Women in Revenue conducts an annual report on the challenges facing women in business today. For 2023 we’ve identified improvements that employers can make to improve on a “successful but not equal” system.
In our report, “Bridging the Salary Gap: The Paradox of Successful but Unequal,” three key themes emerged: (1) compensation challenges, (2) a demand for workplace flexibility, and (3) the need for mentorship. These challenges have led to dissatisfaction for many women. Nearly half of respondents in this year’s survey said they considered quitting their job in 2022, and 20 percent actually did. That translates into a big price tag for companies who now have to hire in a competitive job market.
Pay Inequality
Compensation challenges among this group of successful women with seemingly well-paying careers shows a lack of progress. More than 25% said they made less than their male counterparts, and even more alarmingly, 52% said they had no idea! Pay transparency laws have been enacted across the country to address this issue, but they clearly have a long way to go.
Flexibility is Queen
Workplace flexibility was ranked the number one benefit by a landslide. More than 80 percent of women named working from home as the must-have perk in job offers, and it’s easy to see why. This is a group of high-functioning multitaskers who have emerged from a pandemic with a keen ability to thrive in a modern, flexible workplace.
This group values this benefit most when considering a job offer or whether to stay at their current job. And the number is up 30 percent from previous years. The number two ranked benefit? Flexible work hours.
Need for Mentorship
Along with the desire for a flexible workplace, women also cited the need for mentorship as a key challenge that can be exacerbated by the more virtual nature of work from home settings. Nearly 30 percent of women reported lack of training/coaching, lack of mentorship, and equal seat at the table as challenges in their organizations.
Employers need to take these gaps seriously as they can be nearly insurmountable blockers in harassment situations.
We love supporting our community with the same statistical and fact-based reasoning that makes us all successful sales and marketing leaders. Identifying the top career blockers and most valued workplace benefits is the type of knowledge that companies need to build strong, productive teams.
As a professional association dedicated to supporting all women in revenue, we understand the challenges of transitioning in the job market. While a job search can be a complex and daunting process, we’ve curated a list of tools that our members swear by to help automate and professionalize their job searches. Once you identify your aspirations and develop your professional pitch, these tools can streamline, organize, and automate your job search process.
Text Blaze is a powerful tool that allows you to create text templates and easily paste them anywhere, including Gmail, LinkedIn, and other platforms. This tool saves hours messaging people for networking, replying to emails/InMails, commenting on posts, and more.
Another great tool on our list is ChatGPT by OpenAI. With this tool, you can create resumes, cover letters, thank you notes, and even answers to popular interview questions in seconds. However, it’s important to review the content carefully and add personalization and tweaks where necessary.
Teal is another tool we highly recommend. It acts like your own personal ATS or CRM for the job search, allowing you to organize and manage your job search in one place.
Grammarly is a must-have tool for anyone looking for a job. It scans your text and corrects any grammatical errors, making it great for resumes, emails, cover letters, and even LinkedIn posts and comments.
Mixmax is a tool we love for automating emails and follow-ups, saving hours and allowing you to personalize messaging at scale. Plus, it even sends reminders on when to follow up.
For those who struggle with public speaking, Speeko – A.I. Speech Coach is a fantastic tool. It allows you to practice interviewing with an AI speech coach and helps you get better at public speaking in the process.
If you’re struggling to match your resume with a job description, ResyMatch by Cultivated Culture is the tool for you. This resume scanner and optimizer, courtesy of Austin Belcak, matches your resume with any job description to increase your chances of landing an interview.
Hunter is another great tool that allows you to find anyone’s email for outreach. It tells you a company’s email alias so you can make an educated guess, making it easier to get in touch with the right people.
The List is a central layoff list used by thousands of companies to hire. If you’ve been impacted by layoffs, you can add your name, and companies will reach out directly if you’re a fit for any open roles. On our resource center, you’ll also find several other links with companies who are actively hiring.
And, be sure and become a Women in Revenue member to (1) gain access to our active #jobopportunities Slack channel and (2) join our Mentorship Program to find a mentor (or mentee) that can be a sounding board and thought-partner as you navigate important steps in your career.
Amidst a recession and mass tech layoffs, many of us are being asked to make organizations leaner than they have ever been. We hear things like “get more efficient,” “run more with less,” “cut back on systems” and “we have to cut back on headcount but not lose any revenue.” If you have not had to do this before, keep reading. If you have, you are wearing a Revenue Operations (RevOps) hat already, and this will hopefully be a nudge to get ahead on this, that is, if you are not already being asked.
