[Ep. 382] Wealth, Women and the Ambition Penalty with Stefanie O’Connell Rodriguez

Jessica 

Welcome back to the podcast. You know, I think the last time you were on the show. I think I emailed you it was I think it was in 2015 possibly what he just started. That was Wow, eight years ago. Wow. A lot has changed. Absolutely. For both of us, for both of us for the better. We’re doing great. I am so in love with what you are doing. And also I mean, we’ve known each other for a while. So I’ve seen your your journey, your career journey. And I love that you like figure it out something that is just hitting everybody like oh yeah, this is it. This is and this is so you. So I’m so excited to have you on the show to talk about ambition to talk about women to talk about why it’s just harder for us and we can’t ignore this. I’ve got to tell you a story. So when you know we have International Women’s Day, and I rarely like talk about I don’t know I’ve been getting a little bit more like hey, I’m going to talk about like my views on things but I put a post being like, you know, let’s DOP with like having these bullshit like International Women’s Day parties or whatever. Because I remember working in the office, it’s like Happy International Women’s Day. I’m like great i No, I’m still earning less than this guy, right? I’m like, let’s start with a facade and actually do something about it. And also watch an Instagram, but on tick tock, I got a lot of comments being like the gender pay gap doesn’t exist. And then I’m like, well, here’s all these stats, like, people still don’t believe this. Why do you think people still have a hard time accepting that we haven’t broken the glass ceiling and things are still unequal.

Stefanie 

It’s pretty wild, because there’s just so much data around how unequal society remains. And this is not just across gender identity, this is also true across racial identity and ethnicity and ability and, and sexuality and all of these different metrics. And it’s not even close with some of these things. Right? These are persistent gaps. And the thing that’s really strikes me particularly with gender, just because it’s such a critical mass of people, like half the population, you can’t like, explain it away, that it really hasn’t changed in our lifetime. And I think that’s the thing that really started to light my fire when I was was seeing these people kind of claim that this is a real problem, or that we’re past this or that the next generation is solving this. Because when you confront the data, like from the time that I was born to now the pay gap is almost the same. And I think that’s something that one a lot of people don’t realize, and then two people have all of these justifications, right? It’s this idea. This there’s, there’s this mythology of, well, women just choose to have children, right. So as though men don’t have children, like there’s someone else involved. But okay, there are other people who have children in the workforce, right, or women just choose lower paying jobs, or women aren’t interested in certain fields, or women aren’t capable of, of having the upper body strength to do this. And therefore, you make this kind of money. And it’s predicated on two things. One is this idea of the myth of the way women are as being fundamentally naturally inherently different from the way men are psychologically, physically. And these differences are incredibly overstated. Like there’s a lot of variety in the human population. But the differences between groups are very, very, very small. When you look at gender differences, the differences between people are big. But if you look at a full group versus a full group, you don’t see those same kinds of differences. And so there’s a lot of conflation of this idea of like natural differences with destiny. And one, it’s bullshit. And then the second is this idea of choice justification. women just don’t want this or aren’t suited to this or preference, they prefer these things. And again, it’s just so steeped in mythology, when you have people saying, I was trying to get this job in, I was just posting a reel the other day. In trucking. Yeah, and the company won’t hire me because they don’t have enough women to train other women. And they don’t let men train women because men sexually assault women.

Jessica 

And you’re like, I think we’re trying to solve the wrong problem.

