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How to revolutionize a professional world that’s made for men

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You’ve spent years working hard to achieve academic triumphs — you’re a boss like that. Now, you’re about to graduate or already have. It’s time to become an actual boss and enter the workforce.

When you do, though, you may very well find that the same skills you used to get ahead in school might not always apply to getting ahead in the professional world. Since women’s presence in the workforce is so relatively historically new, our workplace challenges are often under-addressed, and those obstacles more or less considered an expected part of our professional lives. For example, rather than receive the compensation we rightly deserve, and the compensation that our male colleagues doing the same work get, we still have had to fight for recognition and equality — a battle that rages on throughout the country and world.

The good news is that more and more women are speaking out about how unfair these workplace realities are. Women are beginning to feel increasingly confident about confronting inequalities of the past and fighting for an even playing field for ourselves and future women.

To make that task easier, here are some of the hardships you could encounter in the workplace and the best methods for overcoming them.

Problem: You’re Earning Less Than You Should Be

Women, on average, earn less than men in nearly every single occupation for which there is sufficient earnings data for both men and women to calculate an earnings ratio. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy’s Research, if change continues at the same rate it has for the past 50 years, it will take 41 years — or until 2059 — for women to finally reach pay parity. For women of color, the rate of change is even slower. What’s more, this has nothing to do with a lack of training: Female MBAs make about $4,600 less than men with the same credentials, according to a study by Catalyst.

This is quite possibly the most significant issue female employees face today. In fact, one survey found this gap is the main concern of American women in the workplace: 58 percent of women put it at the top of their list of work-related challenges.

Solution: Know Your Worth

Your solution to this problem requires you to be confident, brave, and unbending. You need to know your worth and how much you should be paid — and then ask for it. Fortunately, many strong ladies are paving the way for you to take this step and are doing so in the public eye, thus making the issue a more pressing one for companies to address.

Take journalist Mika Brzezinski, for example. During the 2008 presidential election, she and her co-host Joe Scarborough enjoyed a boost in ratings for their morning political talk show, Morning Joe. This should have been an incredible time for her, but she could feel something was off. As she and Scarborough flew from location to location, he brought his family along, while she couldn’t afford to bring her daughters with her. Eventually, Brzezinski found out her co-host’s salary was an unbelievable 14 times larger than hers.

There was a supposed reason why she earned less — Scarborough had been on primetime TV before, while Brzezinski had no history as a television host before joining Morning Joe. But due to the show’s success, Brzezinski felt she deserved a raise to make her pay comparable to his. The anchor threatened to leave the show if her bosses didn't give her a more fitting paycheck. Brzezinski’s risky tactic was successful, and now she’s a huge proponent of equal pay and workplace equality.

Your battle for equal pay might not make headlines, but it’s worth the fight. You, like Brzezinski, should know what you’re worth and ask for it. If your employer isn’t willing to give it to you, then you should look for other employers who will recognize your worth.

Problem: Your Network Is Lopsided

Another huge problem women face in their professional lives is the job referral system. A study from PayScale revealed just how much companies rely on these votes of confidence: Of the 53,000 workers surveyed, more than one-third received a referral for their current role. More often than not, however, the referral system disproportionately benefits men. That same PayScale survey showed that referrals received included an overwhelming degree of white men, leaving men of color and women of all races in the dust.

Solution: Choose It Wisely

When you go in for an interview, notice the people who work there. It may be a snap judgment to assume the workplace in question lacks diversity just from a glance, but it’s worth being critical and then even asking your interviewer or another member of the company how diverse the office really is.

If you’re at the point in your career where you’re able to have a hand in your employer’s hiring process, do your best to promote an inclusive, diverse workplace. Hiring workers who gel with the work culture makes sense, but not to the degree that everyone looks, thinks, and acts alike — signaling likely issues of discrimination, backward thinking, and stagnation. In fact, research shows if an office were split down the middle in terms of gender diversity, profits would increase: A truly gender-mixed office could boost revenue about 41 percent.

On a bigger scale, you can be aware of the jobs you take based on your own identity. Let the Hunger Games’ Amandla Stenberg inspire you to stand up for what’s right: The actress turned down a role in Black Panther, one of the biggest movies of 2018, because Stenberg is biracial and felt she didn’t represent the character in question as well as another actor with darker skin would. You can take Stenberg’s lead and recognize that opting for diversity will lead to a better work environment with more women and more people of color, a setup that will inspire everyone to thrive, not just white men.

Problem: The Benefits Don’t Benefit You

If you’re fresh out of college, starting a family may not be the first thing on your mind. As such, you probably haven’t looked too much into how your employer approaches benefits related to your future family. In most cases, though, the maternity plan you’ll find won’t be great — many companies do not have robust paid parental leave programs. If they give time off at all, it’s possible it will be unpaid since plenty of companies still don’t even have paid parental leave plans at all. This is one reason why many women leave the workforce when they have kids: They have to choose between their health and their families or their jobs.

Solution: Open a Conversation

You will probably have lots of time before you need maternity leave and pay, but why not start the conversation now? You can meet with the human resources team or with your boss and cite the endless research that says both female employees and the business itself thrive when paid leave is on the table. Take this 2012 study by Rutgers University, which found that “women who use paid leave are far more likely to be working nine to 12 months after a child’s birth than those who do not take any leave.” Paid leave is vital in workplace equality and representation, as it ensures women stick around and keep the playing field level.

If your employer is unwilling to budge, it might be time to move onto another business that works for you as you work for it. Look for organizations run by younger, more progressive people  — for example, Facebook continues to improve its paid leave program. You could also move to one of the states that mandates paid leave, so you have that guarantee whenever you decide it’s time to grow your family.

And That’s Not All…

These are just three problems you could likely face as a female professional. Unfortunately, women are also underrepresented in leadership roles, experience sexual harassment in the workplace, and colleagues often maintain gender biases that lead them to see you as too sweet or too bossy, with no chance of a happy, respectful medium.

The tough reality is there’s little any individual woman can do to fix these systemic problems alone. We can work incredibly hard in the hope that we’ll be promoted to CEO. We can report unwanted advances. We can figure out the way to act so our co-workers like and see us as the perfect balance between kind and powerful (cue eye-roll here). But eventually, it will be up to everyone — not just us — to ensure we can turn the tide in favor of workplace equality. The system works against us, and we can’t succeed unless everyone answers the call for change.

Luckily, if you light this spark in your communities and workplaces, you have a real chance to make great change: Considering that millennials will make up 75 percent of the workforce by 2025, something's got to give — either diversity and gender pay gaps or the discriminatory companies themselves. Forget glass ceilings. Women like you have wings and the audacity to turn the double-edged sword back on their oppressors. Tick-tock.



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Sarah Landrum
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