Just know it’s OK to show gaps. We all have them! Identifying and addressing them is always better than doing nothing.
Let’s level set by starting from the beginning. RevOps means orchestrating people, processes, technology, data and enablement to achieve business revenue targets. Most organizations with a RevOps department started with sales operations and marketing operations and have evolved to other functional areas over time and growth. RevOps is chartered to align departmental goals, people and teams to build and maintain systems and tools, while providing reporting and analysis to drive more effective business decisions.
RevOps is to a business as the spinal cord, brain and synapses are to our bodies. The functional areas included in RevOps are dependent upon the company size, trajectory and organizational structure. Typically, sales, marketing, customer success, channel and enablement will be involved with dotted lines to and/or working relationships with accounting, finance, HR, IT and legal.
RevOps is the infrastructure to support the end-to-end revenue process across the customer lifecycle. This includes people, process, technology, data and insights, but also strategy and enablement. RevOps helps with alignment, visibility and predictability across the entire go-to-market organization to driverepeatable and scalable revenue. It’s not just about marketing or about sales, or even post-sales; RevOps supports the entire organization from top-of-funnel marketing to prospect to customer and through retention and expansion.
The Rise of RevOps
The last few years have shown how critical a strong RevOps engine is. With current market volatility, having a solid operational infrastructure has allowed companies to quickly assess their current state, determine the next best actions and put into play changes to their GTM strategy. The companies that were able to pivot quickly were the ones that had the right data and the insights to understand what and how the business needed to change to accommodate the changes in the market. In turn, they could operationalize those decisions throughout the entire organization.
In addition to market volatility, several factors have given rise to RevOps. One is the SaaS model of recurring revenue where the customer’s journey begins (vs. ends) with the first contract signed. Retention and expansion within the customer base is more critical than ever before. In addition to the recurring revenue model, selling motions and routes to market are more complex. Think about product-led growth, self-serve models, channel offerings, partner-led selling and more.
Buyers are more informed and more demanding than ever before, which has led to these creative ways of doing business where companies need to meet the buyer where they want to be met. Technology and data have exploded in both usage and innovation, which has changed the landscape as well. There is specific tech for every part of the funnel.
Selecting the right technology, then configuring, administering and maintaining that tech by ensuring tech is integrated and working together is a massive job in itself. It often falls on the RevOps team. Training, enabling and driving the adoption of this technology is also a significant part of the RevOps team’s responsibility.
RevOps plays a big role in gleaning comprehensive, meaningful insights from data as well. The availability and significance of data have also escalated. Delivering the right data at the right time to the right people is more critical than ever before. Comprehensive, meaningful insights from the data are a “must-have” for businesses to be able to achieve their revenue goals.
Your Five-Step Plan for Optimization
As companies work to do more with less by tightening budgets and resources, they need to be more efficient and effective across every customer journey touchpoint. This is where RevOps comes in through the collective lens of people, process, tech, data, insights, enablement and strategy to ensure that these are optimized to ensure the best revenue outcomes. RevOps takes a holistic view across all functions and groups that touch the buyer and customer to look for opportunities to improve.
So, what can you do now to take action to make things lean? Here are our top five tips.
1. Run a gap analysis across people, processes, technology and enablement
Making RevOps leaner starts with reviewing your current state. You will need to audit the people, process, technologies and enablement as they are, define the gaps and then game plan where to make the moves. Think of a SWOT analysis where you identify the following:
Strengths, or what works well
Weaknesses, which could be skills-related or tech that’s not fully implemented
Opportunities, such as low-hanging fruit
Threats, including risks like technical debt, not having enough skills and headcount
This is not a fast or easy process. Incremental improvements will help prove what works quickly and set you up for future buy-in from your stakeholders, finance and internal business partners.
Make a slide deck with your gap analysis that you can present across teams, plus an up-leveled version for executives
Build out, update and make a plan to manage your RevOps playbook while you’re in the process of reviewing and documenting
Focus on business capabilities, and assess the current state by rating your business capabilities against the business impact, the current state and the level of effort. Tackle items with the worst current state that have the biggest impact to the business with the lowest amount of effort.
2. Build out a measurable roles-and-responsibilities model for your RevOps and Go-To-Market teams
Clearly spell out who is responsible for what and what each person has access to in what system. Review rules of engagement across the entire GTM team from marketing to SDR/BDR, sales, post-sales, customer success, services, implementation, support, etc.
Look for poor handoffs, unclear processes, unclear R&R or lack of clear expectations, and start to put better policy, process and governance in place to avoid dropping the ball, wasting time or delivering poor customer experience.