Stefanie 

It’s like, Wait, first of all, the policy that men can’t train women is ridiculous is a ridiculous way to solve for men sexually assaulting women fire these freakin mad, fire the predator. And second of all, this is how it works. This is the gatekeeping effect that keeps these people out of the industry and prevents them from getting these kinds of jobs. And then people like say a woman just don’t want to be truckers and it’s like, know that you look at a difference or real difference in an outcome. And then you kind of say, well, this difference in outcome is proof that, you know, women don’t like these jobs that pay well. And it’s just not true. Because you can parse out any single one of these arguments. And this is what I’ve basically dedicated my Instagram to doing. Take any one of these arguments, these misogynists are claiming, and you will find the proof points of why it’s not true. Pay Gap is not just between professions, it’s within professions. You know, comparing the same job level is also very myopic way to talk about pay gaps because it fails to capture the fact that you have men and women with the same performance evaluation scores. And yet men are being promoted at rates that are multiple times that of women or women are outperforming men, and they still don’t get the promotion. So comparing at a job level is already fundamentally missing half of the pay gap. You know, these are the kinds of nuances that I think really get overlooked and I think I was surprised to your point earlier about like The extent to which we’re living in denial. And there’s some research, at least in the United States, I think it’s almost half of American men believe the gender pay gap is the political solely made up for political purposes have which is, it’s it’s something really disturbing. Yeah. And even people who have not hostile sexism, but just like, kind of benevolent sexism, like this idea that men and women have different but complementary skills, right, that it’s not a bad thing or a good thing. They’re always positioning the women’s skills as somehow, like mutually exclusive from equal pay and power. And so it creates this hierarchy. And it reinforces an argument or justifies what is really unjustifiable inequality. And that’s what I wanted to confront was to say, No, this is nonsense. These are myths that all of us, I think, even me, you know, have unwittingly internalized about ourselves and the way the world works. And we have a lot of work to do to dig up this mythology, and start looking at what does it really mean to facilitate equal outcomes? By acknowledging the fact that the systems and the norms that we have built are not doing that currently?

Jessica 

I’m curious, because so you know, how we know each other is like being in the personal finance sphere, and then you kind of pivoted to talking more about this topic, and you have your newsletter and everything like that, what inspired that shift? Because it’s like, for me, it’s like, oh, it’s, you know, adjacent, but it’s different. It’s something happened, like, did it was it based off personal experience?

Stefanie 

You know, what, what inspired it, it was a bit of a journey. So I’ve been writing about personal finance. But you know, as a woman writing about money, I was always asked, you know, or at least gets sent the press releases about these ideas of like, well, why don’t women earn as much? Or why don’t they negotiate as much? Or why don’t they invest as much, and a lot of the things that would come up in these surveys, I would find to be really not reflective of what I was hearing and reading and seeing in the conversations that I was having, with women who were in the workforce, who were asking for more, who were really trying to lean into their financial lives, oftentimes more so than the men in their lives or the men that I was speaking to. And I was like, something here, it feels really disconnected. And what I started to find was that in these conversations, I was coming up against a lot of anecdotes and stories. And one of the ones that hit me was that I was speaking to a woman who was working in tech, and she had been negotiating her salary, following all of the best practices, you know, bringing data points, bringing market research, really contextualized in her offer, reiterating her excitement and her commitment to work with the company like best practices, check, check, check. And you know how Job interviews are these days, she went through, like the 10 rounds, they were psyched. But as soon as she asked for more, the company completely went cold on her. They rescinded her job offer. She was crushed. She was like, What do you mean, like, Oh, my whole life, I was told that like the answer to gender inequality is just asked for more. And yet here I am doing it and doing it in all the ways I’ve been taught and following all the best practices. And not only does it not work, but I’m being punished for it. And for a while, she felt depressed because she no one she had never heard of this phenomenon that women actually do face more backlash when they do ask for more than their male counterparts. But because she had never heard it, she thought it must be me. It’s my issue. I did something wrong. And then she really struggled with that emotionally. Like we talked about this idea of imposter syndrome of not feeling worthy. She had never felt that before imposter syndrome came from the result of this experience that came from a result of the sexism that she had to face in the workforce. It wasn’t because she’s a woman that she’s naturally born with imposter syndrome. She was made to feel that way, because she enacted the exact same behavior as her male colleagues, and our male colleagues get rewarded. And she’s being told no, you don’t belong, and she’s penalized for it. And so after a while of kind of nursing those wounds, she said, she started speaking and reaching out to a couple of friends and talking about that experience because she had to kind of process through it. And she said, I talked to three close friends about it who had the exact same story. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is like, at the time, it was like you’re blowing my mind. Because forever, the advice was like the worst they can say is no. And yet time, there’s nothing worse, right? Time and time. And now we’re talking about like, not just know, we’re talking about withdrawn job offers we’re talking about. And I’ve gone on to have many of these conversations with people, but people who like Oh, they’ll ask for a raise, and they won’t get fired. But then like, their boss starts treating them differently, or they become the difficult one, or they get seen as not a good fit or not committed to the company. And it’s like, wait a second here, this is some pulse. And so what I decided to do after hearing so many of these stories was look at the data more broadly, because a lot of the data I had been immersed in was really personal finance, focused. And again, if you just look at outcomes, if you just look at pay, if you just look at promotion rates, if you just look at whatever, you do see these gender disparities? And so you can easily say, Yeah, women invest less than men. Why is that? Oh, because they they’re not confident enough, or they’re risk averse, or whatever it is. But there is this huge body of research beyond what’s coming out of these various, this limited set of studies that actually show Oh, actually, if you contextualize income, with investing behavior, you know, it’s differences in income that dictate risk capacity, not differences in gender, women earn less, they have less money to risk, you know, so it’s not like women are these like naturally risk averse people, it’s just that they make less money, and they have less money available to risk. And they are more likely to be the ones who are caring for their family members and their constituencies and realizing that gives them less to risk on investments. So these were the kinds of threads I just started seeing upon really looking deeper into the data and saying, like, wow, this doesn’t really reflect the reality of these people’s experiences at all. And actually, there’s this huge body of research that shows us why.

