Labor Day.

Barbecues. The end of summer. The start of school.  The time to get “back to reality.”



This day has evolved to be all of that, but originally, Labor Day was created to celebrate the achievements of the U.S. worker. So, what better day to reflect on one of our favorite and most important topics: How women are doing in the workplace.

Women have definitely achieved so much, but we have so much further to go. Pay parity remains years away, and, progress seems stalled. Women remain woefully underrepresented on corporate boards and in the C-Suite.



But why do women leave the workplace? Why, according to some, does their performance lag behind their male counterparts?  Why are they not smashing through that glass ceiling?

A recent Fortune magazine article explores the lack of success of women in the field of engineering. Some would have you believe that women leave the field for the mommy track. Not so, says Fortune’s article (surprise, surprise). Really, women leave because of the sense of unequal opportunity.  A Bain & Company study, several years ago, reached a similar conclusion across a wide range of industries.

Perhaps pay inequity, in addition to being inequitable, also cripples us women and hampers our individual and overall success.  Unequal pay may well be a disincentive, maybe even a subconscious one, to our outstanding performance.

Which gets us to our question, are you smarter than a monkey?  Watch what happens when two monkeys, asked to perform the same task, are given unequal rewards.

Have you ever felt like the cucumber hurling monkey? How many of us have?

So what to do? We’ve got to join forces to close that pay gap and to make sure that we women feel strong, empowered and supported in our workplaces.

How? We’ve got some ideas about that. More to come. Stay tuned!

Happy Labor Day.

xoxo

She’s Fit To Lead