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How Women Can Win At Work, with Farai Chideya

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Gender unfortunately matters in the workplace. Women at work often encounter significant barriers.

Women, on average, earn less than men in virtually every single occupation. In 2014, female full-time workers in the United States made only 79 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 21 percent. That pay gap has barely budged in 10 years and, at the current rate, it won’t close for decades to come.

Women also struggle to move out of middle management and break through the glass ceiling into the highest level of leadership.

This week on Find Your Dream Job, we discuss how women can win in the workplace. We explore the dynamics behind gender discrimination and discuss tactics woman can use to overcome systemic hurdles. Our guest, Farai Chideya, has written extensively about race and gender in the workplace. Her newest book, The Episodic Career, explores the future of employment, identity, and personal satisfaction.

This Week’s Guest

Farai Chideya is an award-winning author, journalist, professor, and lecturer. Her newest book is called The Episodic Career: How to Thrive at Work in the Age of Disruption. Farai currently teaches at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She also frequently appears on public radio and cable television.

Resources from this Episode

Transcript

Mac Prichard:

This is Find Your Dream Job, the podcast that helps you get hired at the career you want and make a difference in life. I’m Mac Prichard your host and publisher of Mac’s List. Our show was brought to you by Mac’s List and by our book, Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond. To learn more about the book and the updated edition that we published on February 1st, visit macslist.org/ebook.

Gender matters in the workplace. Women on average earn less than men in virtually every single occupation. In 2014, for example, female full-time workers in the US made only $0.79 for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 21%. That pay gap has barely budged in 10 years and at the current rate it won’t close for decades to come. Women also struggle to move out of middle management and break through what’s called the glass ceiling. Even though women hold more than half of the professional jobs in the United States they only make up 34% of middle managers, 14% of executive officers, and a mere 4% of CEOs.

This week on Find Your Dream Job our topic is how women can win at work. I talk with author Farai Chideya about the factors that push down wages for women and how you can negotiate better with your boss. Ben Forstag has an infographic that gives you the facts about the gender gap and other problems women face in the workplace, and Cecilia Bianco answers a question about how you can position yourself as an industry leader.

Ben, Cecilia, it’s good to check in with you. Let’s talk about this week’s topic. What examples in your careers have you seen of gender discrimination.

Cecilia Bianco:

Not necessarily in my career, but I remember when I was in high school I had a friend whose mom was a news anchor and she had found out that her co-anchor was earning a lot more than her. It was a pretty big debacle and it ended in her leaving because she wasn’t able to get the money she deserved from that company. It was in the media and it felt like a huge deal at the time. I don’t think things have changed much since then, so it’s a big topic for us today.

Ben Forstag:

Let me share a story from my wife’s career. When she was out interviewing she happened to be visibly simple fact is they didn’t want to hire someone who was going to take 3 to 9 months off to take care of a child, but those are pressures that many women face. Those are situations that many women see themselves in, and so finding ways to work around that is certainly key to helping women achieve equality in the workplace with men.

Mac Prichard:

A story that comes to mind for me is when I was in high school I had a job working at a restaurant at a hotel. I was in the morning shift with another person, a woman in her 30s. I was 17. It was a summer job for me and I enjoyed it, but she and I, I learned, made exactly the same amount of money, which to me was even, that kind of wage at 17 seemed extraordinary. It struck me for a lot of different reasons, but one was that for me it was a part-time job and I was saving for college and spending a lot of my income on things that teenagers buy. Music, fast food, putting gasoline in a car. For her, it was her whole income. I remember we didn’t make a lot, just a little more than minimum wage, and she had to save for several months just to move from one apartment to another. That made a big impression on me.

Ben, let’s turn to the resource that you found for us this week. You’re out there every week looking for blogs, podcasts, and books. What do you have for us?

Ben Forstag:

I want to start off this week with an infographic I found all about women in the business world. This comes from the website allbusinessschools.com and it entitled Winning at Work? A Look at Women in Business Today. I’ll admit it’s a little bit odd to talk about an infographic, which is decidedly a visual medium, on a podcast, which is a audio medium, but I’m going to try to do this anyway. I’m a big sucker for a good infographic.