Jessica 

Yeah, no, I think that’s what I saw. I remember seeing those posts early when you were kind of making this pivot. And it It shocked me, because that’s all that was always my worst fear. Because I always thought, yeah, the worst they can say is no, but no, that is not the worst thing that can happen. They can actually take away the offer, and you never hear those stories. I’ve certainly never heard a story of a man asking for more and then not getting the job. They’ll just get a No, but it’s incredible, especially since you know, I think we kind of grew up with, you know, lean in came in. And that was kind of like putting the onus on women, you’re not trying hard enough lean in. And I believe that I thought that book was amazing. And then I tried doing some of the things that she said in her book, and I literally didn’t get any positive results from and I asked my boss for a raise and promotion. And the result wasn’t a no, it was a yes, except a delay, delay delay. And what actually happened was I started doing more giving, providing more value and output because they’re like, Oh, the raisin promotion title changes is coming. But just start doing that job anyway. So I thought that was gonna happen. Eight months later, nothing happened. So I quit. I think that’s a very common story. I’ve heard from other people, too. It’s like, well, I was promised this and it didn’t happen. And I thought it was doing the right thing.

Stefanie 

That’s such a good story, too. Because like, then there’s this argument of like, well, why do women take on all of this extra office work in this office labor? You know, they shouldn’t do that. They should demand their value. And it’s like, You’re wrong, no matter what you do? Yeah.

Jessica 

It’s like I did and it still didn’t happen. And then there’s all these expectations. And then if I stopped, if I like, and I feel like near the end, I was kind of quiet quitting, either, either. They didn’t notice that it was doing less, or they were like, oh, is everything okay? And I’m like, what’s happening here? And I’m like, bizarro world.

Stefanie 

It makes you feel crazy. Yeah. And that’s the other thing I really want my work to speak to is there’s so much gaslighting in these conversations around women and work and career. Not only is the sexism and misogyny, so embedded still in the workplace, and kind of, frankly, everywhere. It’s in the home life, too. It’s in relationships, it’s in families, but also there’s this mythology of, well, that was 50 years ago, and that is not the case. In fact, some of this is even more insidious, because it’s not as explicit as saying, we just don’t hire women, or we just don’t promote women. They’re telling you that will we do, but you didn’t do it in this right way, or it was because of x y&z factor and there’s always another moving of the goalpost. And it apply it’s a and there’s almost always a double standard in the way it applies to women and doesn’t apply to men. Now all of this being said, this doesn’t mean, I’m anti negotiation, it doesn’t mean I’m anti advocating for yourself. But my issue with the way this career advice has been position is that one, it’s that simple. And to that it works equally for everybody. Because if that’s not true, it doesn’t work equally for men and women, it doesn’t work equally for people of color, it doesn’t work equally for so many people across intersections of identity. And I think why I think this conversation is important rather, is because when we don’t acknowledge that there’s a full spectrum of possibility, and a lot of it is driven still by discrimination and bias, then people go into the place of, it must just be me, and it must just be my fault. Instead of working harder, I should try harder still, like a very deeply flawed workplace. And it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try right and still do these best practices. But if we acknowledge that, it’s not me, it’s them, then we can shift the context, right? It’s like, okay, if it’s them, let me see if I can go to a new context and find real support and champions of the things I’m trying to do, because I know the value I have to offer. And even if these people can’t get on board with it, there are other people who will.

