The International Society of Female Professionals has always sought to inform, engage, and support women in the workplace. From the professional entrepreneur to management and from manufacturing, retail, hospitality, and beyond, we support women’s quest to have the same opportunities to grow their careers as any other demographic.
It helps that more and more women are networking and supporting each other with personal and professional recognition. But, the International Society of Female Professionals recognizes the many challenges women must overcome in their quest for equal pay and equal respect for equal roles.
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3 Workplace Challenges Facing Women
Underrepresentation in leadership
According to one recent McKinsey report:
“Despite modest gains in representation over the last eight years, women—and especially women of color—are still dramatically underrepresented in corporate America. And this is especially true in senior leadership: only one in four C-suite leaders is a woman, and only one in 20 is a woman of color.”
This lack of inclusion at the senior and C-Suite levels clearly demonstrates that the broken rung on the ladder is still not fixed! The International Society of Female Professionals has witnessed, within their own ranks, several executive-level females choose voluntary attrition because they see no fruit from their hard labor.
Many of these professional women choose to start their own businesses, partner with non-profits, or join smaller companies for less pay to fulfill their executive leadership abilities.
Microaggressions and toxic environments
Workplace belittling, lack of managerial respect, and many verbal – but subtle microinsults are not new to women in the workplace. But, it is the subtle invalidation that may be more modern but just as toxic as the International Society of Female Professionals believes.
Workplace invalidation includes having your experience, thoughts, or feelings questioned or nullified, which then leads to an exclusionary type of environment that is not easy to detect or file a grievance against. When women form alliances and bring a toxic work environment to the attention of HR, only then will we defeat microaggressions and microinsults that hinder our ability to entirely do our job.
Lack of flexibility in the workplace
There is no getting around it. Women are still the primary caregivers in a household, and this is not something we need to be apologetic about. It took a global pandemic for companies to realize that flexible scheduling and remote work were not only beneficial to employees but could also be profitable to employers.
The International Society of Female Professionals would like to see a continuation of this type of flexibility in the workplace to support working families, both men and women.
Remote work helps the environment because of the reduced greenhouse gas emissions from vehicular travel, it promotes a better work-life balance which can lead to happier and more productive employees, and it allows women to make better choices for supporting their families, both financially and emotionally.
In the end, it is diversity, equity, and inclusion that can overcome the challenges facing women in the workplace, according to The International Society of Female Professionals.