Cecilia Bianco:

Yeah, and this one is particularly good. It’s super in-depth and it makes what you’re seeing easier to comprehend.

Mac Prichard:

I certainly love visuals too. If you ever visit us here at the Mac’s List office you’ll find an infographic on the refrigerator.

Ben Forstag:

What I really liked about this infographic was that it nicely frames both the accomplishment women have made in the business world as well as the lingering barriers they face. For example, in 1965 only 1.2% of graduates from the Harvard Business School were women. Want to take a guess of what that number’s going to be in 2017?

Cecilia Bianco:

I hope that it’s a lot higher, but …

Ben Forstag:

You are right. It’s going to be 41% female, which is still not on par with men but certainly a huge jump. This is representative of a general overall trend of women excelling in terms of higher education. Right now women have 60% of all the undergraduate degrees, 60% of all the graduate degrees, and 45% of all advanced business degrees, which is really exceptional. The infographic also includes information about the highest paid female executives and other benchmarks of success for women in the workplace.

Of course we all know that women face a lot of professional challenges, and to be blunt the playing field is not equal at all. Across all levels of employment, as Mac mentioned earlier, women only make about $0.79 on the dollar compared to men. Things are slowly getting better, but there’s a lot of room for improvement. One of the most shocking facts I found in this infographic was this, that at the current rate of progress, women won’t achieve pay equity with men until 2058.

Cecilia Bianco:

Wow. That’s way too long. Hopefully that doesn’t play out in reality.

Ben Forstag:

Are you willing to wait, Cecilia?

Cecilia Bianco:

Not really, no.

Mac Prichard:

Not to be gloomy, but it is a gloomy number. When I got out of college, Cecilia, I remember going to an event and someone there had a button that said $0.63, and this was way back in 1980, 35 years ago now. I said, “What’s that about?” She said, “That’s what a woman makes compared to a man.” I thought that number, “Oh, that can’t last. That’s going to go up.” Here we are 35 years later.

Cecilia Bianco:

Yeah. We’re crawling at this pace.

Ben Forstag:

It’s bizarre because this is such a political issue that gets brought up over and over again, but we just don’t see a whole lot of movement on it. The other shocking status in this infographic was that women are significantly underrepresented in the highest levels of executive management, as Mac brought up. The one stat I pulled out that I thought was crazy is that women are only 16.9% of board members at fortune 500 companies. That’s just shocking. I mean, most of these companies at least 50% of their customers are women, but the folks running the organization are not, which is insane. If this is a topic you’re interested in, and I think we all should be, I’d suggest you check out this infographic. It’s “Winning at Work? A Look at Women in Business Today.” I’ll put the URL in our show notes.

I also want to do a quick plug for an organization that I’ve a friend who works for that is doing a lot help close that pay gap and helping women in the workforce. The organization is called momsrising.org. One of the reasons that women face so many barriers in the workplace is because they have most of the burden of taking care of children. That means watching the children on a day-to-day basis from 9-to-5 when many people go to work. That means taking maternity leave for young children. That means taking time off when your child’s sick, and frankly a lot of organizations don’t offer paid sick leave, maternity leave, or any childcare benefits as part of an employment package. MomsRising works with local governments and state governments to try to implement mandatory paid sick days, mandatory maternity leave, issues like that. If, again, this is an issue that you find important and that you want to do something about, I certainly suggest you check out their website. It’s momsrising.org.

Mac Prichard:

Thanks, Ben. Ben loves to do research, but he also welcomes your help. If you have an idea for him or suggestion, a favorite website, book, please write him. His email address is info@macslist.org. Now let’s turn to you, our listeners, and to Cecilia Bianco, our community manager. Cecilia, you’re here with us every week to answer our listener’s questions. What do you have for us this week?

Cecilia Bianco:

This week I had a reader tweet at me and ask, “How can I position myself as an industry leader expert in my field, and how important is it to do this?” When I think of industry leaders and experts, I think of people who have a strong and present voice in their field. Having a voice these days typically starts online through platforms we all have access to and can use, blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and really any platform where your voice is going to reach many people. If you want to position yourself as an expert or leader, you want to get your voice out to as many people and groups as possible and find ways to prove your credibility. Writing’s a good place to start since it’s an easy way to share your thoughts, especially online, and build a following of people who agree with you.