Jessica 

Exactly I think, yeah, there’s two things there. So number one, the gaslighting thing, I’m so glad that is a term because for so many years, I didn’t know how to describe how I felt, but I have so many workplaces where I’m like, why don’t we feel like I’m yeah, I’m not good enough. I’m not trying hard. But I’m like, I know I am. But I’m very confused. Like you said, the sexism, the discrimination. And I feel like there’s an alignment with you know, so racial discrimination is so subtle. It’s not like what you see in like those movies where it’s like someone saying a bad word to you, or you know, what have you, it’s so subtle with just a few little actions, or you left off an email or something like that, that you’re like, you feel like, Am I going crazy? Is this me? Did I do so and then you spiral. And this has happened to me at so many different workplaces. It’s only now that I’ve been like self employed for almost seven years that I can see it through a different lens, like, Oh, my God, that’s, that’s what that was. That wasn’t my fault. I was in a toxic work environment that was heavily sexist. But it wasn’t the sexism that I grew up in understanding it was this different layer that I didn’t understand at the time. But the other thing that you mentioned that, you know, it’s when you recognize, okay, this space is not working for me, I keep on getting pushed down or told to stay there. It is not your job to fix an institutional problem. Like I think a lot of us women think we need to fix it, it’s, oh, it’s a problem that we have. So we should fix it. I’ve tried at every place I’ve worked. And never, it was never a good result. In the end, it was always a better result when I chose to leave for a better situation. But that’s also really hard, because then you feel like you’re quitting, you’re failing, it’s again, your fault. You didn’t do good enough. And it’s just like a spiral of wow, we’re just, I’m the worst.

Stefanie 

I mean, and it’s, it’s hard. It’s just hard to do, like, I hate when you know, in personal finance world, people are like, Oh, your expense, your cost of living is really high. Why don’t you just move like that?

Jessica 

There’s a lot of reasons why, like, even for me, I don’t feel safe in certain small towns, so they’re much more affordable. Right?

Stefanie 

And it’s the same thing, you know, I’m saying this, through the framework of like, you know, if you’re in an environment where your ambition is constantly undermined and not supported, and champion, I think it’s time to start looking at new environments. But I also acknowledged that that is very difficult. And I just don’t want to say that I nothing is just anything, it is always more complicated. And I think that complexity and nuance is something you and I are both really trying to do more of in our work, because I think it’s a real disservice. I think things that are easy and straightforward sell well, yeah. But it’s, I think, ultimately, a disservice. Actually, there was some great research that came out earlier this year, specifically on the negotiation thing, this idea of oh, well, women just don’t ask for more, and therefore, that’s why there’s a gender pay gap. And so this research found not only is that not true, but they also found that the myth that women don’t ask for more, is what people cite as a reason for paying women less. They use the mythology they there was evidence of using the mythology of these gender differences to justify the gender differences. And I was like, this is the thing I’m talking about, right? And so I think it’s really important in the work we do to not just talk about this nuance, but really call it out these narratives and start doing this myth busting, because what this research tells us is, that is what is going to create some accountability is to challenge these narratives and say no, you can’t gaslight with me anymore. Because I know better.

