Trading Glass Slippers for Glass Ceilings: Someday Our Recompence Will Come

Let’s talk about what her royal majesty, Mary Tyler Moore did not tell us about being strong independent working women: When she threw her blue and black striped beret into the air on the corner of Nicollet Mall and 7^th Street, the director called “cut” before we could see her showered in the shards of glass that fell from the glass ceiling she promised us we could break.

She may have made it after all but, at what cost? The metaphorical collateral damage of raining glass leaves no one, much less the women burglarizing their own futures, unscathed.

In truth, when our foremothers fought for the right to wear pants and join the workforce, they did *not* sign up for low-rise jeans or glass ceilings. Have you ever visualized what breaking a glass ceiling would look like? It’s not pretty; in fact, it’s arguably the second greatest violence modern women face, the first being the popularity of low rise Juicy Couture matching jumpsuits (and any picture that exists thereof), which Teen Vogue and Britney Spears convinced us we wanted to wear in the early 2000’s. Needing to crash through a ceiling of glass to succeed is the injury to the insult of women’s fickle fashion trends.

While we’ve successfully waged wardrobe war and earned the right to pair our high-rise mom jeans with flowy tops and French tucks, we’ve collectively glamorized what we’ve affectionately coined ‘the grind.’ We celebrate when the grind results in women we love breaking and entering to gain access to the corner office they’ve actually earned. And we ask them to be grateful, say thank you, and be very demure, very mindful.

I want you to imagine a world where women get paid for their skills and not for committing metaphorical felonies. Now, imagine that woman is black or brown, transgender, or nonbinary. It’s not a fairytale but it might only happen in a land far, far away- unless we can affect the changes necessary to make it come true.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?

Despite the existence of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws and their companion policies over the past 60 years, the wage gap persists, evidencing the imperfect and subjective application of the promulgated rules. According to U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), a 2021 study uncovered that women, overall, earned about $.82 for every dollar men earned; this differential increased for Hispanic or Latina women who earned $.58 for every dollar White men earned, and Black women who earned $.63 for every dollar White men earned. While this gap is highest amongst women with less than a high school education, female managers fall below the overall average, making only $.77 for every dollar male managers made.

A tale as old as time

It’s no secret that women’s work has been devalued across cultures for centuries. While many overt measures of discrimination have become either illegal or obsolete via the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that leaves room for the proliferation of covert measures of oppression, which are more difficult to identify and root out. Concepts like pay secrecy, while running afoul to the protections of the National Labor Relations Act, persist in U.S. workplaces and trip up attempts towards parity. Discussing pay is deemed taboo and carries with it the threat of creating workplace drama, a trope from which women try to keep their distance.

Indeed, we know that pay secrecy affects wage inequality because the pay gap decreases in industries where wages are promulgated publicly. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the wage gap decreases $.03-$.07 for women who work in government and nonprofit sectors.

Unsurprisingly, women make up a larger percentage of the government and nonprofit employee census. However, professional women in the government workforce face a lose-lose proposition as government and nonprofit pay does not compare to what they could earn for the same work in the private sector. This leaves women facing a difficult choice: pursue potentially higher earnings in the private sector, where they may face significant gender pay gaps, or opt for government employment with potentially better pay equity but lower overall earnings, risking a 10-29% pay cut compared to their private sector peers. Either way, they’re potentially losing 20% of every dollar their male relative or friends makes- and the only thing professional women want 20% off on is our student loans and the sales rack at Kohls.

You want thingamabobs? I got twenty. But who cares? No big deal, I earned more.

When women manage to escape the shroud of secrecy surrounding their pay, tone policing and gaslighting enter the chat to maintain the status quo. These tactics effectively silence women, especially women of color, who battle constantly with the pejorative stereotype of ‘the angry black woman’ and prevent them from demanding fair pay.

Mita Mallick, head of inclusion, equity and impact at Carta and cohost of Brown Table Talk revealed the following reality in Lola Bakare’s 2022 article How Black Women Can Navigate Pay-Gap Gaslighting: Black women seeking pay equality are often confronted with dismissive and insulting questions, such as “Why are you asking for more money?”, and “Don’t we pay you enough?”, and “You should be grateful!” This is a calculated effort to discourage women from asserting their worth, which results in the ever-increasing gap between Black women and their White male counterparts.

Visualizing this gap as pennies (or dimes) on a dollar is not sufficient. Each year the American Association of University Women (AAUW) calculates how far into the year women of different racial and ethnic backgrounds must work in order to earn the same amount a White man earned the year before and marks that day. For Black women, these dates range between July-September of the next year, meaning an equally qualified Black women must work at least 1.5 times as long as a White man to earn the same amount of money. Compounded over a 40-year career, that’s 20 extra years of work. Put into actual dollars, it amounts to Black women losing an estimated one million dollars in wages.

A whole new world

The complexities of the human condition, particularly the biological burdens of childbearing and rearing, inevitably intersect with women’s careers. This unavoidable reality presents unique challenges, which can be better understood through a relevant narrative. Gather ‘round and take a seat on the magic carpet, it’s story time.

As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be two things: a mother and lawyer. Imagine my delight welcoming my third child into this world during my final semester of law school, a decision made to avoid needing to take maternity leave as a young associate attorney- a related story for another time.

While I may have forgotten my prenatal vitamins more often the third time around and ingested more heartburn medicine than strictly necessary, I remained diligent in my prenatal care otherwise. Part of that commitment included a 20-week ultrasound to ensure baby’s growth and anatomy were on track. When I mentioned to my (extremely supportive and loving) husband that my ultrasound was scheduled for a weekday—because that’s when doctor’s offices operate, or whatever— his response was….. wait for it: “I’m a salaried employee- I don’t have time off available to go to doctor’s appointments.”

