fought for equal pay, the book shines a light not on the influential figures who were written out of history, but rather on the trailblazers who were never written in to it. She pens the Women Money Power Substack, to capture important histories that didn’t make it into the book and to discuss the modern inequities women still face today.
Josie was moved to write the book after a prominent business leader said women just aren’t as professionally ambitious as men, especially after they choose to start a family. It was an infuriating explanation for the gender pay gap that demonstrated that while laws have caught up to the importance of gender pay equity, our culture and the mindsets of those in power are lagging far behind. Cox makes the case that inequality affects us all and thus it is everyone’s problem to fix, not just a burden to be shouldered by women.
As a journalist, Cox has worked for Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, as a financial markets correspondent, and The Independent, where she served as a business editor. As a freelancer, her work has appeared in publications such as Forbes, Fortune, Washington Post, Business Insider, Huffington Post, and Guardian, among others. She is a frequent guest on CNN, ABC, PBS, CNBC, BBC, and various public radio stations. Josie is also a writer for and founding editor of The Persistent, a digital journalism platform committed to amplifying women’s voices, stories, ideas, and perspectives.
Cox holds a BA from the University of Bath in the U.K. and an MBA from Columbia Business School. She was a 2020/2021 Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia Journalism School and currently serves as an associate instructor within the Strategic Communications program at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies.
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Women Money Power
Despite the tremendous progress women have made toward gender parity since the beginning of time, the playing field remains grossly uneven—often in ways that are less obvious and thus much more insidious. While women have had legal protection from overt discrimination for decades, the collective mindset of those in power has not kept pace. In this presentation based on her book Women Money Power: The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality, Josie Cox traces the many social and political hurdles women still face in the fight to close the gender pay gap. She drives home that women’s pay inequality is not just a women’s issue, but one we must all work to fix. By outlining the biases we must overcome on an individual level and the systemic failings we must rectify on a societal level, Cox leaves audiences with the knowledge and motivation to build a more equitable world.
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Profiles of Unsung Trailblazers
The path to women’s relative empowerment today was paved by extraordinary women you’ve likely heard nothing about. In feminist history, the likes of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem are household names. But have you heard of Katharine Dexter McCormick, the woman who, under the guise of a medical supplier, smuggled diaphragms from the Europe into the U.S. by sewing them into the lining of her clothes, and who also almost single-handedly financed the development of the birth control pill? What do you know about Pauli Murray, a gender-fluid legal scholar, mentor to the late RBG, and co-founder of the National Organization for Women whose scholarship shaped legal protections for women, Black Americans, and LGBTQ+ people? In this presentation, Josie Cox introduces audiences to the largely unsung heroes in the fight for women’s equality and asks how we can continue their work today.
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Gender
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Women's Voices
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