Let’s Talk About the Reality of Working Women
So, being a women in 2016… easy? Definitely not. As difficult as it has been in the past? Based on history, lack of being recognized as a human… not really. Based on day to day reality, I have an opinion or ten about it… so here are some.
We can easily say that women’s socioeconomic status has drastically changed since we earned the right to vote. Looking at facts: between 1950 and 1990, the labour force participation rate for women in Canada rose by 52%, and by 2014, women made up almost half (47%) of the entire Canadian workforce, according to Statistics Canada.
In terms of education, Maclean’s has pointed out that women account for 59% of young adults (age 25–34) with a university degree in Canada, and it’s about the same in the United States. Plus, the university attendance ratio is 93 men to 100 women globally. “Most gains are in developed nations; in some countries, as many as two thirds of graduates are women, though discrimination still lingers”, notes Yale Global. At a lower level, more than 70 percent of the 2012 high school valedictorians in the U.S. were female. Go nerd girl power go!
But, let’s get the other facts straight. Women make up nearly half of today’s workforce and are, on average, we are more educated than men. Sounds great doesn’t it? Well, not necessarily. Even today, we face the recurring problem of lack of quality pay, the great dilemma quantity vs quality. A sufficient quantity of women are working, but they still aren’t earning quality pay.
The lack of quality pay.
Last year, Alex Johnston, executive director at Catalyst, told the Globe and Mail that “The global pay gap was about $4,000 on average between men and women, and the Canadian pay gap was just over $8,000”. If we break it down, women are making $0.82 for every $1 that men are making. Even worse, women are facing wage discrimination at every point of their careers, starting right out of school. With just one year out of university, there’s still a 6.6 per cent gap between what women and men earn, according to the Huffington post.
Honestly, why?
Kate McInturff, CCPA Research Associate, explains clearly why this is happening. She says
“The economic gender gap is not due to a lack of qualifications…”
“The income gap is actually greater for women with university or college degrees than it is for those with high school diplomas. Having a university degree means a higher level of income overall, yes, but it also means facing a higher level of wage discrimination”, she continued.
There’s no doubt that people are generally aware of the gender pay gap; hundreds of initiatives have been taken in an attempt to level the playing field. McMaster is one of dozens of Canadian organizations that has performed an internal analysis on the employee landscape. What the university found is that men were paid $3,515 more than their female co-workers. Although it was only a 2% pay gap between full-time faculty members, they decided to close it by adding that amount onto the salaries of the women.
Great, some incentive programs, some research, but I have lived this. I will never forget the day a previous person I worked for had the audacity to ask me: “Why do you need a raise, need more shoes? You don’t have a family to take care of like X ?” … yeah this is the ugly truth. My boss was referring to someone my age, who happened to be a male with a stay-at-home wife.
To me, this doesn’t feel like a real solution, but just an attempt at finding one. If we want change to transpire on a larger scale, we need to be looking at the root of the problem.
The Real Problem
It seems as though there are both internal and external factors leading to this inequality.
Educated women have been encouraged to pursue high-level careers and to take leadership positions, only to find out that they’ve usually been ruled out for the job based on expectations. In the corporate world, or any growth industry, schedules are demanding, with little flexibility.
It’s expected that they’ll have worked in multiple departments and countries. This often makes it hard on women to find “work-life balance”(PS: I will write about that too.. another ridiculous concept) and some find they have to choose between having a family and working, especially when so few companies grant leaves to women with children — Even Barclays fired a woman after her son got cancer. In Switzerland, 40% of professional women have chosen to be childless instead. This could account for why so few women become executives? Hmmm.. I think it may it is one of the reasons.
Only 4% of Fortune 500 CEO’s were female (that’s 21 out of 500) as of February, while only 19% of board seats on Fortune 1000 companies were held by women, as of December 2015.
Sadly, these numbers haven’t even been achieved out of pure willingness to promote women; many shareholders have protested the lack of diversity by writing letters and public statements to the CEO’s of companies.
In 2012, when Facebook was going public, Anne Sheehan, a director for the California pension fund for teachers and Facebook shareholder, wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerbergafter finding out that there were zero female board members. In the letter, she said “This is particularly glaring in view of the fact that Facebook is going public at a time when there is clear evidence that companies with diverse boards perform far better than the companies with more homogenous boards.” The letter gained a lot of attention and in face of the scrutiny, Zuckerberg appointed Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, to the board.
Sheryl Sandberg has become an important and great activist for women, starting Lean Into inspire women to support each other. Organizations, from UN Women to Accenture, and celebrities, like Kerry Washington and Emma Watson, have supported the movement.
Some of their principles, which highlight some internal factors leading to the lack of diversity, include these 5 steps towards changing the reality faced by women at work:
- Make sure women’s ideas are heard
- Challenge the likeability penalty — Women often face double standards when it comes to assertiveness in negotiations and leadership styles. They can be seen as rude and ambitious rather than confident and tactical, as men would be seen. TakeJennifer Lawrence’s essay, for example.
- Celebrate women’s accomplishments
- Encourage women to go for it — Women, more than men, feel that they need to reach a certain level of expertise in their field before accepting a promotion/new job. It’s also common for women to think good work won’t go unnoticed, but that’s not always the case. (More can be found on The Huffington Post)
- Give women direct feedback
So here is me taking point 5 to heart: Let’s talk about this? Because if we don’t.. who will?