Speaking at professional or industry groups in your sector is another great way to prove credibility because 1, someone has endorsed you and your voice in order to book you to speak, and 2, you’re growing your network through new people in the audience. Mac, you’re seen as a community leader in our field, how do you think others can position themselves as experts or leaders?

Mac Prichard:

A strategy that could work for anybody is to be generous and share what you know. You’ve laid out specific strategies that people could follow to do that, Cecilia, whether it’s sharing their ideas through blogs or social media posts, I think that would serve anybody well. I would just add in addition to being generous in sharing your expertise, be consistent. You don’t have to publish on the hour every hour, but if you are going to commit to, say, doing a blog, commit to a schedule. It could be as little as once a week, or if you’re going to run a social media account or post, say, to your LinkedIn page, find a schedule that works for you and then stick to it and people will come to expect to hear from you. They’ll look forward to it as well.

Ben Forstag:

I’ll just echo what Mac said. I think it’s so important to help other people in your field. When you help others you really position yourself as a leader and as someone with integrity. I think if you can match subject matter expertise and integrity you can’t lose.

Cecilia Bianco:

To answer the second part, as far as how important this is to be and industry leader, I think that really depends on what level you’re at in your career. Obviously entry-level people can and should mimic the actions of leaders in their field, but it’s unlikely at that stage that others are going to look to you as an expert or a leader. Once you’re at a higher level, it’s a little bit easier because you likely have years of experience that back up your opinions and your ideas. When you’re just starting out I don’t think it’s a priority to be seen as an expert or a leader. It’s more important to focus on getting that experience that you need. Once you’re further along, making an effort to become an expert in your field can go a long way towards career stability and future success. Do you guys agree with that assessment?

Ben Forstag:

Absolutely. I think it’s important that being an expert in your field, it’s more than just style. Frankly, you see a lot of folks in the online world who, they produce a lot of content and a lot of style behind it but there’s not much substance behind it. I think unless you really have mastery of your subject and you’re new to the field, trying to position yourself as an expert is probably not going to work. You need to get a little bit of experience before you can really sell yourself as that expert.

Cecilia Bianco:

Right. I think that has to do a lot with proving your credibility before you try to be a leader in that field.

Ben Forstag:

Absolutely.

Mac Prichard:

I agree. One way to get that experience and then acquire that knowledge is buy curating content that others create. One of the biggest challenges that we all face is that we’re overwhelmed by information. Somebody who sifts through what’s out there in a particular field and presents the best ideas that they’re seeing is doing a great service and building relationships and providing value and serving others along the way.

Cecilia Bianco:

Yeah, I definitely agree.

Mac Prichard:

Okay. Well, thank you Cecilia. If you have a question for us here at Mac’s List, please email us at communitymanager@macslist.org. The segments by Ben and Cecilia are sponsored by the 2016 edition of our book, Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond. We’re making the complete Mac’s List guide even better. We’ve added new content and published the book on multiple e-reader platforms. Now that we’ve launched the revised version of the book on February 1st, for the first time you can read Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond on your Kindle, your Nook, or your iPad. You can also order a paperback edition. Up until now you’ve only been able to find it as a .PDF, but whatever the format, our goal is the same: to give you the tools and tips you need to get meaningful work. To learn more visit macslist.org/ebook and sign up for our newsletter. We’ll send you special publication updates, share exclusive book content, and provide you with great prices.

Now let’s turn to this week’s guest expert. We’re pleased to have with us Farai Chideya, who is an award-winning author, journalist, professor, and lecturer. She has a new book out. It’s called The Episodic Career: How to Thrive at Work in the Age of Disruption. I had the chance to read it over the weekend. I highly recommend it. Definitely add it to your Amazon wishlist. Farai currently teaches at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She also frequently appears on public radio and cable television. She’s a graduate of Harvard University where she earned a BA. Farai, thanks for joining us.

Farai Chideya:

I’m really delighted.

Mac Prichard:

It’s a pleasure to have you, particularly to talk about this week’s topic, how women can win at work. I think when many listeners think about the subject, the first thing they go to is the pay gap. We talked about that earlier in the show. What are some of the factors, Farai, that drive down pay for women?

