I hear a lot of online chatter about how the gender pay gap doesn't exist
and that
the reason that women don't reach the higher echelons of corporate America
is simply because they can't hack it.
I worked for about a decade as an attorney in what's called Big Law.
A huge law firm representing like
name brand clients.
to give you an idea, I
never worked on a deal less than a quarter of a billion dollars
while I was there. And I worked in the private equity space.
It was pretty openly acknowledged that the top associates at that firm
were the women. If you looked at the top 10% of billable hours, right,
like nine out of 10 of those people were female associates.
I worked with a number of male partners who pretty much insisted on female teams
because they said the women put in more hours,
worked harder,
were better about implementing their
instructions efficiently, didn't lie about their hours.
I mean, the list goes on and on.
And yet when it came time to promote partners from a class of fifty
50 female/male associates, it ended up being about 80% men promoted and 20% women. Why?
Because there absolutely were reasons for this.
It's just that the reasons themselves were based on an inequitable system.
During my decade at the firm,
I worked with one female C E O.
And hundreds of male C E os.
I worked with under 50 Women on the client corporate side at all.
Thousands of men. And when it comes to making partner,
it's kind of an eat what you kill model.
The most important thing is your ability to bring clients into the firm
and retain them. And that requires networking.
It requires creating a trusting relationship with a client.
As a female associate, you would see people at your same level,
the guys who are going out with the clients all the time.
They're going to play golf,
they're going to work out,
they are bar hopping, they're out to dinner together constantly.
If you as a woman tried to do that,
there were one of two things essentially that would happen.
The guy would either turn it down
and think it was really weird that you had asked at all,
or they would mistake you wanting to network as romantic interest.
This was also during a time where women's networking events
were being shut down left and right
because men said they were essentially a version of reverse sexism.
So these events
where the few women that existed in the corporate space
could get to know women in the services space
were vanishing left and right
as men claimed it was totally unfair they didn't have access to those spaces.
And of course, this is a self perpetuating cycle.
The fewer women you promote in any industry,
the fewer women there will be in industries related to those. women
who made partner Did it by being mathematically undeniable.
They worked
often more than twice the hours of the male associates who made partner.
They gained the trust of clients through pristine work.
Okay, like,
unreal, accurate work.
They also gained their trust through cutting their own billables.
In other words, I'm not just giving you the best legal services.
I am 24 7 available, and I'm going to discount my work.
That's how I'm going to retain you as a client.
Every single one of those women would have rather been able to do that
through a few rounds of golf,
through some dinners, right through some sort of bonding.
And doing it that way means
it was very difficult to maintain any kind of outside life.
It was very, very difficult to make the same money as the men,
because part of the appeal is,
Is the perfection at a lower price.
There are plenty of other reasons for a lack of women's promotion
that I could go into. Like,
it is so deeply ingrained in male corporate culture
that women lie about harassment
that it is unreal.
Even male partners who insisted on female teams would never be in, like,
a conference room or their office alone with you (w door closed)
Even if you're on, like, a.
A conference call, these guys would call their secretaries in to, like,
ostensibly take notes, but they never did it with the men.
And that was because they were so fearful that you would falsely accuse Them
of harassment and end their career.
As a woman, I can't tell you how
that undermined your, Your respect for that partner,
because they are essentially looking at you
and because you're a woman, saying,
best err on the side of caution,
and assume that this woman that I have worked with so many times,
who I trust with my clients,
is actually a craven, exploitative liar.
And there were reasons they believe this, okay?
That were also sexist, which are
there were men who were accused of harassment,
and the men would then say, oh,
it's because she lied. That's always the defense,
of course. And it didn't matter if there were one, two,
three, four,
dozens of women who accused these men.
They'll just say, it's a big conspiracy against me,
they're lying. And the other men believed them.
They believed the,
The other men, full stop.
This is why, as a woman,
in any corporate structure,
there will be a whisper network.
And you must listen to those whispers.
The whisper network never LED me wrong.
In corporate America, if there were women saying,
look out for this guy,
they were always right, they were never lying.
So,
it was almost an opposite experience that you have as the woman.
None of the men would believe these women,
and then you yourself would experience the harassment from the dude personally,
so you knew it was true. Men just do not have that lived experience.
Of realizing that the men they look at and work with,
who they think are like, good stand up guys,
and it's just that, you know,
they're a little like, bawdy or whatever,
and the women can't take a joke. Like, no,
they don't have that lived experience of seeing the reality firsthand.
I honestly could go on for days about all of the reasons,
but little insight there.