The Double X Economy is the 2020 Porchlight Business Book of the Year

It has been said many times this year that the challenges we have all faced due to the pandemic are unprecedented. The resulting economic uncertainty has impacted everyone, but women have experienced a disproportionate loss of jobs, and we are unlikely to understand the effects of that job loss on women’s equality for years to come. Repairing the increased damage to an already difficult road for women, whose progress toward financial security and economic power has always been rife with obstacles and setbacks, is going to be critical. And when that road is repaired, it opens pathways forward for all. That’s why the Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award goes to a book rich in feeling and insight, research and solutions to address this issue: The Double X Economy by Linda Scott, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Linda Scott is a professor emeritus of entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Oxford, a senior consulting fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and founder of DoubleXEconomy LLC, a consulting firm specializing in women’s economic empowerment. She is the founder of and senior advisor to the Global Business Coalition for Women’s Economic Empowerment, and she was named one of the top twenty-five world thinkers of 2015 in Prospect. Scott works with multinational corporations, international agencies like the World Bank, national governments, and global NGOs, designing programs to better include women in the world economy. The Double X Economy is her first book. She lives in Rhode Island.