Women and Work

There are more women in the workforce, more women earning degrees and more female breadwinners than ever before. Women are entering the pipeline but they're not coming out; they're not getting funded and they're not getting those senior management roles. They're showing up and being dismissed a lot of the time, even if they lean in. What's up Sheryl Sandberg?

Much has been written about the impact of becoming a parent on women’s careers. It is said that working mothers lose focus and determination. Choosing to “have it all” is usually framed in problematic terms for women. (Less so for men.) The fact is, having a family does slow women’s career progression, but it’s not significant in preventing them from getting to the top. You can't always blame baby fever.

It is often cited that men will apply for a role knowing they only have 50% of the required skill set while a woman will wait until she has 100% of the needed skill set. Women’s reticence to “put themselves out there” is seen as lack of confidence, which means they miss out on senior leadership roles. I see it as being grounded in reality and not letting your ego make decisions for you. Many would say that women make better decisions because they're more risk-averse.

The Old Boys Club is often cited as a source of social access and influence that helps men progress in their careers. Lack of access to traditional types of networking opportunities is frequently used to explain why women don’t appear on the shortlist for top jobs. This point is very important. While women do not reap the benefits of informal networking (and this is damaging), they take full advantage of formal channels to build their profiles and access support for professional development.

So, what keeps women on the career path? Who has what it takes to reach the C suite? Peterson would say that women just can't handle that intense corporate lifestyle. They're too agreeable and leave when the going gets tough. However, the truth of it is that women don't give up on their careers because they can't keep up with the "brilliant" men around them. Lack of promotion and sexual harassment, rather than attrition, seems to be the larger reason why women are running for the exits.

Ellen Pao talks about this very issue in her 2017 book Reset. She says, "The system is designed to keep us out. These are rooms full of white heterosexual men who want to keep acting like rooms full of white heterosexual men, and so either they continue to do so, creating a squirm-inducing experience for the rest of us, or they shut us down when people of colour or women enter the room and resent having to change their behaviour." (143)

What I know for sure is that it's not about stamina or being "stress averse", as Damore likes to say. Women work the double day while being harassed and look pretty doing it. Sometimes bleeding. Name a man who could do that.