Setting aside his likely inaccurate understanding of his own workplace benefits, his instinct reflects a broader systemic problem. The messaging he received in his male-dominated workplace, by overt directives or covert observation, was that prenatal care was not men’s work, it was women’s work.

What followed was a delightful (for me), civil (for probably no one) and deeply memorable conversation between a pregnant near-lawyer and a man who, a decade later, is still hearing—and now reading—about his choice of words. And yes, fear not, he made it to the appointment and lived to (never live down) the telling of the tale.

The purpose of this anecdote is not solely to memorialize an epically mature and rational conversation I had once upon a time. Rather, this anecdote aims to expose the insidious ways gendered expectations infiltrate professional environments. Pregnant women do not have the option to not attend monthly (and sometimes weekly) appointments; failing to attend prenatal visits is ill-advised at best, neglectful at worst. Meanwhile, fathers are excused from the same, left to play the loyal company soldier, not making waves or requesting special treatment. This double standard, in light of the undeniable biological reality that reproduction requires both partners, reveals a fundamental flaw in our understanding of workplace equity.

However, deliverance from workplace inequality does not come with delivery. In the family unit, women are disproportionately burdened with caregiving responsibilities, which results in their careers being interrupted or dismissed five to eight times more often than men. While this choice is complex, the gender pay gap plays a decisive role. In situations where childcare costs outweigh one partner’s income, economic logic dictates that the lower earner, statistically the woman, leaves her work to become the primary caregiver. This decision is often coldly economic: the woman, earning less, sacrifices her career. Period. This isn’t a choice so much as an economic mandate.

This forced exit from the workforce becomes a weapon in the fight for equal pay. Employers weaponize “lost experience” to justify suppressing women’s salaries, effectively trapping them in a cycle of lower earnings. This explains why women’s earnings plateau in the middle of their careers while men’s continue to ascend, a blatant example of systemic inequity.

A dream is a wish your heart makes

The dreams MTM sold us are, at best, a whispered wish that will need to travel centuries to come true. The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) projects that “it will take until 2158 (and 2227 for Black women) to achieve full gender parity.” That’s nearly 200 (and more than 250 for Black women) years after the promulgation of the laws meant to effectuate the equality imagined by our grandmothers. To put that into perspective, 200 years ago, our foremothers travelled by steam engine (probably escorted by a chaperone) and sent messages in morse code via telegraph. Today we can order a self-driving taxi on a cell phone that provides us access to a growing number of free applications for communicating with other people worldwide.

All of that to say, 200 years is a looooong time.

Given the current trajectory, today’s working women can only dream that their four-times great-granddaughters might achieve the equality that so many women demanded during the 1968 Miss America protests when they tossed their bras into the Freedom Garbage Can. To put it mildly, the fight for those fundamental rights remains unfinished.

Almost there

One thing we can all agree on: Tiana is the best Disney Princess. Instead of relying on her childhood wish upon a star, she worked two jobs and perfected her beignet recipe. But if the ingenuity of women made the dreams come true, we’d all be queens of our own castles. Instead, we’re going to need some help from Prince Naveen, Ray, and the whole Bayou. To that end, here are four things employers and male allies can do to make our pay parity fairy tales come true:

• Conduct Pay Equity Audits: Regularly examine salary data to identify any disparities between men and women performing similar work. Do this blindly if possible and use metrics established by the industry, not by your own past practice. Take immediate action to rectify any unjustified pay differences. If you’re worried that you’re going to inflate the market, you already are- you’re just doing it selectively.
• Promote Pay Transparency: Include salary information in job postings and internal communications and encourage employees to discuss their compensation without fear of reprisal. This transparency promotes fairness and reduces the potential for bias. If you worry that you might have to answer for performance or merit-based pay discrepancies, you’re not having enough honest conversations about performance disparities- it’s a management problem that you’re entirely capable of fixing. Your company will be better for it. Avoid using past salary information as a basis for negotiation. This practice not only fails to reflect a candidate’s true value to your company but also risks perpetuating discriminatory pay practices from previous employers. Just because other companies and managers engage in this behavior doesn’t make it right. Adopting a more ethical and fair negotiation strategy deepens the talent pool, instead of driving qualified candidates away.
• Support and Support-alike: Provide the same caregiver considerations to men and women alike. Discuss this openly with your employees and/or male coworkers so that there’s no doubt regarding their perception of their own ability to take leave for caregiving. Provide options such as remote work, flextime, and compressed workweeks. Do not create unnecessary hurdles for men to support their partners with their shared childbearing, childrearing, or other family care responsibilities.
• Ask Marginalized Groups: The fundamental flaw in the ‘princess rescue’ narrative is the assumption that we know what is best for others better than they know themselves. Did Rapunzel want to be rescued by someone climbing her hair? Doubtful. Similarly, addressing pay inequity requires listening to those directly affected. Their insights not only generate innovative solutions but also foster a critical sense of belonging, which is essential for workplace satisfaction. And for goodness sake, do not tell them to calm down if they feel strongly. Your organization’s strength is directly tied to its ability to listen to and process critical feedback.

The stark reality of gender pay inequality is far from a fairy tale, but as Tiana said, “fairy tales can come true, you gotta make ’em happen, it all depends on you.” This isn’t about waiting for a magical solution to materialize from the law or its flawed application. It’s about taking action. We must collectively dismantle the systems that perpetuate this inequity from inside the house by challenging biased practices, and demanding equal pay for equal work. If we “work hard, each and everyday,” we can create a world where women’s contributions are valued, and their bank and retirement accounts reflect that truth. And unless and until then: “Look out boys, [we’re] coming through.”