This post touches on a topic that I’ve been thinking about writing about for a long time, but I haven’t known the right way to approach it. Why aren’t women succeeding in business as often as they should? It’s 2019 and we are still facing challenges EVERYDAY that those who came before us have worked their asses off to break through.

In a matter of five days, three things happened that got me thinking about this again and now here I am tackling one of the biggest mysteries of the world.

ONE

On Thursday, I got a text from one of my best male friends, sending me an article that our Alma Mater reposted from the campus newspaper titled, “A senior with five jobs: Her journey to ‘girl boss'” tagged with the caption “Want to become your own #girlboss?” and he was less than thrilled. He believes that the term girl boss is demeaning to women. “A boss is a boss. No gender.”

This got me thinking – I’ve never felt one way or another about this term, but it’s true. Why do we feel the need to define ourselves as a “girl boss” and not a boss? I’m all for female empowerment, but he’s right! A boss is a boss is a boss.

TWO

The next night, I flew back home from Wisconsin and when I got back, I had a stack of mail waiting for me, including the latest version of Money magazine with the featured cover story “THE #GIRLBOSS REVOLUTION.” Ironic. I immediately flipped open to the story to read more about Sophia Amoruso’s story and the #girlboss revolution. I haven’t read her book, but I began to understand more of the history of #girlboss. This led me to research girlboss.com, whose mission statement reads “We exist to redefine success for millennial women by providing the tools and connection they need to own their futures.” I LIKE THIS. And I fully support the mission, but thinking back to my conversation just one day earlier, I still don’t like the way the term #girlboss was used in that article.

THREE

Then this morning, I awoke to a notification about Nike’s newest advertisement spotlighting female athletes, so I watched it. And I cried. And I watched it again. And I realized, this isn’t just about women in business, this is about WOMEN IN GENERAL.

What are we dealing with?

I’m a numbers gal, so I’ve pulled together some statistics.

• There are 25 women in the Senate (17 Democrats, 8 Republicans) of the 100 Senators Representatives. 25% (35% of total Democrat seats, 16% of total Republican seats)
• There are 102 women in the House of Representatives (89 Democrats, 13 Republicans) of the 435 Representatives. 23% (39% of total Democrat seats, 7% of total Republican seats)
• There are 69 women serving as a general or admiral in the US military out of 976 total generals and admirals. 7.1%
• There are 25 female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, as of August 2018. 5%
• There is one female referee for the NFL out of a 121 person roster. 0.8%
• There are zero female head coaches of a male team, while it is not unheard of to have male coaches of female teams. There are six female coaches across the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS, and MLB. Five of these women are employed by the NBA (4 assistant coaches and 1 player development coach) and one is employed by the NFL as an intern. There are approximately 2,600 coaches across these five organizations. 0.23%

WOW.

I want to circle back to Girlboss, the company, and #girlboss, the concept.

Coming back to the mission statement: “We exist to redefine success for millennial women by providing the tools and connection they need to own their futures.”

I am proud to say that I work for a company that fully supports females and more importantly, female advancement, in the workplace. KPMG hired its first female Chairperson and CEO on July 1, 2015. KPMG was the first of the four “Big Four” accounting firms in the US to have a female in this role and is still the only with a woman in this role today. I was a participant in a leadership program for female employees at a certain level in our career, in which the firm provided us with tools and networking opportunities to build our careers, starting with a module on taking ownership of your career. Well that aligns a whole lot with the mission statement of Girlboss, and I already said I fully support this mission. But this leads me to conclude that #girlboss is a concept and not a label. It’s a mission, an idea, a way of life, not something that I want to be called. I fully, whole-heartedly, 100% support this concept of enabling females to own their careers and futures so that they can be come leaders and bosses. But not a girl boss, a #BOSS.

Why are we still struggling?

I’ve had conversations with friends across different industries and different firms and there a couple of common factors, but it all comes down to society’s perspective of women. I’m going to bring you back to the Nike ad and let you watch it again. Nike has hit the nail on the fucking head.

Women who show emotions are dramatic

Women who stand for something are unhinged

Women who get angry are hysterical, irrational, or just being crazy

Not that this is news to me, but wow, I am so happy to know that you feel this way, world. You da best! NOT.

