How to succeed as Women Executive in the workplace

How to succeed as Women Executive in the workplace? I asked my question many times during my 25 years as Financial Executive. We bring unique perspective and set of skills to the table. Despite this, we face challenges that their male counterparts do not.

In this blog, I will share my personal experience and my learnings.

Gender bias and discrimination

We face skepticism about our abilities. Personally faced a couple of experiences where all my colleagues were male executives. In a nutshell I would describe the experience as “Rough”. I faced discrimination not only because of my skin color, my gender but also my “accent”.

The way I would explain it best, is my male colleagues were condescending which is something I found hard to understand. How my skin tone or latin american accent had anything to do with my abilities to understand the company goals or impact my performance in any way??

I had one of my performance reviews were it was highlighted to me I excelled on all the projects BUT I had an important “area of opportunity”, which was to my surprise to improve my accent. During the conversation it was pointed out that the executive team had a hard time adapting to it. So my possibilities for advancing my career were tied to my ability to change something not under my control.

In cases like this if you are faced with a similar situation I would recommend to:

• Believe in yourself!!!
• Know for a fact that your abilities do not change because someone fails to see it
• If you are in the wrong place, it’s ok to move on.
• You should never consider yourself as a failure for someone else’s inability to see your worth.
• Lastly, be humble there’s always an opportunity for you to grow and improve

Lack of mentorship and sponsorship

Women executives may struggle to find mentors and sponsors who can help them navigate their careers. I would say this is true mostly because most executives at the higher levels are male. While they can share with you their perspective on how to navigate your career in a man’s world, they usually do not agree or understand our struggles.

I had only one female mentor in my career, she was golden. She knew the struggles and developed a great ability to network. Which has always been one of my major areas of weakness, I just don’t like it.

If you are anything like me I would recommend:

• Just get over it! That’s how the wheel moves, you need someone to advocate for your work and help you build your career.
• Find women’s groups inside or outside, there are many!
• Also never discount the guidance and counsel of male leaders, they will be able to show you the path an a man’s world!

Work-life balance

Oh boy! Did I struggle with this! My normal status was feeling guilty: either for not staying at work either going beyond the call of duty or feeling guilty when I did stay because I felt like an awful mother and wife.

We should not have to choose! Depending on the field you are in, I think the only way (unfortunately!) is to prioritize your career to advance, it’s just the reality!

What I did over the years is a compromise on both my career and my family. I decided that I was going to spend no more than 9 hours at work and I would never miss any of my son’s special moments. That meant a sacrifice, of course it took me longer to grow my career but I did.

Pay gap

Hate to talk about this but it is true! We do not have same compensation period. Why? Because we don’t think we deserve it and the market supports that fact. I think we need to learn to fight for ourselves. Sometimes women tend to think “They will pay me what they think I am worth” and settle. That’s not quite true, in my case it was a disguise for fear. Fear of not being consider and for what others would think I am. Questions in my head would be, would they think money is my only driver? I don’t want that so I will take what they think I am worth.

Unless we start being more courageous and actually get the companies on board to make a difference this may continue to be a challenge for another decade or more.

You can see more of my story here.