Jessica 

I wonder too if there’s one thing I was thinking of. We hear a lot of these stats like I hear often it’s like women aren’t, you know, financially confident, imposter syndrome, those things get talked about all the freakin time. And I feel like sometimes the more we talk about them in a way that women are like this, you almost perpetuate it, you can’t help it. And so like I am trying to reframe, I try not to say imposter syndrome anymore. Because doing research for the book, I’m like, You know what, I never had impostor syndrome up until I started working in a space where they discriminated me, I never felt like that and film school. And it was male dominated, because it was a wonderful art bubble where everyone was like, it doesn’t matter your gender, we just judge you on your art. And it was a beautiful space. And then I remember going to my first job, which was still a very art focused space. But male dominated and realizing like, oh, things are different here. And this, I was not prepared for this. And I kind of I was a super ambitious, confident person, and did really well in film school. And I finished and I recognized during that it was just a four month job at this film festival, I became someone different. And I think I was just like, I didn’t know who to be, I didn’t know where my space was. And I was trying to look to other women to see what were they doing. And they were very quiet. They worked really hard. They didn’t complain, all these types of things. And like, I guess that’s what I should do. But I feel like yeah, sometimes we’re looking to what are other women doing? And sometimes they’re doing what other people are doing, then we’re just perpetuating these myths, and then actually then becoming the reality, which is terrible.

Stefanie 

But I don’t blame no women.

Jessica 

No, no, no, no, no, exactly. We’re just trying to do what we think is right and trying to survive.

Stefanie 

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I do think it’s important that we talk about all of these things within a broader structural context, right? Everything that we see, even like the SEC, even explicitly hostile sexism, perpetuated by men or women, it’s just part of this broader system of incentives and disincentives of like, Who are you supposed to, quote unquote, be in the world, men are supposed to be providers, leaders, ambitious bull. And so when they behave in those ways, they are rewarded. And when they don’t behave in those ways, they are penalized, right? When men take paternity leave, they get backlash. And that’s a problem too. So this isn’t just about like, these are bad men or bad women, right? It’s not that it’s about questioning this broader structure of who is supposed to be this way, and who is supposed to be the other way. And then punishing people when they behave in these kind of counter stereotypical ways. Women are allowed to be leaders to women are allowed to be ambitious to, and men are allowed to be nurturing, and they’re allowed to be empathetic. And we are already all of these things, we have greater well being when we’re allowed to be all quote, unquote, masculine and feminine. And we only hurt ourselves. When we’re cutting parts of those pieces of our personalities off and hurting each other.

Jessica 

I think the difficult thing is it is really hard to be countered to those roles, those traditional roles that again, are sometimes very subtle, but little things that I remember, like one thing that was really important for me, and I’m like, I don’t know, if I knew why I was doing this at the time. They had one workplace, they always asked the support, you know, workers and I was one of them to take over reception for the hour that the receptionist was on lunch break, and I refused to do it. Because I’m like, why are you asking me? You’re not asking these sales, right? You know, they’re not frickin doing anything. And I worked there three years, and I think I did it once. And then I said, Sorry, I’m too busy. I’m too busy with work. I don’t want to be the receptionist, because I’m a woman. And it was basically just women. I think there’s one guy who, you know, volunteered to do it. But it was hard. I got flack for not doing it. Because I didn’t want to, you know, be a stereo. I don’t I didn’t want to be this stereotypical receptionist because that was not my role, but it was expected of me and not lots of the other men that could have absolutely done it.

Stefanie 

And this is a great example because it shows you the impossibility of the catch 22 Because if you do do it, then the argument will be well you shouldn’t be providing this extra unpaid labor. You know, this is the problem that women always take on this stuff and you know, and no wonder they’re not compensated their full value. But then if you you know, if you don’t do it, then like What’s wrong with you? You’re the problematic one, why can’t you step up and be a team player? And I think that’s the thing that drives me crazy about the discourse in the workplace. And certainly talking about the workplace online, there’s just no way to win. And you just see this come up in absolutely every example. This was such a such a simple thing, right, manning the desk. But you see this in age discrimination for women. You know, there was a study that came out that showed, you know, when women are in their 20s, they’re perceived as being too young for most professional roles. And then they tip into being perceived as too old and there is no in between. And that not only is an ageism standard, but it’s a gendered ageism standard. Same thing with bodyweight, you know, in this research to you know, when women gain body mass, they’re discriminated against, you know, and that might not be surprising, but then aren’t the same ways. And so it’s like, again, this double standard of how all of these different intersections of identity and being are held to such a different standard, depending on the gender of the person who’s expressing it, or has that identity. So it’s just, I think it’s a lot to your point earlier about, it’s harder to pinpoint, but it’s insidious, and that it’s absolutely everywhere.