Who is at fault?

I don’t know if I would say that any one person or one group of people are at fault. Are there some people who you can blame for the way that they act towards women in any field? 100%! Ladies, you aren’t going to like my take on this, but I believe that there are three contributing forces:

>> 1. MEN 2. OTHER WOMEN 3. YOURSELF

Men – I hear stories from women that there are men that won’t take a woman on their team because they demand to have an all male team working under them or men that won’t take direction from women for whatever bizarre excuse of a reason that they want to give. I’m fortunate enough that I haven’t dealt with men like this in my office and I have always felt supportive, but chances are, more women than not have dealt with someone like this. At the end of the day, these are going to be the hardest people to make an impact on. As a woman, all you can do is work your hardest and show that you’re just as good or better than any of the other males working with you. Use your connection to the “good guys” and other women around you to help you if there is some stubborn, stuck in his ways, asshole holding you back, and don’t waste your time trying to please him.

Men also struggle with women and emotions. Often, women are more in tune with their emotions and have a stronger emotional intelligence,
the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. I am emotional and I am a crier. Even better is that I am a stress crier so when I am stressed, I often just need a good cry to let it out. Usually, I can get myself to a private space, but that’s not always the case. I was once in a room with four male co-workers, all older than me. It was towards the end of a very long week and everything seemed to be going wrong. I was in the middle of dealing with one issue when my manager came in asking about something else, and I just lost it and started sobbing in front of everyone. Each person froze when they realized what was happening and then put their head down and focused realllllly hard on their computers. It was one of the most awkward experiences ever, but I needed to let it out and they needed to pretend it wasn’t happening. Was that the most ideal situation? Probably not. Did it impact my work, the project or anyone’s view of me? Definitely not (except maybe that they realized I was a bit overwhelmed!). Women are still perfectly capable, even if they are emotional – if you are emotional, it’s part of who you are. Our emotional intelligence is part of the reason women are such good leaders.

Women – We as women still don’t support one another and don’t lift one another up as regularly as we should. In a conversation that I had with a very beautiful woman, who is incredibly smart and has been very successful in her career, she told me that she tried not to dress as cute as she wanted every day or wouldn’t wear a lot of make-up to work some days because she felt like she was treated differently by some of the women above her just because of her looks. Right, because women can’t be intelligent if they are fashionable and women can’t be leaders if they are beautiful. WRONG. We need to learn to build a better network to support each other. Celebrate someone’s successes because she deserves it, don’t be jealous and petty because it’s not you. If you find yourself in a position where you think that something was unfair, think about how you would react if the other person was a male – is your reaction still the same? Are we applying double-standards to other women? Women don’t tend to get jealous of men in the same way that we do of other women. Apparently, we can’t stand when other women have it all. STOP THAT and support her, whoever she is, because we need all of the support that we can get if we want to keep making progress.

Yourself – This is probably going to be the most controversial point that I make in my entire post, but I think that this is the most critical. As women, we tend to have lower confidence levels that set in, we doubt ourselves more quickly, and we don’t promote ourselves and talk up our accomplishments. We have to stand up for ourselves, but most also remain modest. We have to learn to take the lead without appearing bossy or bitchy. In a world of so many contradictory expectations, it is very easy for woman to give up on themselves because who can possibly do everything so perfectly to meet these [unrealistic] expectations?

We live in a world where there is a clear gender gap when it comes to opportunities and pay. There are also stereotypes about the gender roles related to raising a family and home-life. We have stubborn men who are still living in the 1950’s and other women who aren’t providing the most supportive space. While there are a hundred other obstacles in our way, why should we let ourselves be another block in the road?

THIS is where the concept of #girlboss comes in. I was one of the biggest obstacles to myself in my career before I understood the concept of owning my career and choosing to flourish. Use the tools available to you and make connections to take ownership of your future and redefine success. Whether you use girlboss.com, which I have learned has tons of career, money, and wellness resources or a workplace or personal support group of women and men, use the tools available to you to accomplish your goals and to help tear down the walls keeping women from being successful in everything that they do.

Now you do you girl, and I’m right there with you!