Tips:
Use a model like RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed) to review who is responsible for what and where you have gaps
Review systems and process ownership and systems permissions
Determine if your operating model makes sense for where the business is at today (e.g. centralized vs. decentralized vs. hybrid)
Set up a ticketing system for your team in Asana, Wrike, Monday or a custom object in SFDC, and identify opportunities for ongoing training to close skills gaps
3. Implement a process for roadmaps, project briefs and/or project charters
If you don’t have a RevOps roadmap, you will need one to clearly spell out RevOps initiatives and how they are tied to overall company goals. If you already have one, reassess the roadmap to ensure it still makes sense. The roadmap should show strategic initiatives, as well as tactical projects, that tie back to the overall GTM and Revenue goals. Each initiative should show standard project criteria such as the objective, key stakeholders, active participants, the expected timeline, targeted completion dates, RACI, next steps, level of effort, prioritization, etc.
A project charter turns into your communication tool to walk around for feedback and input, share across teams, build momentum, show transparency and obtain buy-in and sign-off throughout the entire project or program lifecycle. It is by far the most important communication tool for strategic projects, but not all projects are that grand and require this.
Tips:
A project charter will include your roadmap, roles and responsibilities, project/program goals tied to overall company goals, impacts within and across departments.
A project brief is usually used for smaller-scaled, less strategic projects, with the same purpose as the project charter—to build buy-in and ensure effective communications
4. Optimize the Tech Stack
When looking for ways to be more efficient and effective, leveraging technology makes sense to reduce manual work, minimize the potential for errors and automate or integrate where possible. But oftentimes, we have systems and tools that are not being used in the most optimized manner or not used at all.
Now is the time to evaluate the tech stack to assess:
What technology is actually used and how it is being used
Where you can better leverage the technology that you have to unlock more use cases, solve more challenges, drive better productivity and eliminate manual steps
What technology is redundant or not being utilized at all for and could be consolidated or eliminated
Where additional training or enablement needs to happen to improve adoption, provide more value and better serve the GTM team
Where better integration can be configured or designed to allow better visibility and a more seamless experience
5. The Metrics that Matter
Many organizations have too many metrics, not enough metrics or the wrong metrics. Now is the time to be abundantly clear on GTM goals and objectives, and then make sure you are looking at the right metrics to assess how the organization is tracking toward and performing against those key goals and objectives.
Cut out the noise, and focus on the top metrics that provide deep insights into how the organization is performing. This will provide leading indicators of where to pivot, change direction or lean in.
Don’t measure everything; instead, measure the things that matter.
Conclusion
The value of RevOps is simple. You cannot significantly accelerate revenue growth and scale a business for future growth without it. And what is interesting is that RevOps is still significantly understaffed. Even more interesting is that in a downturn, RevOps professionals are being cut because they are often misunderstood and undervalued. A lot of this has to do with leadership skill gaps in RevOps; areas such as knowing how to up-level communications, obtain executive buy-in and allies and showing constitution to the revenue goals.
Women in Revenue’s roots come from the B2B tech industry. That means that our community has been hit hard in recent months by layoffs and change. When turmoil hits our ranks, we gather our resources to help. Today we’re launching the Career Progression Support Center, a place for our members to go to get advice on imminent career transition.
Whether you’ve been laid off, are considering a new career or job, or find yourself navigating a new work environment post layoffs, this center has resources to help you plan and cope. We spend one-third of our life working. Managing and planning for what comes next is important for your financial future, overall career success, and your mental health. We hope this page helps.
The Career Progression Support Center is a living site that will be updated regularly with resources to help with career transition and progression. It includes helpful resources from experts around the web including articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, webinars, and more.
To give you a sample of what you can find in the center, here are a few highlights and tips from the resources we’ve gathered:
Don’t forget your worth. As this Harvard Business Review article says, “Being laid off is not a reflection of your skill set — it’s a reflection of your former company’s lack of proper planning during a turbulent economy or of its change in business strategy.”
Not laid off yet, but worried you might be? This Resource Center includes a number of resources with advice on what to do when you’re laid off, including a layoff playbook which includes insight on how to handle the rumors, the actual layoff meeting, and steps on what to do after. For example:
Before: Gather documentation and information (such as employment agreements, contracts, contacts, and examples of your work). DO NOT take proprietary information.
During: Know that you can negotiate your severance. Understand what to expect and how to negotiate.
Immediately after a layoff: Hydrate. Sleep. Process.
After: Compute your runway–How long do until you have to work. Apply for unemployment. Set up health insurance.
