[Cent #10]: tales of women in corporate america

hi lil bees! happy tuesday 🙂 

Table of Contents

• what’s been going on in sneh’s world

• current state of world of women in leadership

  • being glue by Tanya Reilly

  • POV: women, show me your work and men, show me wha …

  • the age-old tale of imposters syndrome

• the influence on a woman’s relationship with her m …

• what we can all do

  • continuous investment into DEI mentorship opportun …

  • promote competent women

  • collab of women x women

• closing thoughts

what’s been going on in sneh’s world

• Half marathon training: I RAN 12.25 MILES. And it was one of the hardest physical challenges I’ve ever done. But I did it, my body is capable of so much more than I can imagine. Catch me foam rolling my entire body this week.

• I’m onto Harry Potter: Order of Phoenix this week and the air outside is getting so crisp. I’m in east coast fall heaven.

Let’s get into Cent #10 of 25 cents of womanhood and money: tales of women in corporate america, the full story around diversity, equity, and inclusion directives and how it influences our relationship around money.

current state of world of women in leadership

This past week, I read a Chief Network piece surrounding women in leadership.

Of course, as a data-driven girly, I was intrigued to learn about the current state of women representation in the workplace.

If women are not getting promoted at lower levels, how are they getting to C-Suite positions?

The growth at the top for women is due to business restructuring and an effort to add more women to leadership boards, especially for Chief Human Resource Officers (CHRO) rather than tech and product roles. Additionally, according to 2023 data, 40% of C-Suite leaders in their roles last year were outside hires. Aka, the pipeline to promote within is a bit broken.

Alexis Krivkovich, a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, thinks it’s largely due to underrepresentation of women in senior roles. Not in C-Suite, but people managers. Directors. SVPs. VPs.

I’ve seen this. Every woman I’ve chatted with who works in corporate has seen it too. We’re under the illusion that there is equal parity for women in the workplace, because of the great investment in getting women into entry-level positions. Which is amazing. However, there is not much parity in the promotion and therefore retention of these women into senior roles.

There’s a phrase for this: the broken rung, the difficulty for women to transition from entry-level to management positions.

In 2018, for every 100 men promoted to manager, 79 women were promoted. Today, that number is now 81. And the situation is even worse for women of color. For every 100 men promoted to manager, 54 black women and 65 Latinx women were promoted.

But even with all this conversation around gender equity, why are women still disappearing upon the climb up the corporate ladder?

the challenges that surround women in the workplace & leadership

featuring thoughts from women leaders 🙂 

being glue by Tanya Reilly

TL;DR:

I discovered this piece around “being glue” at work by the brilliant Tanya Reilly. She coined this phrase glue work as tasks that keep projects moving smoothly but aren't necessarily seen as technical achievements. Tasks like helping unblock other team members who are stuck on problems. Reviewing code and designs. Onboarding new team members.

All extremely important work and markers of technical leadership. It allows for early career individuals to receive the proper mentorship and onboarding.

However, focusing on it too much especially during early career can be detrimental to one’s career because spending too much time on glue work leaves less time to develop the deep technical skills needed for promotions. And by the time promotion comes around, glue work often goes unrecognized and unrewarded compared to more technical achievements like writing code.

Aha, and women in tech may be disproportionately assigned glue work. According to data, 48% of women volunteer for non-promotable work, and 44% more of the time, managers ask women to do this work. Women volunteer more, and are volunteered more.

POV: women, show me your work and men, show me what could be

It was found that half of younger women say they’ve experienced ageism at work. But how? From the 30 years of social science research, we tend to promote men based on potential and women based on what they’ve already accomplished.

So when a young woman is expected to have a full resumé to show for her 4 years of experience in the workplace, it’s not shocking that entry-level women get held back and that propagates to getting women in senior leadership.

the age-old tale of imposters syndrome

WebMD defines Imposters Syndrome as when you doubt your own skills and successes. You feel you're not as talented or worthy as others believe, and you're scared that one day, people will realize that.

It was first coined in 1978 by psychologists Suzanne Imes and Pauline Rose Clance, specifically for high-achieving businesswomen. It’s since been found in all genders and lines of work and is identified when you feel different from most of your peers, whether it be your race, gender, religion, etc.