Farai Chideya:

One of the most prominent ones in our day and age is the life cycle of women versus men. Women are much more likely, even now, than men to be involved in hands-on care giving. Of course immediately we think about children and women leaving jobs or not going on a fast track at a career because they have to, and want to, spend time with their children. There’s also elder care giving, there’s any number of moments at which people of both genders are asked to step up and women are somewhat expected to step up. I think that there’s certainly a lot to women wanting to be a part of care giving, but there’s also a cultural expectation around it. There’s also, unfortunately, not a lot of infrastructure when it comes to women being able to step out of the workforce and then step back in. That’s one of the biggest problems is that when women take that time for care giving or for other reasons and try to reenter the workforce, they find it very difficult to get back in.

Mac Prichard:

Let’s pause there for a moment, Farai. What advice do you have for women who are about to take that time away from the workforce and for those who want to get back into it? All of us here at Mac’s List, we hear from a lot of job seekers. This is a common issue and people are looking for successful strategies that they can use to make that transition. What have you seen work?

Farai Chideya:

I definitely think networking is the biggest solution. The reality is that most people have some set of close network ties. That is not actually what is most likely to get you a job. It’s the weaker ties of people who are on the outer edges of your circle who have very different life experiences, sometimes than you, and they’re seeing you through a little bit more of a remote lens. They’re not your best friend. Maybe they’re that person you went to college with and you see at a reunion every now and then. It’s really important to go to those people to expand your vision of what opportunities are available to you. Also, as long as there’s a good base for the relationship, even people who are not deep personal friends of yours will give that much needed recommendation and say, “You should really hire Jane or you should really hire Keisha. This is someone who I can vouch for.”

That very specific, personal, “I’m vouching for this person,” is the way to go and often is a way for women to reenter the workforce. There’s also great job training programs available to some people, not everyone. In the book I profile people who have switched careers through federal job retraining programs, sometimes by teaching themselves, so self-taught computer programmers or people who teach themselves even something like scrapbooking, which now is a skill that you can market to other people. People hire professional scrapbookers to help them organize their memories. There’s also sometimes a transition where you can work part-time in a new field while raising children or while care giving, and then work your way all the way into a full-time job.

Mac Prichard:

Okay. If you’re getting ready to get back into the workforce, think about how networking can help you. I agree completely with your point about the value of weak ties. It’s surprising how sometimes the most valuable leads and recommendations can come from people that you only know slightly. I’m also hearing you say look into job training programs that might be available through state or federal government. There might be opportunities there. Then think about reinvention about new careers or opportunities. Those are good strategies for people getting back into the workforce. What about people who are getting ready to leave to care for a parent or a child, a woman, what should she think about before she leaves with an eye towards that reentry, which might be months or even years later?

Farai Chideya:

First of all, there’s an increasing tendency of people to do exit documentation when leaving a job. This is obviously leaving a job under friendly circumstances. Let’s say that you’re pregnant or you are taking time out for a family leave and you know that you’re probably not going to come back for a while. Sit down and say, “I want to just document the work that I’ve done over the past year and the skill sets I have. I’d like us to produce a document that I can take with me.” You have to be delicate about it. If you’re not planning to leave the company permanently you can say, “I’d love you to put this in my personnel file.”

Also keep a copy for yourself because workplaces change. If you know that you’re really not coming back, but you’re on good terms with who you’re working with, you just say, “Well, you know I know there’s probably not going to be a job for me by the time I’m ready to work again, but I’d love you to write a permanent documentation and recommendation that I can take with me when I either come back to this company or go elsewhere.” You have to basically be your own archivist. You have to document your own career, you have to have people sign off on things, and don’t just go back to someone 5 years later and expect them to know what you did. Take care of that beforehand and take it with you.

Mac Prichard:

Yeah, that’s a great idea. An even more tactical suggestion I’ve seen people follow is just getting something as simple as LinkedIn endorsements or recommendations from supervisors and co-workers before you leave a position. Whether you’re moving onto a new organization or you’re going to leave the workforce for a period. Let’s talk about pay. You mentioned how the life cycle, how it influences wages for women, what about negotiating salary? What advice do you have for salary negotiations?