Jessica 

It’s everywhere. It’s yeah, have you found any data to just speaking to the body mass research? Because one argument I see a lot of, and one thing that I’ve complained a lot about is makeup for women. And the argument always seems like, well, you don’t have to wear makeup, and like I absolutely do. I absolutely do. If I’m doing speaking, if I’m on TV, if I’m going to an event, I have to and hair takes 45 minutes to an hour, that is time and I spend money on these products.

Stefanie 

You will earn less if you don’t, yeah.

Jessica 

But I want to spend your time and your money on that, then don’t do it. And like, it’s but I know for a fact I have to and even to like I was talking to a male friend of mine, and you know, do lots of media and stuff like that. And like honestly, I say no to quite a bit of media now. Because it’s awful. I don’t really see too much of an ROI for doing a quick five minute thing on the news that I don’t get paid for. But I’m like, the cost the sunk costs unless I’m already inherent makeup for I’m going to do some Instagram reels or I’m going to do something else. It’s doesn’t make sense for me. Where’s the guy? Oh, yeah, I’m free right now. But sometimes I get a call be like, Oh, you freed in 30 minutes. Like, I can’t do it in 30 minutes, because I’ll still be doing my hair and makeup for a thing that maybe someone will see on TV. So what’s the point? And it’s? Yeah, it’s frustrating.

Stefanie 

Yeah, I identify with that a lot personally, and I have been doing a lot of media and then like, it’s winds up being a full day commitment for like, three minutes.

Jessica 

You’re like, what else can I do with this man? Like, honestly, I’m like, what else can I do with this makeup today, then? Yeah.

Stefanie 

But again, like another thing that’s highly gendered, also highly racialized. You just see these things come up in absolutely every aspect. And I think, you know, we are talking about equal pay before, pay is just one metric of the way these things show up. It’s in recruitment, it’s in hiring processes, and it’s an evaluation processes, it’s in promotions, it’s in how leaders are evaluated, right. So I think the same way that makeup and appearance and body mass and like all of these little things become gendered. And then they each their gender, their discrimination and bias across gender identity on each of those dimensions are then compounded by the total number of qualities of all those things. And then that’s compounded by the total number of processes in the workforce. And it’s just like, oh, I then see how this idea of a micro aggression then becomes such a such creates such huge disparities.

Jessica 

Another term I’m so glad exists microaggression, because those things have existed my whole work life, it wasn’t until I was able to create a career where I’m in control, but also to I recognize, I have an agent who mainly who does all of my negotiation for my behalf. He’s a man, and I’m pretty sure I make more money because he is a man. I don’t know that for a fact. He’s also a good agent. But also I’m just like, I wonder if that having that kind of you can’t get to me unless you talk to this man makes me more money.

Stefanie 

I mean, I think I get more because of that. My agent is also a man. I mean, also, self employment protects me from a lot. Yeah, it protects. And it’s interesting now, because there’s been more research coming out about what happened during COVID. And as more people were able to work from home, they weren’t subject to as much daily discrimination that comes with going into the office and those kind of toxic workplace interactions. And you did see there’s women’s labor force participation, at least here in the United States is at a record high because of that. So I think there’s a lot of, quote unquote solutions that people talk about that I’m always really skeptical of because they’re always talking about it within the context of like, in this one anecdotal instance, this worked for me or this. Yeah, for like the top 1% of people. And I’m always really interested in when do we see changes that create a real impact for the majority of people? Right, so seeing women’s labor force participation hit a record high, at a time when flexible and remote work was adopted at a level we’ve never seen before. That actually tells us something. And then that makes all of these conversations about people demanding you returned to Office for jobs that have been proven to not be needed to be done in office, all the more nefarious, because then you can just say, like, We know now that that’s just sexist.

