Change the Struggle

By Sarbjit Kahlon

Are you a female professional that has walked away or wanted to walk away from a job in corporate America because you felt you didn't belong? You are not alone, and it is time to make changes.

Unlike other books about female leadership that provide a list of things women need to do to become effective leaders, this book explore

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manuscripts LLC
• Release date: Jun 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889268109

Book preview

ChangeTheStruggle-COVER.jpg

Change the Struggle

Empowering Women in the Workplace

Sarbjit Kahlon

New Degree Press

Copyright ©2023 Sarbjit Kahlon

All rights reserved.

Change the Struggle

Empowering Women in the Workplace

ISBN 979-8-88926-809-3 Paperback

979-8-88926-810-9 Ebook

Mom and Dad—Thank you for giving me wings, catching me when I fall, and helping me find the courage to soar higher. I am so lucky.

Contents

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Introduction

Part I: The Current State

Chapter 1: Past to Present

Chapter 2: Five Generations

Chapter 3: Work-Life Balance

Chapter 4: Diversity

Part II: Transformation

Chapter 5: COVID-19 and Change

Part III: Constructing the Future State

Chapter 6: Childcare

Chapter 7: Maternity

Chapter 8: Gender Wage Gap

Chapter 9: Women in Pipeline to Leadership Roles

Chapter 10: Training

Conclusion

Final Thoughts

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Unspoken

My thoughts are unspoken,

And the truth lies untold.

Some say my voice is broken,

For my opinion is unspoken,

That my feelings need to open.

My voice, it could be gold, I’ve been told,

Over and over again.

But what if it doesn’t fit the mold?

What do I do then?

So, my opinion remains unspoken,

And the truth lies untold.

—My daughter, age twelve

Quote

When someone gives you a good comment, it’s okay to get confident. Just don’t get overconfident.

—My son, age ten

Introduction

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From woman, man is born;

within woman, man is conceived; to woman he is engaged and married.

Woman becomes his friend; through woman, the future generations come.

When his woman dies, he seeks another woman; to woman he is bound.

So why call her bad? From her, kings are born.

From woman, woman is born; without woman, there would be no one at all.

—Sri Guru Granth Sahib, ang 473

I am incredibly fortunate. My parents spent their entire lives investing in my siblings and me. In their eyes, I always saw and felt the belief of their whole being that I was perfect. Life wasn’t always perfect, but their love and unwavering support made me think I could do anything.

I derived my life’s purpose and fulfillment from my career for many years until I had children. My two kids gave my life true meaning and the most profound satisfaction. However, becoming a mother started one of my greatest struggles of balancing my career and family.

The career that gave my life its best high became an emotional struggle. Every opportunity, promotion, or new project that typically would have made me ecstatic carried a heaviness because it meant time away from my children.

In corporate America, a wall existed between the personal and professional worlds. There were many benefits, but none catered to advancing or empowering women’s lives. I had to return to work within weeks after the birth of my children because I had exhausted my short-term disability and available time off. I remember the stress endured when the children fell ill unexpectedly and the constant shuffle through daycares, babysitters, and family members to make it all work. I worked long hours away from my children to meet the demands of my career. With every advancement and experience, I hoped for more flexibility and balance, but it only got more complicated.

After fifteen years, I walked away from corporate America. My identity, defined by my job over the years, disappeared overnight. I had to reconcile who I used to be, who I was, and who I wanted to be. One thing was clear: I wanted better for my daughter. I realized I’d been raising her as my parents raised me—to believe she could do anything. However, it wasn’t true. She, too, would eventually be limited by the shortcomings of the current professional environments. My struggles, and the thought of those same challenges creating a barrier for future generations of women, led me to write this book. I want to advocate for meaningful change for women so they can achieve their highest potential.

I eventually returned to corporate America and continued to work, still facing my share of the struggles like most women. I am hopeful that bringing light to the issues faced by women will ultimately lead to change.

Women today

Women are progressing in society, holding more power and position in leadership roles worldwide than ever before. They are graduating from colleges and universities in record numbers, comprising half of the graduating classes (Fry 2019), formulating the majority of the decisions related to the household controlling over $20 trillion in annual consumer spending (WCGL 2021), and venturing into the workforce, making up nearly half of the entry-level workforce (Fry 2019). While that seems powerful, it is also true that women are nowhere near equal to men. Even though women are making great strides, it doesn’t equate to leadership positions, pay, or respect. According to research, college-educated women earn less than their male counterparts and make up roughly one-fifth of C-suite roles (CEO, CFO, CHRO, CMO, CIO/CTO), despite being nearly half of the workforce (Sahadi 2019). The gender wage gap continues to persist, with women earning eighty-two cents for every dollar earned by men (Miller 2021). Women struggle to navigate careers and motherhood and face countless other obstacles, such as discrimination and sexism.

In Jim Collin’s bestseller Good to Great, he says, Good is the enemy of great. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The book explores turning the ordinary into the extraordinary and challenges organizations to believe and achieve optimization versus accepting the status quo. Thus, women’s role in corporate America has settled for what we perceive as currently being good when we should strive for something greater.

Feedback for women

Consistently bombarded with feedback from leadership programs, books, coaches, mentors, and male and female leaders, women have changed how they behave, speak, and act to be successful. We have had to transform ourselves to fit in a world that hasn’t considered our inherent differences.

Despite women’s natural use of more words than men—an average of twenty thousand words a day compared to seven thousand for men—they are told to be concise and leave out the details (Hammond 2013).

Research suggests women are much more likely to report their performance lower than men, even with similar scores. The same gap in self-promotion exists even after being provided full access to their scores as well as the accomplishments of others (Cahn 2020). As such, they still self-promote less even when they know they’ve done as well as their male counterparts. Similarly, they are less likely to ask for a raise or negotiate their salary.

Women mask their natural tendencies or incur the blame and penalty when they don’t. Women are consistently trying to figure out how to be someone they are not versus trying to be who they are. The professional world tends to focus on adapting women to their environments versus making room for their differences, which would allow both them and the organization to achieve greater value.

Organizations and women

Most organizations are not structured to accommodate the needs of women. Women have molded themselves and created unique solutions on their own to fit the framework of the organizations. One of the biggest challenges for female employees is childcare. Women have navigated the confines of the corporate environments to create viable remedies to address their needs, such as enlisting family or friends to assist, finding jobs closer to home, or utilizing childcare facilities with extended hours. The lack of sustainable solutions to childcare has come at the cost of long hours away from children, the quality of good childcare, and the stress and anxiety associated with juggling a family and career on a daily basis. The system is broken for millions of women, which in turn impacts families, children, organizations, and society as a whole.

I want to apply this concept of turning the ordinary into the extraordinary to the people, especially women, who work for organizations shaping our world. We work in a time when organizations employ up to five generations of people with vastly different needs. Work-life balance has proven to be non-existent because we cannot devote enough time and attention to both family and careers. Assistance, support, and effortless childcare and maternity solutions must exist. Women work three times harder maintaining professional and personal responsibilities than men. They get paid less for doing the same work and still think they need to be better.

The future

As most organizations define the new normal in the post-pandemic world, it is the best time to start creating long-term sustainable solutions for the entire workforce. Specifically, companies must develop a toolbox of thoroughly and thoughtfully crafted options to support their female employees. This toolbox should address the unique needs of women, further supported by company policies, core values, and top-down leadership. At the minimum, we must address the following:

Childcare

Flexibility

Equal advancement