Farai Chideya:

Well, this is a huge hot issue right now because women have been told to lean in. Then women have been told you can’t lean in, that’s fiction. Really, you have to be strategic about how you lean in. There’s a professor at Carnegie Mellon, Linda Babcock, and she wrote a book, Women Don’t Ask, Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Basically, she has done all these studies that show that when women make a direct ask in a negotiation like, “I got this job offer from these other people. Can you raise my salary?” Companies react fairly badly to that for women only. Men are allowed to say, “This is my market value. I’m laying it on the table. What can you do for me?”

Women are viewed as disloyal. It’s a very gendered and emotionally fraught workplace culture around women and negotiation. You have to make a case as a woman for why your advancement or your higher pay or whatever is good for the company, good for everyone. Women are being asked to make a group argument, whereas men are allowed to make a bit more of a unilateral argument. Just understanding that allows you to frame things.

Mac Prichard:

Money matters a lot in negotiation about pay. What are some of the other measures of success that women should consider when going into those conversations?

Farai Chideya:

Certainly women and men should also consider, “How am I going to be evaluated?” Some companies unfortunately really look at productivity as just hours in the office. You may not be that great, but if you’re there for 8 to 10 hours you are amazing. I co-authored a book previous to this about women in the technology industry and this one woman talked about how she was told by her boss that she was working “mommy hours.” She worked the same number of hours as men, but because she was raising a child she wanted to start earlier in the day and leave earlier in the day. She was working just as hard doing just as much work, but she was working “mommy hours.” She left the company. She was like, “I’ll never succeed here if people don’t recognize how hard I’m working.”

One of the things you need to ask is, based on my needs, what is my desired schedule and can my company accommodate that? If the company can accommodate it, you need to be very clear and say, “I’d like to come to work at 5:30 in the morning. I know most people won’t be here. I’ll do my heavy duty project work there. Then when people come in we’ll do our collaborative work and I’m going to be gone by 3:30 in the afternoon and go home and be with my family.” If you get a negative reaction to that, you have to think about it. I also don’t want to pretend that it’s just something that women with children need to think about because again there are many different factors.

I have friends who are serious athletes well into their 40s and 50s, and they play in … One of my friends actually is the reigning Golden Gloves champion, “senior champion,” which just means that she’s in her 40s. She’s a female boxer. She’s married. She has 2 kids. She’s got a great, happy life, but boxing is important to her, and so she has a schedule where she can go and be this amazing national champion boxer. You may have any number of reasons for asking for a specific schedule, but scheduling is really important.

Mac Prichard:

Certainly that’s an issue that comes up a lot when employers talk about millennials in the workforce wanting to have flexibility. I think your point here is an important one. It’s all age groups and women and men that are increasingly look for that kind of flexibility. The glass ceiling is real. It exists in the workplace. What advice do you have for women who are seeking promotions and how they can move up?

Farai Chideya:

I do want to point out although we’ve been talking about the life cycle, which is how I framed things initially, that according to studies at least 12% of the pay differential between women and is due to “other factors,” which basically means sexism. It’s a polite way of saying sexism. When you control for everything, women still earn less. I definitely feel like when it comes to looking at the big picture of pay, time, advancement, you have to seek out people who you trust and then if they slip in that trust you have to remind them of the kind of social contract that holds you together. Like, “Well, I don’t want to be annoying about this, but when Jason asked for so and so, he got such and such.”

There’s a precedent for this, or if there isn’t a precedent for something you’re asking for in your workplace you can acknowledge that and say, “I know no one has ever done this before, but based on my record of productivity, blah, blah, blah.” When you’re talking about whether it’s salary, scheduling, all of the other factors that are important, you have to really seek out people you trust, but also be willing to give them a little nudge if they’re not acknowledging your skills.

Mac Prichard:

Right. Be clear about what you want and have a clear ask.

Farai Chideya:

Exactly.

Mac Prichard:

We need to start wrapping up, Farai. Tell us about what’s coming up next for you.

Farai Chideya:

Well, I’m touring with this book The Episodic Career. I’m doing some dates in various parts of the country. For me, I just did a date in New York and it was at the Harvard Club of New York, and so one presumes a very educated crowd and a white collar crowd. Let me tell you, everybody there was focused on the anxieties of the modern workplace. Whether I’m talking to people who are more middle income, higher income, everyone is anxious right now. I’m really doing a lot of active listening as I get to enjoy going around the country and talking to people about this book. I’m really listening to what people have to say because there’s a lot of anxiety and fear.