Take care of your mental health. Pandemic followed by career transition is a lot. The resource center includes a pair of podcasts from Brene Brown and Melissa Froehlich on how to handle the exhaustion and how to shift your success mindset, respectively.
Ask a mentor for help. Mentorship doesn’t have to be a lifetime commitment. As Women in Revenue board member Jill Melchionda discusses in a WIR TV episode on the resource page, you can even have “spot mentorships…where people get matched on a particular challenge or topic.”
Check out the resource center and if you need help with any of the steps, help is available in a flash! Taking a page from that last highlight, Women in Revenue’s Flash Mentorship Program allows you to set up a one-time call with a qualified mentor to discuss a specific skill and/or topic, for example, how to beef up your resume, how to set up an informational interview, or how to leverage your network to find or get the inside scoop on job opportunities. Sign up here and be sure to select the “Mentorship” box to get started.
If there is one thing the COVID-19 pandemic showed the world, it’s that while solitude may be enjoyable — and sometimes even necessary — we still need to connect with others. And it’s about a lot more than simply having people to interact with.
Having a good community means being around like-minded individuals who get you. A place where you can bring your genuine self to the table. No need to scale back for fear of being labeled as too much, or too loud, or too outspoken. The point is to feel free to be yourself. While this may sound a bit idealistic, once you find it, it’s pretty empowering. How so? Let’s count the ways.
Benefits of Being Part of a Community
There are several reasons why being a part of a community is beneficial. While individual needs may vary, there are some common denominators across the board:
Sense of Belonging Feeling like you belong within a group of people is essential for good mental health. This is because having a support network can help you feel motivated when things are going well, and less alone when undergoing difficult times. As a result, you feel connected and are better able to manage stress.
Mentorship While some individuals may seem like they’re infinite sources of wisdom, the truth is that everything they’ve learned has been a product of their life experiences — including their relationships with others. These experiences make them invaluable resources for advice, constructive criticism, and sharing of knowledge; all of which is crucial to help them — and you — grow as individuals and as professionals.
Support There are many ways to support one another. This can be done through encouragement to pursue a goal, guidance as we go through new experiences, and maybe even financial — especially at a time of sudden layoffs. As much as we all strive to be independent and self-sufficient, life comes with many surprises. Having a reliable support system is essential to navigate them successfully. For example, you could connect people on LinkedIn to help someone find a new job, or be part of a group that pitches in to assist a friend facing a hardship. Members of a community can also serve as each other’s allies, whether they hear of an opportunity, or to link arms in the quest for social justice.
Access to Resources One of the biggest benefits of having a community is that everyone is good at something. Let’s say you all work in tech. Someone may be well-versed on database management, while someone else’s strong suit may be network security. When people work together, all bases are covered, and everyone benefits.
Professional Growth Having a professional network also helps you extend your reach for your business, as you refer contacts and business to each other. And since these referrals are done by people who know you, the likelihood of prospects being a good fit is greater. At the end of the day, word of mouth is one of the most effective forms of marketing.
How To Find a Community That’s Right For You
While all of these benefits sound ideal, you may be stumped as to how to find the right group of people. It seems simple to look for, say, people within your industry, but it’s imperative to dig deeper. What are non-negotiables for you? Some factors to consider include:
Integrity
True authentic commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion
Experience with innovation
Giving back to the community
Leadership
Accountability
The next step is to narrow down your options by exploring your interests. Are you looking to forge a community around one of your hobbies? Find people with whom you can discuss work woes and accomplishments? If it’s the former, look for groups with common interests, such as running groups or book clubs. If it’s the latter, opt for networking events — whether it’s ones created to amplify women’s voices, offer mentorship, and/or foster diversity.
At Women in Revenue, we recognize the value and power of community, and we proudly support women in revenue-generating roles. Read about what we offer, and browse through our resources and events. You may just have found the kinship you’ve been looking for.
In western civilizations, women’s rights have gone from non-existent to being achieved incrementally thanks to the plights of those who came before us. But knowing this is part of the whitewashed version of history. Let’s talk about Native American History within this context.
Before the Americas were colonized by Europeans, these continents and islands already had many tribes, languages, and cultures. And while these varied from region to region, they all had something in common: Native women always had property rights.1 Women could also be shamans, warriors, and be active in political life.
So, instead of continuing to think of the early days of this part of the world through a romanticized (and inaccurate) lens, let’s take a closer look at what it means to celebrate the native peoples of the Americas — and why November has been designated as Native American Heritage Month.