Jessica 

I know. And I know, you want me to come to the office merely because you have a lease on a building that, you know, just like sublease it my gosh, there’s solutions to this stupid problem. I’m curious too, because I feel like I did see a real that showed women were the first to kind of being let go during COVID. So it’s like, we’re always the ones to like, oh, there’s, you know, there was a war will step in, and then like, oh, the men are back. So you can go back to your home. And when we’re always the first to feel any kind of financial crisis. Why do you think that is like in this day and age? Why are we still valued less?

Stefanie 

I mean, it’s, it’s tough, because this isn’t like this goes back to before what we were saying about these being broader structures. It’s the devaluation of anything that’s associated with femininity. It’s not even just women, right? It’s the idea of leadership is associated inherently with masculinity. And that is what is valued. And anything that’s related to care, or community is really related to women and femininity, again, not based on anything that’s true about differences between men and women, but rather just stereotypes of this as the way men and women are. And anything that is seen as feminine, is incredibly devalued the kinds of jobs, the kinds of unpaid labor that we choose not to compensate. And so I think when you see, crises take hold, you see those divisions play out, you see it happening, you know, obviously in times of recession, you see it happening in climate change, you see it happening in war, you’ll always see the same inequality that you see in a workplace play out in moments of crisis too.

Jessica 

Yeah, it’s, it’s fast. I know, I think

Stefanie 

the other thing is it hurts everybody, right? Like, it’s not. I mentioned this before, like, I don’t send her men and my content, I think they’re centered enough. Yeah. But let’s be clear, like, this isn’t helping them either, you know, the pressure to feel like they have no value, if they’re not out earning their partners, like, that’s not good for them. As much as it’s not good for us. The idea that, like, if you’re not financially dominant, or physically dominant or anti, that’s not good for culture, it’s not good for anybody. So I think, really, the goal of all of these conversations isn’t just so that like we can feel a little bit better at work. I think the goal of these conversations is really reimagine these roles for ourselves and what’s available to us, because I think we’ll all be better served if we’re not limited to these ideas of what men and women should be, and what we’re allowed to access or not access.

Jessica 

And I feel like for a lot of us, at least, for me, I never really thought about gender until I entered the workforce. But like, growing up in school, even in university, I thought everything was pretty equal. I’m like, Well, I don’t feel discriminated. And once you would just enter this environment that’s just had all this discrimination for so many years is so hard to battle. And I think that’s that’s the complicated thing is you’re like, Okay, well, I understand the stats, what are the solutions? And then you can look to, I’ve done so much research on like, what are solutions? And a lot of the ones that are like, here’s what you can do on an individual level, it’s like, well, we’ve tried a lot of those and they still don’t work, the only way to actually see change. And we’ve seen this is asked me on a bigger institutional level. Like I know you did a real recently about when companies are transparent about their pay scales. This is what actually makes changes. You want to talk a little bit about that because I thought it was so fascinating.

Stefanie 

So this is a great example of the way I was talking about looking for solutions that work at scale as opposed to an exception. So pay transparency legislation has been starting to be passed in, in cities here in the United States and certain countries, they’ve been implemented. There’s one study that It was based in Denmark because they had implemented pay transparency about like a decade ago. And they saw that among those companies that weren’t big enough to require pay transparency, their gender gaps just started to disappear. And not only because they started to confront differences in pay for the same work, which is how we typically think of comparing pay, but they also started to see when they had to be transparent. All of these other differences emerged, they were like, Oh, well, a lot of what’s driving this pay differential is that we don’t recruit very many women, and then we don’t promote a lot of them to leadership. So a lot of this pay is being reflected by these differences that aren’t just about pay, but about all these other stages of our career ladder that contribute to these differences in pay. And rather than using that as an excuse to explain away the pay inequality, the transparency really forces, not not forces as in like, they’re legally required to address it. But people do feel compelled to address it when they see and are confronted with the data, how unequal these systems are. And so there was this great similar study here, it wasn’t a study, rather, it was is a case study at the company buffer. It’s a social media startup, where they started implementing this pay transparency policy internally. So it doesn’t even have to be legislation. It could just be an internal company policy. And they share what everybody’s salary is how it’s calculated how it’s determined. And then the pay gap grew on gender pay gap grew, and they were like, you know, this isn’t working. Why is that? Oh, it’s because these same things, we’re not recruiting properly. We are not, we’re not having women coming into leadership roles. And again, instead of saying, oh, women aren’t interested in these jobs, or women don’t want to work here, or women aren’t interested in leadership, we need to do a better job of recruiting in places that don’t just cater to white men, we need to do a better job of identifying the top performers in our company who are leadership material and make sure we’re sponsoring them, because they’re great performers. And not just because they’re our buddies that we go golfing with. And then their gender pay gap closed after having gone from growing with transparency, to using transparency as a tool to address these chronic issues. So we started to see not just these case studies, but also like as legislation has been passed in different parts of the world, you can start to see these differences emerge on a macro level. And that’s where it gets really exciting, because you’re like, oh, wow, like this whole city that implemented this policy is starting to see these gaps go away.

