August 20, 2024

901: Why Women Need to Take up Space at Work

23 minutes

Today is the day! The first episode of Shameless Leadership is LIVE. I couldn’t be more excited!

In this first episode of Shameless Leadership, I dig into one of my very favorite topics: why women need to take up more space. This is a topic I have been passionate about for a long time now. In fact, you’ve likely heard me rant about it before. It feels like the perfect topic to kick off this new show for women leaders.

Recent data overwhelmingly tells us that the number of women in leadership still doesn’t come close to representing the number of women in society.

According to Leanin.org’s Women in the Workplace 2023 Report:

Women represent roughly 1 in 4 C-suite leaders, and women of color just 1 in 16.

Progress for early-career Black women remains the furthest out of reach. In 2023, for every 100 men promoted from entry-level to manager positions, only 54 Black women were promoted. After rising to 82 in 2020 and 96 in 2021, the promotion rate for Black women to manager has fallen back to lower than it was in 2019.

Because of our “broken rung” system (described in this episode), in a typical company, men end up holding 60% of manager-level positions, while women hold just 40%. As a result, there are fewer women to be promoted to director, and the number of women decreases at every subsequent level.

The impact of “microaggressions” experienced at work by women or any other marginalized group are anything but “micro”. In fact, they have a macro effect long term.

If women are to occupy more leadership roles, we must start intentionally taking up more space. We must demand more space. In this episode, I share how women are socialized to shrink our bodies, hold back our ideas and opinions, and play small in all aspects of our lives. From there, I dig into specific steps you can take to start taking up more space and stop accepting without question the leadership, thoughts, and opinions of those who have more power than you (ie: men).

If you’re ready to take up more space, use your voice in new ways, and take a seat at any table, this episode is for you.

Links Mentioned:

Join my September Influence & Ignite Retreat for small business owners: shamelessmom.com/retreat

Article: Leanin.org Women in the Workplace 2023

Learn about my speaking, training, and coaching: saradean.com

Connect with me on LinkedIn: saradean.com/linkedin

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By Sara Dean

4.7

794794 ratings