Why the Status Quo at Work Just Isn’t Good Enough

March was Women’s History Month and while we never need a reason at Fairygodboss to celebrate women, we do walk among a generation of older women who have benefitted from the great advances women have made. To some of these women, it may even seem that we’ve generally achieved gender equality. For example, my own mother, Pamela Newman, asked me in the early days of our company “Why is Fairygodboss necessary?” Or to paraphrase: “Hasn’t most of the inequity in the workplace been tackled? Aren’t we in a place where women and men work successfully side-by-side in most places?”

To say that I was surprised was an understatement. I was shocked by my mother’s question because she is no sideline observer on this issue. My mother is a legend and perhaps something of a unicorn, still flying high in her extraordinary career at age 68. She has been one of the top revenue producers for AON, a large global insurance brokerage, for 25 years running. She began her career in New York City in 1973 at Peat Marwick, with a PhD from the University of Michigan, as one of a tiny number of women in professional positions. At her initial job interview, she was told that she simply shouldn’t get pregnant, which she did shortly after being hired. Without the existence of FMLA, she headed back to work xx weeks after having me. She has worked her way up the ranks beside and often ahead of most her male peers, and constantly outshone by being out-promoted and even out-compensated.

And yet, in some ways, I understand why she asked the question. Recently, reading the New York Times Philip Galanes interview with Gloria Steinem and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I was reminded that when my mother first arrived in New York, she would have been unable to rent an apartment or open a bank account without a signature from her father or her husband. And there were just xxx women for every man in the new classes of Peat Markwick hires, whereas today an incoming class at a Big 4 accounting firm would likely be evenly split by gender.

To quote Virginia Slims, “we’ve come a long way, baby.” The progress in the workplace since the 1970s has been tremendous. According to the US Department of Labor, Women’s labor force participation grew by 53% from 1993 to 2012. Important legislation including FMLA, The Equal Pay Act and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act have helped to significantly reduce discrimination in the workforce.

In my fifteen years spent working in corporate America, I have experienced very little harassment, mistreatment or overt discrimination. I had excellent mentors and managers – men and women alike – to whom I am infinitely grateful for their fostering and support. I left the corporate life of my own volition to follow a more flexible path –  entrepreneurship – that would make me more available at home to my family. Not everyone prefers to make that choice, or has that luxury.

And yet, after many conversations with women across America and extensive research in the process of founding Fairygodboss, it is clear to me that progress is still needed to support women in the workplace. But since it is not obvious to everyone – not even to a trailblazer like my mother – it seems worth articulating here:

1) The Wage Gap

According to US Census data, white women in the US make 78 cents for every dollar that a man earns. Recently, the World Economic Forum found that it will take 118 years before the global wage gap is closed, and the US now ranks 74th in gender wage equality among 145 nations, down from 65th place last year.

Because it’s very difficult to get an apples-to-apples comparison, the data behind the gender wage gap has been a topic of contention.  However, whether this discrepancy is the result of choice of profession, inferior negotiation skills, fewer hours worked or unpaid time off for children, the net result is that women often take home less than their male counterparts – which, combined with the financial and emotional cost of daycare – can cause women to drop out of the workforce.

2) Subtle discrimination in evaluation and promotion

Due to latent, unconscious bias, women’s accomplishments and efforts at work tend to be evaluated and perceived differently, New research from Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research (as reported by The Wall Street Journal) found that “managers are significantly more likely to critique female employees for coming on too strong, and their accomplishments are more likely than men’s to be seen as the result of team, rather than individual efforts.”

Further 2011 research by McKinsey & Company written by Joanna Barsh (who is an advisor to Fairygodboss) found that often, women are promoted based on performance while men are promoted based on potential. In other words, Stephen gets the promotion because he seems like the kind of guy who can do the job, while Stephanie has to actually demonstrate excellence at all the components of the job before management feels comfortable promoting her.

3) Not enough women in leadership roles

According to the Center for American Progress, women hold 52% of all professional-level jobs and yet very few of them make their way to the top ranks of the private sector.  For example, women make up 45.4% of legal associates – or entry level lawyers – but are only 25% of non-equity partners and 15% of equity partners. They account for 78.4 percent of the labor force in health care and social assistance but only 14.6 percent of executive officers and 12.4 percent of board directors, and 0% of CEO’s. Women make up only 3% of creative directors at advertising agencies, which affects much influential imagery for young women. (So much for advancing from the days of Don Draper.)