Origins of Native American Heritage Month
Acknowledgment of the first peoples of this nation started with the efforts of Native American Red Fox James,2 who rode on horseback from state to state in 1914, seeking to create interest in establishing a national holiday commemorating American Natives. The torch was carried on by Seneca archeologist, Dr. Arthur C. Parker,3 who witnessed how the US government stripped Natives of their land and community through legislation.4
Thanks to his advocacy, in 1916, New York declared an American Indian Day. In 1976, Congress designated the last week of November as Native American Awareness Week. And in 1990, President George H.W. Bush designated the entire month of November as National American Indian Heritage Month. This month was chosen since it’s the end of many Native tribes’ harvest season.
Why Celebrate Native American Heritage Month
In an age when politicians are turning back the clock on women’s rights, it becomes even more important to see Natives practices as inspiration in the fight for equity.
Indigenous women had complete control of their lives.5 They lived in cultures where gender biases did not exist. They maintained independence, regardless of marital status. This way of life encouraged suffragists: In 1848, Lucrecia Mott visited Seneca and saw these equal rights and responsibilities. This occurred the same summer that she was denied entry to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London. And it was after these experiences that she participated in the Seneca Falls Convention — the precursor to achieving white women’s right to vote in the US.
Even after European settlers arrived and systemically stripped them of rights, Native American women have continued to thrive and contribute to the richness and advancement of the United States. These contributions have positively impacted many of the fundamental aspects of life:
Technology. Product Designer at Facebook, Pomo Native American Danielle Forward,6 has been a pioneer in interaction design (IxD), which anticipates how a user may interact with a system to provide an optimal user experience. And CEO of the First Nations Technology Council, Denise Williams,7 works to ensure that tech companies and governments provide education and access to Native Tribes.
Food. It’s crucial to acknowledge that Native tribes are responsible for something even more fundamental to humans around the world: About ⅗ of the world’s crops were first cultivated by Natives.8 Corn, beans, chocolate, and tomatoes exist thanks to them — even before they became staples in many European dishes.
Clean energy. It’s not news that the planet needs more sustainable ways of providing energy. Environmental pollution and global warming need to be addressed immediately. And Native tribes are leading the way in implementing wind, water, and solar energy.9 When you remove special interests out of the equation, society at large (and the planet) benefits greatly. This also promotes energy independence at a time when it’s more important than ever.
The more we read about Native American cultures, the more it becomes evident that the country — and the world — owes a lot to them. As such, it then becomes our duty to collectively do better to understand and support them.
You can do your part by reading Native American stories, actively look for ways to support them,10 and being mindful about respect. And if you liked this blog, check out our resources for more information on how we celebrate and foster diversity.
There are 35 countries in the Americas — 33 of them Latin American (and a US jurisdiction, Puerto Rico, that’s also part of the Latinx community). Therefore, it’s hardly surprising that the United States is enriched with a wide array of these cultures: Cuban, Peruvian, and Mexican, just to name a few. While accents, traditions, and contributions span many varieties, it’s undeniable that they’re all an integral part of what makes the United States the melting pot that it is.
While it’s commonplace for all of these cultures to be grouped into one single label (Hispanic), it’s impossible to capture all of the variations with that one word. Some were born here. Others emigrated. The common denominators include the Spanish language, Spanglish, and/or a fierce sense of identity.
As part of Hispanic heritage month, we pay homage to this mosaic by showcasing how it enriches all of us.
Origins of Hispanic heritage month
Hispanic heritage month — celebrated from mid-September through mid-October — has been commemorated in the United States since 1968 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. It starts mid-month because it coincides with the independence days of several Latin American countries.
But before it was recognized nationally, it was first introduced as a bill for Hispanic Heritage Week by California legislators Edward Roybal and Henry Gonzáles, after decades of Latinx activists demanding fair access to education and government services.
Why celebrate Hispanic heritage month?
There are many reasons to celebrate Hispanic heritage. From a superficial level, who’ll say no to great food, drinks, and music? And from a deeper perspective, it reminds us all of the impact of the Hispanic population in the United States:
And let’s not forget the things that add so much to our daily lives:
Technology
If you love your Google Assistant, you’ll want to know about Venezuelan Senior Director of Product Management at Google, Lilian Rincón. Although she didn’t know any English while in elementary school when she first moved to the US, she did excel at math, which led her to her career in computer science. And you can be grateful for safe drinking water thanks to Guatemalan scientist África Flores. As regional coordinator of NASA’s SERVIR program, she helped ensure satellite data to assess the health of water quality.