One of the things I really want to stress to people is that we all deserve to lead good lives. Work should not be a constant fly in the ointment. If your work is a fly in the ointment, you really need to think expansively about what kind of work you want and how it fits in with your life and look towards those personal factors of satisfaction and being in a good, comfortable zone with the choices you’ve made. We all make choices. Not all of them are comfortable for us, but you have to at the end of the day say, “I made the choice that’s right for me.” It’s about self evaluation. In the book I have a tool called the work-life matrix that really tries to integrate the personal with the work because at the end of the day it’s not just about a pay check, it’s not just about advancement. It’s about what kind of life you get to lead.

Mac Prichard:

I was impressed by the number of tool and tactics that you had in your book. They’re practical things that people can do to act on those choices. I encourage people to dig into it. Good, and I imagine the dates of your book tour are on your website.

Farai Chideya:

Yes. If you go to farai.com, F-A-R-A-I.com, you’ll find both the dates of the book tour and some press that we’ve gotten and a few different excerpts of the book. There’s a lot of material there and hopefully I’ll be getting to a lot more cities over the course of the coming months.

Mac Prichard:

Good. I know people can also find you on Twitter. Your handle is @farai, F-A-R-A-I. We’ll be sure to include that, the website, and the books you’ve mentioned in the show notes as well. Farai, thank you so much for joining us and it’s been a pleasure having you on the show.

Farai Chideya:

I have been so delighted and I really think the work that you’re doing is critically important. Thanks so much.

Mac Prichard:

We’re back in the Mac’s List studio. Cecilia, Ben, what are your thoughts after hearing Farai?

Cecilia Bianco:

I thought she had a bunch of really great information and tips for how to navigate your work life. I loved her point about being your own archivist because I think a lot of people forget to do that and then they regret it later on. That was an important takeaway for me. I just liked how she made work more about what type of life you want to lead and now just what type of job you want to be doing. I think that goes a long way towards your work life balance and your happiness overall. She had great tips.

Mac Prichard:

Good. What are your thoughts, Ben?

Ben Forstag:

My blood is still boiling over that mommy hours response that one of her clients got at an employer. That’s just ridiculous. Obviously, I’m not a mother myself, but I am a father, and I understand the value and importance of getting home and spending time with your kids before they go to go bed. Any employer who doesn’t recognize that, I can’t think of anything nice to say about those kind of organizations.

In terms of tactical advice what she gave, the most important thing is being clear with your ask and with your demands of an employer. Unfortunately you can’t just expect employers to give you what you want or to respect the work-life balance, so you need to go in with targeted requests and say, “Here’s the value I’m bringing to the organization and here’s what I expect back in return.” Hopefully you’ve got reasonable employer who will meet those requirements that you have.

Mac Prichard:

I think having a clear ask is just vital. I think I’ve made this point before on the show. There’s an old lobbyist I know, or experienced lobbyist I should say, who says the definition of a failed meeting is when you get up from that appointment and there’s no clear next steps. That happens because people don’t have a clear ask. It’s great advice. Thank you all for listening. We’ll be back next week with more tools and tips you can use to find your dream job. If you like what you hear on the show, you can help us by leaving a review and a rating at iTunes. This increases our standing in the iTunes career chart and helps us reach more people and help more job seekers. We have 2 reviews we’d like to share with you this week. Ben, would you like to share one?

Ben Forstag:

Sure. This one comes from [boney girl 00:32:16] who writes, “This is really valuable stuff. It kind of smashed old assumptions and expectations and offered a totally new approach that is energizing and exciting. Thanks for the wake up kick in the butt.” You’re welcome. Glad you found value there.

Mac Prichard:

All right. I have a review from [red dirt girl 00:32:33] who writes, “I will be graduating with my Bachelor’s degree in 1 year and this is giving me so many helpful tips and recommendations that I’m already putting to use.” Thank you red dirt girl for sharing that and we hope that you’ll take a moment and leave your own rating and review. In the meantime, thanks for listening.