Reshma Saujani and Sallie Krawcheck have thoughts on this terminology and its relationship with women.

Saujani finds it to be a scheme and distraction that holds women back, as though there is something inherently wrong with us. Krawcheck refuses to have imposters syndrome; she simply won’t partake in that kind of insidious negative self-talk.

Of course you will feel like an imposter when the system was not meant to include you. So you build the change you want to see. As VP Harris said, “you never have to ask permissions to lead… When you want to lead, you lead.”

And I haven’t even touched on how women tend to have different timelines, whether it be for maternity leave, longer lifespans, etc. Or glass cliffs, which deserves a full article on its own.

All of which is to say, if a woman does not see light at the end of the tunnel for her career, she might feel discouraged that there is no growth available for her where she is. Or force herself to leave to some place that will.

According to data, women who experience three or more microaggressions are 4.2x more likely to feel burned out and 2.7x more likely to consider leaving their company.

the influence on a woman’s relationship with her money

We know climbing the ladder at work typically leads to more income. Let’s just look at the facts. This means, on average, less money is reaching the hands of women.

Less money that contributes to the gender pay gap. Less money that contributes to the gender wealth gap, for a woman to own and keep for her own and others well-being.

We are not only implicitly defining a woman’s worth through glue work, imposters syndrome, and glass cliffs. But we are explicitly using money, an access card to the world, to determine their ranking in the world. Money that can be used towards non-profits or community-building or helping other women.

Women need to work harder to make the equivalent of their male counterparts, all while expected to maintain a mindful & demure personality (sorry, I know).

what we can all do

continuous investment into DEI mentorship opportunities

It’s time to double down again on DEI investment. Currently, 78% of companies say gender diversity is a high priority and 69% say racial diversity is a high priority, down from 87% and 77%, respectively, in 2019.

Krivkovich says, there is a “pullback on sponsorship and mentorship programs that were tailored for women and women of color, internship programs, recruiting programs that similarly had a focus on women and women of color, when the data shows how badly these are needed to get an equal playing field.”

Data shows that in 2020 and 2021, when there was a heightened focus on race and intersectionality, the promotion gap for Black women nearly closed. But today, she says, the focus has shifted and those numbers have drastically dropped.

So let’s invest in employee resource groups (ERGs) and not just one for all women, but women of color, LGBTQ+ women.

responsibility of management and men to step up

Professors Babcock, Recalde, and Vesterlund from the HBR proposed that it’s not the onus of women to decline more work requests. But rather, have management distribute these tasks more equitably. Rather than volun-telling women, there should be some rotation log across employees. Additionally, knowing that women volunteer more can also be a way for men to volunteer themselves and serve as allies to their women counterparts.

Just this past week, my work bestie sent me a very sweet message offering to take notes during meetings, given I always jump in to take notes and its a poor societal stereotype. I didn’t even realize I do this, and small messages and actions like this can go a long way 🙂 

promote competent women

I couldn’t have said it better than Tanya Reilly.

collab of women x women

I think it’s really powerful when women can recognize strong women leaders on their team and uplift their voices, especially when you notice they are not being recognized for the great work they’ve done. Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.

closing thoughts

I recently attended a women’s social where a powerful woman in tech sat on the panel. She was asked, “how do you move past the fact that it feels like women need to be perfect in every realm before they see an ounce of success?” Her response really stuck with me: “You accept that you have to work 100x harder, but you do it anyways.”

It is very fking hard work, it is an imbalanced playing field. But I, along with many other women, do not take no for an answer. No is just a yes that hasn’t happened yet. Women are rising the ranks, and there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Here is a self-reflection exercise for you all after this piece.

• 💭 What does representation look like in your workplace? Do you see women in leadership? Women of color in leadership?

• 💭 Have you found any certain solution(s) effective for improving DEI that is/are not just fluff?

• 💭 If you’ve received mentorship in the workplace, have you found it to be played more towards developing your soft or hard skills?

• 💭 Do you feel comfortable speaking up about growth opportunities to your manager?

• and generally,

  • 💭 what do you like most about the between the buzz newsletter?

  • 💭 what are topics you want to hear more about from me?

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until the next 🐝 , and with 💛 ,

Sneha