Courage, Clarity, and Confidence

1The Current State of Women and Work

For a woman in today's current climate, it takes courage to go to work every day.

The glass ceiling with all of its dents and cracks still exists.

A small fraction of the challenges we deal with are:

• The gender wage gap, where the maximum we earn is 80 cents to each $1 a man makes.
• The Motherhood Penalty,¹ earning just 71 cents to every $1 a father makes.
• The fact that we are expected to be primary caregivers and are severely impacted when caregiving needs arise.
• The lack of support for us in management.
• The failure to promote us into executive leadership roles and how companies ultimately suffer as a result of our absence at the decision‐making table.
• We are ignored in meetings at work; worse, we are blatantly undermined and reduced to an “assumed” administrative role.
• We experience overt and covert harassment and discrimination, of all kinds, at work.
• We walk into toxic work cultures and the obnoxious bro‐culture that unbelievably still exists.
• We have to navigate the inequities with work on top of the actual duties of our job, and let's not forget the pressure to deliver on unrealistic goals while we “smile more” and “consider our tone.”
• In this chapter I attempt to give an overview of the current state of affairs for women and work. I carefully chose the word “attempt.” There are so many instances, circumstances, experiences, perspectives, and stories that there could be an entire catalogue of books on the current state of affairs for ...