Articles

A Lifetime of Inequality Can Start With the Very First Paycheck

Every paycheck you receive during your career, with a few exceptions, will build on that first paycheck. Every salary increase. Every bonus. Even matching retirement contributions. Since most employers use percentages to calculate all of the above, that first paycheck can be the start of something big. Except for women, it’s usually the start of something less. 

Now More Than Ever: We Need More Women on Board

I recently wrote about how women should not wait until retirement to work on securing a corporate board seat. As follow-up, someone ask me why it matters. If it's so hard for women to secure a board appointment, why fight with it? Why not find ways around it - other ways to have impact? This is why having women at the table is critical.

Getting on Board: Don't Wait Until Retirement

I am often asked by other women for advice on securing a board seat. My first piece of advice? Don't wait until you're ready to retire to secure that board appointment.

Women and Salary Negotiations

Negotiation: the fact that men do and women don’t is one of the reasons used to explain the gender pay gap and was the subject of the best selling book by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask, in 2007. The book and its related research spawned thousands of workshops and classes aimed at teaching women to negotiate their salaries and close the gap. 

In spite of these efforts, the gender pay gap persist.

A Woman's Right to a Life Without Violence

It takes a special kind of coward to target a maternity ward for a terrorist attack. But that’s what happened in Afghanistan on Tuesday, when gunmen stormed a maternity clinic in Kabul, killing 24 individuals, mostly moms and newborns. The attack was clearly targeted, in a country where women live precarious lives at best. 

Who's Going to Take Care of the Children?

This is why having more moms in leadership roles is critical, because clearly no one around the decision-making tables has noticed that the plans for the next six to eighteen months are missing some resources - the ones that take care of the children while mothers and fathers are at work. 

Women's Equality: Sometimes It is a Zero Sum Game

It’s a popular argument - women’s equality is not a zero sum game. More women in leadership is not a zero sum game. Men v. women is not a zero game. 

Except sometimes it is. A zero sum game.

Men Take Risks, Women Take Responsibility

Faced with a global pandemic, it hasn't escaped anyone's attention that it has been the women world leaders who have been most effective in handling this crisis while many of their male counterparts have stumbled. What explains the difference? One factor could be who takes the risks, and who takes responsibility.

Women, Wicked Problems, & Pandemics

There’s an irony in here somewhere: women’s typical career path through positions of support (not production) is the very thing that provides them skills and capabilities needed to lead in a time of crisis - in a time when the problems we face can only be described as “wicked.” 

Office Housework: Women Do More

Taking notes, getting a conference room, planning parties and retirement recognitions, straightening up after a lunch meeting - these are all tasks that have to be done, but they are not directly related to core business activities and don't help when it comes time for pay increases and promotions. So why do women end up with these assignments more often than not?