The Gender Penalty: Addressing Workplace Inequity

Studies show that despite recent movements for equal pay, no significant gender pay gap has been made in the last two decades. Women are still earning less than men, with some variance as high as 22%.

But the discrimination extends far beyond just the pay gap: from childbirth to menopause, women are also discriminated against for their life choices and in some cases, life stages, with  42% of working women reporting facing gender discrimination at their workplace.

In a From Day One webinar, Lydia Dishman, senior editor of growth and engagement at Fast Company, moderated a discussion among women in roles of leadership on how to achieve equality in the workplace.

Studies show that women are 41% more likely to experience toxic workplace culture than men, underlining the need for a culture revamp in companies.

According to recent research, one in three working parents stated they lacked access to a reliable workplace lactation location. The disparity shows that offering solutions is far more than checking off boxes, Teresa Hopke, CEO of Talking Talent said.

“Having a pumping room is a checkbox. So even if we check the box and we get the right rooms and accommodations for people, that’s not going to move the needle in the way that we need to in terms of the systemic change that needs to take place,” Hopke said.

For change, both workers and leaders need to be actively working to create the shift that they need, Hopke says.

“There is some hard work that organizations need to do to create the right culture with the right mindsets, behaviors, conditions, and structures that will support women as they advance through their careers,” Hopke said. “There is also work that women need to do to articulate their needs and not suffer in silence when the load gets too hard.”

When asked about allyship, seventy-seven percent of white employees consider themselves allies to women of color. However, far fewer replied to actively participating in allyship, with only 39 percent stating they confront discrimination when they see it, and 21 percent stating they advocate for new opportunities for women of color.

“If you are not taking any of those ally actions regularly, you’re not moving things forward in a positive way,” Marcee Harris Schwartz, director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at KPMG, said. “We have to think about how we activate allyship whether that’s taking someone under your wing who comes from a different background or experiences so that it has an impact.”

When asked about biases at work, 83% of employees stated that the biases they experienced were subtle and indirect. In one work case, Renu Sachdeva, head of client solutions at Talking Talent, found this to be true.

“We asked leaders to pick people to actively sponsor who belonged to these identity groups. And when the results came back in, we found a majority of them had selected white women, the next most selected group was men of color, and the least selected group was women of color,” Sachdeva said.

The findings weren’t surprising, Sachdeva says. Research has found that white people demonstrate a clear bias for other white people, affecting workplace processes from hiring to promotion. Challenging biases is key to moving allyship in the right direction, Sachdeva said.

“If you’re talking about the majority, corporate America is usually white men in most organizations, so the highest level of comfort tends to be with white women because there’s a relational aspect to it,” Sachdeva said. “But with intentionality, we need to consciously choose to connect with [different] people to mentor, sponsor or be an ally to because that’s usually the group that gets the most overlooked and left behind.”

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Talking Talent, for sponsoring this webinar.

Wanly Chen is a writer and poet based in New York City.