Sheconomy launches with 74 partner groups and a 100-day challenge for women’s money
We asked an AI to make women economically equal 100 years ago and rewrite history. Today Invest for Better turns its headlines into a 100-day challenge.
Four weeks ago Invest for Better took Our Sheconomy public, three days before International Women’s Day. A month in, the campaign has reached 6.5 million people, with 2 million impressions on its posts and LinkedIn leading the way. The engine is simple: women holding up a green card with a headline from a better history, and asking everyone who sees it to make one money move this week.
The first month
- 6.5Mpeople reached in four weeksUnique people who saw the campaign across social channels, from March 5 to March 31.
- 2Mimpressions on campaign postsTimes the campaign’s posts were shown on screen.
- 14weeks of financial actionA national challenge with a few simple money moves each week, through mid-June.
- 120+individual supporters signed onWomen leaders, advisers and creators who committed to share the campaign.
From a soft launch to a public one
Sheconomy started quietly in November, with a site, a merch store and a coalition of 74 organizations sharing an idea we had built with them. We had trained an AI on thousands of pages of research, sent it back 100 years, made women equal in the economy, and asked it to show us what we missed. Its answers became headlines from a parallel world. The gender pay gap closed by 1965. Teachers make more than lawyers. Mental healthcare has been free for decades.1 More than 250 people joined the challenge in that first quiet week, well before the public launch.
Over the winter the campaign grew up. It took a new name, Our Sheconomy, and a new home at oursheconomy.org. The 100-day challenge became 14 weeks of action, long enough for real habits to form. Then, on Thursday, March 5, the doors opened to everyone: a guerrilla launch timed so the first card selfies would build toward International Women’s Day that Sunday. And the coalition kept growing, from the original 74 to more than 100 partner organizations on the supporter list, among them 37 Angels, Amalgamated Bank, As You Sow, Golden Seeds and Pipeline Angels.
Hold up the headline you want to see come true.
The card selfie did the heavy lifting
Every piece of the campaign comes back to one gesture. Pick the alternate-history headline you want to live in, hold it up, take a picture and post it. A card that says “Women never had to carry pepper spray” starts a conversation that a chart about the wealth gap never could.
Before launch, we sent VIP packages to the women most likely to start that conversation. Each green, magnet-close box held 18 headline cards printed on heavy linen stock, with inserts. We printed 257 cards for the first round, and another 40 participant boxes went out in late February, ahead of launch.
Those first participants mattered far more than their number suggests, because each one posted to people who already trust her. Together they brought a combined audience of about 4 million people. The coalition partners added roughly 3 million more followers of their own. Creators made their own posts too, including Emily McEnroe, Joshlyn Aguirre, Kayla Swift, RJ Batlle, Rock Perez and Taylor Bagley, each in their own voice.
LinkedIn, of all places
The surprise of the first month was where it worked best. LinkedIn, not TikTok or Instagram, was the campaign’s strongest platform. In hindsight it makes sense. The campaign is about money, careers and who gets to make decisions, and LinkedIn is where women already talk about all three, in front of colleagues, clients and bosses.
A headline card on LinkedIn reads differently from one on Instagram. “Half of all Fortune 500 companies were founded by women” is a provocation in a feed full of job titles. So is “Anyone working minimum wage can afford to own a home.” Each one invites a colleague to ask the obvious question: why not here?1
A film, a front page and a ground game
The launch film carries the idea to people who never pick up a card. We shot it in Canby, Oregon, last November, and director Kristopher Wente coached more participants remotely, so women across the country could film their part at home. Thirteen people appear, each holding a headline and saying what their lives would look like in the Sheconomy.
Online reach is only half the plan. In New York, organizer Kim Macharia has been recruiting volunteer captains to bring the challenge into living rooms and offices, with a goal of 50 captains and 1,000 participants. Behind every post sits the same case the campaign opened with: women hold one in four C-suite seats, make up 28% of investors and get about 2% of venture capital, and by 2030 they are expected to control more than $34 trillion in American wealth.
Live every week, through June
The campaign has a weekly heartbeat. Invest for Better is partnering with a network of financial influencers for live events every week of the 14-week campaign, with an audience of about 10 million. Each week’s challenge comes with a menu of simple steps. Do one, or all of them, and share what you did.1
The next major push is planned for around April 23. The world in the headlines is still a simulation. The money moves, made one week at a time by real women, are real.
