Some food for thought

[MamaSheep]

Here's an interesting perspective someone shared with me this morning: "Stop Telling Women To Do Startups".

[Carol in Cal.]

I worked for a major tech firm for 20 years.

I have an engineering degree, and I had a lot of responsibility and was consistently very effective. I was thrilled to be able to be self-sufficient, to do interesting work, to get financially rewarded for it, and to progress in the corporate world. I changed a few people's minds about what women can do, especially some male engineers and managers that I worked with in Japan.

 

And yet, I was underpaid. Over a period of years, for no reason that anyone could really see or figure out, I was underpaid compared to male engineers at the same level, many of whom were less dependable and had fewer achievements than I did. And when I found that out, I was kind of embarrassed. I was embarrassed because I had been so happy. I was embarrassed because I thought that this reflected on me. It didn't.

 

When I left my company to stay home for a while, everyone asked me why I was leaving. I told other woman engineers, one on one, that a factor was being underpaid, and that that made me less interested in sacrificing my family at all for my career there. Every Single One told me that they had found out in the same way that they were also underpaid. Every single one.

 

And, when I left, I had never not worked fulltime. I had not had children until very late in that career. The discrepancy was in no way due to choices that I made or being less than fully engaged in my career. It was the system, entirely. Looking back on it, I probably would have done better if I had grandstanded more--threatened to leave if I didn't get more money. But I didn't do that because it would not have been truthful. Should I have pretended that I would quit? Honestly, that is the only thing that I can imagine doing differently that might have had a positive effect on my pay.

 

Before I left, I went to the highest female executive that I knew personally, and I told her that I had found out that every single woman engineer who had worked at that firm for any significant length of time was also underpaid, and that she might want to think about how that fact could be interpreted and take some action. I don't know whether she did anything about this, but she was a good manager and she probably at least tried to. But at least I didn't take that secret out the door with me.

 

There is more going on in discriminatory pay practices than just women's choices. Period. And those practices do not have to be intentional to have a discriminatory effect.