Further, representation in US government continues to be disproportionately male although women are 50.8% of the US population. Women today hold only 18.5% of congressional seats, 20% of Senate seats, are 10% of Governors, and are outnumbered 2-to-1 in cabinet positions.

One of the main themes that has emerged in our research for Fairygodboss is that women in management roles feel a tremendous sense of isolation as they advance in their careers. To take the journey up-river toward success as a woman, it helps tremendously to have allies, mentors and role models. Yet we still have a long way to go, and without more women in leadership positions, we end up in a vicious cycle.

4) A lack of affordable quality childcare

A report last year by Childcare Aware determined that in 30 states plus the District of Columbia, average annual daycare costs exceed in-state tuition at a 4-year college. As a recent article in Quartz points out, “the lack of affordable day care may be the real reason that the glass ceiling exists.” In other words, the cost of daycare is such a high hurdle that many working mothers drop out of the workforce because in an inane twist, they can’t afford to continue working.

5) The “always-on” culture at many employers, which affects women disproportionately

Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent Oped in The New York Times has ignited a discussion about how the increasingly demanding work culture in America has created a “Toxic Work World” that negatively impacts all workers, but disproportionately harms women. As Slaughter says, “far too many [women] discover that what was once a manageable and enjoyable work-family balance can no longer be sustained — regardless of ambition, confidence or even a partner who shares tasks equally.”  Since it has been documented over many years that typically women bear the responsibility for home- and child-care duties, long hours at the office exact an even greater toll on women’s participation in the workplace.

Further, long hours in the workplace make it less likely that a couple with children can successfully absorb two careers because ultimately someone has to make it home. So it is likely that whoever is the lesser earner will be the one to make the choice to stay home, especially in the face of expensive day care. As the gender wage gap indicates, in most cases the higher earner is likely to be the man (for heterosexual couples.)

6) Inferior Paid Maternity Leave Programs

I raise this topic last but it is possibly one of the most important, and has one of the most concrete and actionable remedies. Two facts everyone should know but most people don’t about paid maternity leave in America:

  1. The US is the only developed economy in the world that doesn’t mandate that employers pay employees on maternity leave. Just to put that statement in context, out of 185 countries measured by the International Labour Organization, the US finds itself in company with Oman and Papua New Guinea as the only countries that don’t require that employers pay employees who have recently delivered a child.
  2. As a result, just 12% of US workers have access to paid maternity leave through their employers.

$12 Trillion by 2025

To get practical, enhancing women’s participation in the workplace is not just about gender equality. It’s about productivity. According to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute (as reported by Quartz), improving women’s participation in the workforce could enhance the world’s GDP by approximately $12 million dollars by 2025.

How can these issues be addressed?

In the private sector, there are already many companies that are far ahead of the curve on several of these issues:

Salesforce has recently undertaken a complete audit of compensation across its workforce, spending $3 million to close the gender pay gap. Microsoft is requiring employees to undergo diversity training to reduce unconscious bias. Google, Facebook and Dow Chemical (among others) have stepped up efforts to increase the number of women and minorities on their staffs. SAS has been lauded for years for its exemplary on-site daycare program, which helps them attract talent far and wide. And, SAS makes a point to staff to a level where people aren’t routinely forced to work late or long hours, emphasizing that employees should work a maximum of 37.5 hours each week. And, of course enhanced paid maternity leave across top employers has been a major news story of late, with companies including Netflix, Microsoft, Amazon and Spotify announcing improved policies.

And in the public sector, happily, the topic of women in the workplace has already surfaced as a major point of discussion for the 2016 elections – on both sides of the aisle. Since this is the first campaign cycle with a woman frontrunner to become a major party presidential candidate, it seems like this is the time to shed as much light as possible on what is happening across corporations so that we can all see a path to enhanced equality and the economic rewards that accompany it.

So to answer my mother’s question, why does Fairygodboss exist? We hope that by creating more transparency and revealing more information, we can help chip away at some of these issues to make improvements to the workplace for women. And, in the meantime, we can help call attention to which companies have the policies, programs and culture that are on the path to improvement.

Romy Newman is co-founder of Fairygodboss — a free, anonymous job review site for women, by women.

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

Co-founder of Fairygodboss: a job review site for women, by women

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