Healthcare
Antonia Novello grew up with a congenital digestive condition, for which she could not receive adequate treatment, because her family couldn’t afford it. She was able to get surgery at age 18, then decided to become a doctor to ensure that other children, women, and minorities had access to quality care — a cause she championed when she became the first Hispanic U.S Surgeon General. By the same token, Puerto Rican physician Helen Rodríguez Trías was instrumental in abolishing forced sterilization of women on the island. And Panamanian nurse Ildaura Murillo-Rohde founded the National Association of Hispanic Nurses to promote quality care for Latinx communities, as well as help Latinas obtain educational grants.
Inventions
One of the most practical modern devices is the e-reader. They fit everywhere, and make it possible to carry an entire library wherever you go. And the person who invented its first iteration was Spanish teacher Ángela Ruiz Robles, who was seeking to make life easier for her students as they walked from class to class. Like the freedom that birth control pills bring to your life? Be grateful that chemist Luis Miramontes made the first molecule that became one of the first active ingredients in oral contraceptives.
All of these contributions are just the tip of the iceberg – yet they showcase how we all benefit from Hispanic contributions to our country. To celebrate, consider reading books or listening to podcasts about Latinx insights, history, experiences, and pop culture. And if you liked this blog, check out our resource library for more information on how we celebrate diversity across all mediums.
Nearly half of all employed women worked remotely in 2020 because of the COVID 19 pandemic, and many of us still do today.
Working from home offers conveniences like no commuting, the comforts of home, and the ability to unload the dishwasher between meetings. But it brings added stressors, too. Children, pets, home repairs, and countless other to-dos can fill our minds and make it nearly impossible to fully focus on our work, let alone our own mental and physical health.
Yet, we’re told to prioritize self-care as an additional responsibility. Practice mindfulness. Unplug often. Set healthy boundaries. Learn to listen to your body. Put yourself first. Blah blah blah.
Conversations around self-care — or what the World Health Organization (WHO) defines as “individuals, families, and communities promoting and maintaining their own health with or without the support of a health worker” – have never been more common or more discouraging.
Thanks to our own high expectations as well as society’s, we’ve unintentionally created a vicious cycle in an attempt to care for ourselves. We know self-care is important to prevent burn out, yet we feel guilty and selfish if we take the time to practice it.
But what if we have self-care all wrong?
Women In Revenue welcomed Jeanette Bronée, internationally recognized wellbeing expert, author and two-time TEDx Speaker to explore self-care at our last event. You can enjoy her full presentation, Rethinking Self-Care at Work, here. Or, keep reading to learn some valuable self-care nuggets including understanding what self-care really is and what that looks like in a professional setting.
What does self-care actually mean?
Maybe you don’t think of self-care as a weekend pedicure or a much-deserved glass of wine after a long day (If you do, don’t worry: You’re in good company!). Either way, Bronée thinks self-care – and how it affects us in the workplace – is far more about “care” than “self,” and that focusing too much on self is a significant part of the problem. She challenges us to push our ideas of self-care to the next level.
“Self-care is not what we do after work to recover,” Bronée says. “It’s how we work better so we don’t have to recover. Wellbeing is not the goal. It’s how we achieve our goals.”
Jeanette Broneé: TEDx Speaker, Cultural Strategist, Wellbeing Expert, and Author
So how do we shift from a recovery mindset to a prevention one? Let’s find out.
3 ways to rethink self-care at work
Our view of and approach to self-care shifts when we understand that people are advantages to harness instead of problems to solve. Jeanette offers many solutions to shift your point of view on self-care from “self” focused to “care” focused.
Time is money. And introspection takes time many of us think we can’t afford to take (Hint: We’re wrong!). Bronée encourages us to see this time as an investment in our own self-care and to hold space for who we are as people beyond how we can professionally grow and change.
“Imagine if we could pause more,” she says. “What change can happen? That small pause where we can exhale for just a moment and allow a nervous system to calm down lets us really ask, ‘Hey, how am I doing in there, and what do I need so that I can be at my best right now?’ ”
Jeanette Broneé: TEDx Speaker, Cultural Strategist, Wellbeing Expert, and Author
[2] Understand that self-care is bigger than you
Being honest, curious, and kind – especially with yourself – gives us the awareness to understand that if we aren’t aware of our own internal challenges, others might not be either.
When we change how we think about self-care, we don’t just do it for ourselves. Instead, it also helps us care for, connect with, collaborate, and communicate with others. In Bronée’s words, “we self-care together,” and we’re all the better for it.
[3] Develop healthier behaviors
Acknowledging challenging feelings and understanding that you’re not alone in feeling them is useless without developing healthy behaviors to help you combat and correct the emotions themselves. Healthy self-care takes action. So, here are two restorative steps you can take to live and work healthier for yourself and others.
