Announcing 9 Ways in 9 Weeks: The No Excuses Way To Embrace Your Power
[youtube width=”340″ height=”275″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O8Pi2XBdms[/youtube]
Women make 78 cents for every $1 men earn? The gap is even greater for unmarried women, who make 58 cents for every $1 men earn, and for women of color, who earn 1/3 less than men. Women spend 80% of US consumer dollars. Yet they make up only 15% of corporate boardrooms where decisions are made about what will be sold to consumers. Women are the majority of voters in the US, but just 17% of Congress. There are many reason for these imbalances. But frankly, there are No Excuses any more.
Please join me in the new discussion of “9 Ways in 9 Weeks: The No Excuses Way to Embrace Your Power.” In the coming weeks, we’ll be exploring each of the 9 Ways or power tools I discuss in No Excuses. I’ll post about one of the 9 Ways each week, and I invite you to share your ideas, thoughts, and especially your stories about that power tool in your own life. There will be new video clips each week too, and other new materials and bonus items not necessarily found in the book.
This week I’m most eager to know your thoughts about these knotty (not naughty!) questions:
Is there still a glass ceiling, in the work world and in government? What have been your experiences? If so, why do you think it still exists? If not, what’s the evidence of that? And what three things should women do now to reach parity?
I look forward to exchanging ideas with you in the comments section here, on Twitter, and on Facebook.
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.
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Gloria, these are all good questions. I think that part of the wage gap can be explained by challenges that women have negotiating a good salary for themselves. For example, my first job out of college offered $27,500 as the starting salary. I was used to living on less than $10,000 a year, so I was stoked about that amount of money. it never occurred to me to ask for more. I also had this ridiculous notion that since the job was for a nonprofit, that they probably couldn’t afford to offer more, and that I was applying for the job because I was passionate about LGBTQ issues. Fortunately, I got a wake up call and realized that I needed to ask for a substantial raise. And I’m proud to say that I got it.
I think that the huge wage gap between single women and married women, though, is very perplexing. What’s that all about?
Serena, have you heard of the “mommy track?” Here is one recent example:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62N4ZL20100324
Aletha, I have heard of the “mommy track,” and it’s so infuriating that it is still happening in 2010. The link you shared really pissed me off, but it’s not surprising.
I wrote an article last month about stay-at-home dads. The number of SAHD is increasing during the recession, because men are getting laid off at higher rates, due to having higher salaries than women. I compare the situation in the US to Holland, where both men and women are entitled to PAID parental leave after the birth of a child. But despite Holland’s generally progressive attitude, parents don’t utilize parental leave (whether they are male ore female) because they are afraid it will hurt their careers.
http://imaginedmag.com/2010/09/number-of-stay-at-home-dads-rising-during-economic-downturn/
Gloria has argued on several occasions that the future of feminism needs to be men and women working together to change the workplace. I agree. I think men need to advocate for pay equity – if only to prevent themselves from getting laid off because they are paid more than women. And men and women both need to be demanding family leave and child care benefits.
Serena, I agree with you that men need to advocate for pay equity alongside women, but I wish there was more to motivate them besides just protecting their own jobs! It makes me so upset that in 2010 there are still “boy’s clubs” like the one the article Aletha posted describes at Goldman Sachs. Are they allowed to do that because no one is fighting it hard enough? We need another women’s movement, one that this time will teach us to stop making excuses for the way men treat us. And men should be on board, too. Feminism is about equality for EVERYONE.