From the Trenches

Three years ago I wrote a blog about Augusta’s National Golf Club’s male-only membership policy. This topic unfortunately reared its ugly head again last week when Virginia Rometty was denied membership—at least for now. Augusta National is a vivid example of a good old boy network doing what it does best—exclude women. Only this time it’s different because Rometty isn’t just any other woman.

Women let guilt get to them. I don't have any lofty, university-backed study to support this but my guess is that more women than men feel guilty when they have to leave their small children at daycare or home with a nanny when they go to work. My unscientific, qualitative study of female leaders shows that those who make it to the top don't let these feelings consume them. The women I interviewed for my book, If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Secrets to Career Success From Top Women Leaders, offer this simple piece of advice: Don't feel guilty

Ambition. Those who have it generally get ahead in the workplace. Those who don’t have it aren’t usually as successful—except those who get lucky. Ambition spans gender, race and ethnicity…or so one would think. Unless you are one of those columnists who espouse that women don’t get ahead in business because they lack ambition.

Headlines proclaim that a woman earns 79 cents—give or take a cent or two—to every dollar earned by a man. This number is generally not disputed. However, the reason for the 21 cent discrepancy is.

What happens when sexism in the workplace comes from other women? In the past, I’ve written that sexism still exists and that one way to combat it is for women to help each other. But one recent event in particular highlights the fact that some women are decidedly not looking out for other women—and in fact, seem to be doing things to damage our collective reputation in the workplace.

“Women are their own worst enemies in the workplace”

“Once a woman ‘makes it’ in the corporate world, she doesn’t want to help other women get there. They can fend for themselves just as she had to”

“Women don’t help women in business”

Two weeks ago, as I was walking down the hall toward the room where I was scheduled to give a speech, a maintenance worker greeted me with “Good morning pretty lady.” This was not someone I had ever seen before and he had no idea who I was nor was there any reason to believe I would ever see him again. I was dressed in a business suit on a Saturday morning so was clearly an “outsider.”

Not much has changed. These are the depressing findings of the 2010 Alliance for Board Diversity (ABD) in their recent study of the boards of our nation’s largest companies. In their publication, "Missing Pieces," they show that six years after the first ABD Census, white men still overwhelmingly dominate corporate boards. From 2004 to 2010, women gained a grand total of 16 board seats in Fortune 100 companies to move from holding 202 seats to 218. Men held steady at 993. For the Fortune 500, the picture is even bleaker.

Negotiation is a hot topic today. We read about “win-win” and “getting to yes.” So it’s not surprising that when I spoke to CEO of Arby’s Restaurant Group Hala Moddelmog, she said the biggest piece of advice she can give younger women is to negotiate—not just for their companies but for themselves.

How often have you been in a meeting where one person is monopolizing it and others in the room don’t agree with him/her…but nobody speaks up? It may be fear, lethargy, or something else keeping everyone quiet. Whatever the cause, they represent the silent majority—and what they think matters.