Take 3-5 minute power pauses: Short pauses between meetings to stretch, get a snack or a glass of water, and take a breath lets your nervous system calm down. We’re more likely to make mistakes or miss out on important information when we’re unfocused: Taking pauses and calming down lets ou focus on your next task.
Adopt an “AAA” mindset: There are lots of stressors beyond our control. However, we can control how we respond to them. Bronée lays out a three-step process: Acknowledge how you’re feeling, accept those feelings as valid, and reclaim your agency.
She says, “when we pause for a moment, we’re aware of how we feel, we acknowledge the circumstances for what it is and accept what it is. Now, we can then become more adaptable, agile and healthy in our workplaces.”
This AAA mindset is a valuable tool in your emotional toolkit, and can help you see problems, and people, in a more positive light.
Self-care is just the beginning
We’ve provided a quick overview of Jeanette’s tips to adopt a healthy view of self-care and a self-care mindset in a professional setting. However, she has much more wisdom to offer.
Or check out our resource library of articles, eBooks, webinars, and reports to learn more tips to help you succeed as a woman in a revenue-generating role.
The United States loves to wax poetic about our freedoms. It’s allegedly what the USA stands for. We even have holidays to commemorate underrepresented groups gaining equal access to some of these freedoms — such as Women’s Equality Day, celebrated on August 26. Suggested in 1971 by Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY) and created in 1973, it recognizes the date the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.
Before we raise a glass to cheer for the freedom to vote and other gains made by women in the 20th and 21st centuries, let’s embark on a brief history lesson.
A Brief History of the 19th Amendment
While commemorating women’s suffrage via Women’s Equality Day sounds noble in theory, in practice it extols a right that was conferred upon white American women at that time, instead of upon every female citizen.
The fight for women’s rights began in the 1820s, but didn’t gain traction until almost 50 years later. In 1848, human rights activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott visited London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention, but were denied entry as women weren’t allowed to participate. Outraged, they returned to New York and organized a meeting to discuss women’s rights. Three hundred women attended the two-day event, which came to be known as the Seneca Falls Convention.
At this event, they drafted the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled after the Declaration of Independence. Grievances included the denial of voting rights, property rights, and wages; taxation without representation for women who did own property; and husbands having the right to deprive wives of liberty and keep children after divorce.
The suffrage fight was disrupted during the Civil War. After, the Reconstruction led to other rights being enshrined, including the 13th amendment to abolish slavery, the 14th amendment granting citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. (thus extending it to formerly enslaved people), and the 15th amendment granting Black men the right to vote. This fueled the demands for the same rights to be extended to women.
In 1869, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Speaking at her trial for illegally voting in 1872, Anthony decried:
“It is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them by this democratic-republican government — the ballot.”
Forty-one years of civil disobedience, rallies, protests and activism followed until women were finally granted the right to vote in 1920.
Yet, the Right to Vote Was Mostly Granted to White Women
Due to many other discriminatory laws, the 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments didn’t end voting disenfranchisement
The 14th amendment right of citizenship wasn’t extended to Native Americans until the Indian Citizenship Act, signed into law in 1924.
Poll taxes, established by states to prevent Black citizens from voting, weren’t outlawed federally until 1964 via the 24th amendment. It took two more years to outlaw state and local election poll taxes, via the Supreme Court decision Harper vs. Virginia Board of Elections.
Grandfather clauses allowed white citizens to vote if their predecessors had been able to vote prior to the Civil War. This enabled them to bypass laws that disenfranchised Black voters.
Voting Disenfranchisement Continues Today
According to the Voting Rights Lab, in 2022 six states have introduced voting legislation that may restrict voting access. More common are election administration interference laws. In 2021, 18 states enacted 26 election interference bills. In 2022, 20 states have enacted 26 such bills and more than 100 bills remain active. These laws can threaten voting access, inject partisanship into the election process, and intimidate voting administrators.
The Center for American Progress tracked disenfranchisement actions taken in the 2018 midterm election that included closing poll sites in “strategic” locations, voter purges, misinformation about polling locations and voting requirements, intimidation and harassment at the polls, malfunctioning equipment, and gerrymandering.
Women’s Equality Day is a good opportunity to both look at how far we’ve come and to consider how far we still need to go. Here’s how you can get involved in defending the rights of all women and disenfranchised voters:
Register to vote, encourage your friends and family to do so as well, and offer a ride to the polls for those who need assistance.