Jessica 

And I know, I feel like there was something else that you shared that said that when there is more women managers, or in a higher management, we see a bigger difference. And it’s like, yeah, maybe it’s because yeah, we need more more diversity on the hiring committee to see more diversity come into the company.

Stefanie 

Yeah. So that that one was specifically about women in management. And they found that the tipping point was when you get about 60% of women in management, all the gender pay gaps disappeared. And so what that tells us is that the approach that a lot of companies have taken to diversity thus far is this idea of tokenism, right.

Jessica 

Like, let’s put someone who fits that bill at the top, and then we’ve checked that box.

Stefanie 

Right, I’ve got a woman in this position, I’ve got a person of color in this position, and that doesn’t move the needle and it doesn’t move the needle, because then that person is really isolated. And they don’t have, you know, if you’re in a position of leadership, you need buy into your leadership, you can’t just be put there, and then not given the support that you need to have people say, oh, like, yeah, these are, you’re not just here at the table, but you’re being heard, and your ideas are being valued. And what happens is, if you have more representation, a critical mass of representation, you’re more likely to get that buy in, that actually challenges the status quo, as opposed to being just like, the one voice in the room that saying, hey, maybe this policy isn’t working to facilitate the most equitable outcomes, or it’s not rewarding our best performers. You know, you really do need that critical mass of people there to provide the support. And then you do see these differences further down the organizational ladder start to go away. And so that’s again, an A great example of things that work at scale. And not just in this one instance, when I asked in this way, with this punctuation in this outfit, in In this perfect time of day, this worked.

Jessica 

You know, and this mirror is something I had a conversation with someone and I will not give any details because we’re like, Please don’t, this is off the record. But they did say, people focus just on the C suite, they don’t focus on management management is what moves the dial and management still, you know, they were talking about like, it’s male, and it’s, you know, white and that is why we’re not really seeing changed below that. And we’re just seeing those yet the tokenism happening, so they can check the box and say, Oh, we did our best.

Stefanie 

And you need you need that representation at every level of the organization. Oftentimes, you see a lot of people trying to address this from a bottom up or a top down, right, they’ll be like, Okay, we’ll get to equitability in our hiring at the entry level, or we’ll get to even a corporate board. That’s great. I want to see women on corporate boards. But you can’t just address the two opposite ends of the ladder, you have to address every rung of the ladder.

Jessica 

I’m getting so many ideas that I’m like, Okay, after this, write down all these notes, so it can kind of add some more little things in my finishing this section. Oh my gosh, shit, there’s more stuff that I have to include. I am so happy that you were doing what you’re doing. I think it is such an important work. So I highly recommend everyone follow you on social media and subscribe to your newsletter. Do you want to kind of share where people can find you at and subscribe and like and follow?

Stefanie 

Yeah, I am Stephanie O’Connell, Rodriguez. I know it’s a lot, a lot of letters. But social media. Good news doesn’t fit all of those. So just Stephanie O’Connell. And my newsletter is called too ambitious. And we got some exciting things in the pipeline that aren’t quite ready yet. But Instagram is the place where I’m most active. So you can find me at Stephanie O’Connell there.

Jessica 

Thank you so much for taking the time. I’m so excited for what you have whatever it is on the horizon, because you’re doing such amazing important work. And I appreciate you coming back on the show after all these years.

Stefanie 

Thanks for letting me chat it out with you.