Know your rights, such as where to register, how to find your polling place, what to bring, and how to vote early and/or by mail. You can also learn about rights for people with disabilities or who may not speak English well, and what to do if you face voter intimidation or harassment. Visit the ACLU voting rights page (also en español) to learn more
While American women today have achieved greater rights and representation within our workplaces, politics, and the voting booth than ever before, the battle is far from over. And it’s far past due that society in general recognizes that the feminist movement has largely advanced the rights of white women and left many behind. Only by acknowledging this reality can we begin to fix it.
Advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion are ongoing efforts, but June offers an opportunity to celebrate and recognize the progress that the Black and LGBTQIA+ [1] communities have made to transform our country into a more just and equitable place for all Americans.
While Pride Month will be celebrated throughout the entire month, Juneteenth will be commemorated on June 19th. The two holidays present an opportunity for us to reflect on how far we’ve come — but also on how far we still must go to end inequality based on race, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Why We Celebrate Juneteenth and Pride Month Pride Month commemorates the 1968 Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, which many historians mark as the beginning of the modern lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement. Throughout the month of June, Pride events take place across the country — from festive parades to film festivals and advocacy events — which allow the public to learn more about the community’s unique societal contributions and the challenges it still faces in achieving equal rights.
Like Pride Month, Juneteenth commemorates both the hardships and the triumphs of another marginalized community. The first federal holiday established since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983, Juneteenth marks the day — June 19, 1865 — that Union Troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved African-Americans living in Texas, the last state of the Confederacy with institutional slavery, were officially free.
In the United States, both Black and LGBTQIA+ communities have battled for and won hard-earned freedoms. Black men and women have survived amid slavery, Reconstruction, a “separate, but equal” education system, Jim Crow laws, redlining, and workplace discrimination to ascend to the highest levels of executive and national leadership.
The LGBTQIA+ community also has made strides, from the official end of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in 2011 and the passage of marriage equality in 2015. Today, more members of the community have been elected to public office than ever before, including Dr. Rachel Levine and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg who are both openly serving at the highest levels of government. LGBTQIA+ men and women lead Fortune 500 companies, including Beth Ford of Land O’Lakes, the first openly gay female CEO of an American Fortune 500 company. We also see more LGBTQIA+ representation in the media, bringing the stories of the community front and center and into the homes of millions of people, which hopefully is fostering more understanding and compassion.
But even with these gains, there’s still much more work to do, especially when it comes to achieving workplace equality for Black and LGBTQIA+ members of our community.
Workplace Challenges for Black & LGBTQIA People We know that women in the workplace face an array of challenges when it comes to parity, pay equity, and harassment.
However, our recent study, “The Great Renegotiation,” found that women of color are often more impacted by harassment. A quarter of Black women listed workplace sexual harassment as a top challenge, compared to 21% of respondents overall. Not surprisingly, the same women whom harassment affects most also face the biggest pay gaps: Black women make just 64 cents of every dollar a white man makes, despite having some of the highest labor force participation rates. Separate research has found that the unemployment gap between white and Black workers has remained steady even as the pandemic wanes, with Black unemployment remaining higher even as both figures hit historic lows.
The LGBTQIA+ community faces its own challenges with workplace discrimination and harassment. Recent research indicates that discrimination against LGBTQIA+ workers continues to be pervasive. Just over 45% of LGBT workers in one survey said they’d experienced unfair treatment at work, including being fired, turned down for a job, or harassed because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBT workers experienced this treatment whether or not they were out, but they were five times as likely to experience discrimination if they were open about their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The facts are even more illuminating when we look at discrimination from an intersectional lens. The same study noted above found that LGBT workers of color were more likely to report they’d experienced workplace discrimination in the previous year compared to the entire LGBT community overall. They also were more likely to say they’d been verbally harassed at work because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Additionally, LGBT workers of color were more likely than their white counterparts to say they’d changed their behaviors, voice, or mannerisms at work to avoid harassment and discrimination.
It’s clear our country must make significant progress to change the hearts, minds, and actions of people everywhere but particularly in the workplace. Everyone should have the chance to excel personally and professionally regardless of race, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Every person should be able to live out their full identity and have a safe space to express themselves.
At WIR, our goal is to create an inclusive space and address opportunity equity issues for women across all identities and backgrounds. We know tackling these challenges will take a collective effort, but if we all do our part in our corner of the world, one day, we’ll be able to commemorate both Juneteenth and Pride Month with only triumphs to celebrate.
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Check out our 5th annual State of Women in Revenue Report! Bridging the Salary Gap: The Paradox of Successful but Unequal (June 2023)
