Here's how we can regain momentum on the push for gender equity, according to experts on LinkedIn

By Josh M. Carney

For women in business, the ladder is still broken. Just 38% of leadership roles in the U.S. are occupied by women, according to new LinkedIn data — a 2% rise since 2016. And while women climb at the same rate as men early in their career, things start to go awry at the manager level.

Tied in part to this problem of advancement, women's pay continues to be stuck. Women earn an average of 82% of what their male counterparts make, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of median hourly earnings for both full-time and part-time workers. That's a 2% increase since 2002.

On this International Women’s Day, LinkedIn spoke with Top Voices who are sharing what it will take to create more equitable access to opportunity at every level of the workforce. They highlight the need to support career starters, open doors for women who are looking to upskill into technical positions (as the US Department of Labor has pointed out, women tend to be overrepresented in lower-paying occupations), and invest in resources that will help change the culture of care.

Here are some of their takeaways — share your own in the comments below or in a post using #iwd2023.

A ‘whiteboard moment’ for pay equity

The World Economic Forum says it will take another 132 years to reach full pay parity. That’s not acceptable, says Shelley Zalis, the founder and CEO of The Female Quotient: “We created the internet in 25 years ... We had a pandemic and created a vaccine in one year. How hard is it to close the pay gap?” 

She believes we’re at a “flipping point,” where organizations can return to pre-pandemic norms that “were written over a hundred years ago by men, for men, when women just weren't in the workplace” or take bold action. “We have a whiteboard moment,” she says. “It’s time for leaders that are brave enough to step up and take the lead.” 

What will closing the pay gap take? Zalis suggests looking at the incoming class of workers and establishing equal pay for equal work at the entry level. “They have no salary history,” and by establishing a level entry point, companies can “go forward and create new policies” as female employees move up in an organization.

It sounds straightforward, but research from the National Association of Colleges and Employers shows that the gender pay gap for entry-level positions is 18.4%, with entry-level women earning an average annual salary of $52,266 compared to entry-level men's $64,022.

Building on a commitment to pay equity, facilitating a culture in which there are equitable opportunities for advancement is vital — especially as the gap only widens as women move up the chain. According to a report by The Female Quotient, 31% of working women are considering leaving their jobs in the next six months — and one of the top reasons cited was a lack of career growth prospects. 

Sponsorship opportunities, in which executives coach aspiring leaders, are one way to create those opportunities. But they’re largely top-down programs that can be “filled with a lot of bias because we always pull people up that look like us, sound like us or act like us,” Zalis says. Instead, she believes “proximity-ship,” in which executives set up office hours available to any mid-level managers, can be an effective way to invest in the next generation of leaders.

👉 Check out the “Success Strategies for Women in Workplace” LinkedIn Learning course to see how you can support women on the path to leadership roles (free until 3/31).

Recognizing bias is key for building more equitable pipelines

As Zalis says, closing gender gaps starts with investing in career starters. Yet women entering the workforce still have to navigate entrenched biases about how they’re perceived. A recent study found that women receive higher performance ratings than male employees on average — but receive 8.3% lower ratings for "potential" than men, resulting in female employees being 14% less likely to receive a promotion compared to their male colleagues.

“There are real systemic issues in terms of our gender stereotypes and the expectations around how people of specific genders should behave and what’s allowed and what’s not,” says Amy Gallo, an author and co-host of Harvard Business Review’s “Women at Work” podcast.

The data indeed shows a "broken rung" in the first step up the ladder to a leadership role. Only 87 women for every 100 men are promoted from entry-level to manager positions, according to a recent McKinsey report. One of the ways that companies can address that is through the performance review process, Gallo notes. Educating and training managers about gender biases and the concept of the “broken rung” is vital, she says.

For female career starters themselves, Gallo recommends being an effective self advocate by extending your network internally with potential mentors and learning from senior colleagues — as well as finding ways to be more visible. Asking a thoughtful question in a meeting, offering to present to senior teams, working on a group project and raising your hand to be the face of new opportunities are all effective ways to position oneself for future growth.

There needs to be a balance between what's the responsibility of career starters and what has to be done at the systemic organizational level, though, Gallo says. She often hears from senior women on her podcast who say they’re inundated by mentoring requests because they’re one of few women who’ve reached a particular level. Men have an important role to play, too, she says, by being allies for female colleagues and dedicating their time to mentor female career starters.

The best managers realize that building an equitable pipeline requires consistent work and having clear conversations with employees about how they can reach their goals, Gallo says. That regular communication combined with a nuanced understanding of how potential biases can show up helps ensure that evaluations are more equitable. “Oftentimes we think of equity as a goal, but it’s really a process.”

👉 Check out the “Speaking Up for Yourself and Underrepresented Groups” LinkedIn Learning course to hear about best practices for being an effective advocate (free until 3/31).

Flexible work can help change the culture of care

As women move up within an organization, however, gender bias can become a pervasive hurdle as they straddle responsibilities at work and home. Obligations like child care, elder care and household work “still fall predominantly on women's shoulders, even though many men have stepped up their contributions from the norms of prior generations,” reports LinkedIn’s George Anders. Just recently, several of the world’s most powerful women have called it quits — hinting at burnout and stepping away to spend time with their family — unwinding progress towards increased female representation in leadership roles. 

Reshma Saujani, the founder and CEO of Moms First, believes “the opportunity is now” to solve some of the structural barriers that have limited the career growth of women. For one, “we have to start talking about childcare as an economic issue and not a personal one,” she says.

Parents still face steep costs for child care, often pushing women to assume key caregiving responsibilities. It's crucial to ensure that paid leave is gender neutral, Saujani notes: “We have to change the culture of care, and remove the fact that we expect women to be doing the caregiving work.”

Flexible work models can help caregivers who are returning to the workforce optimize their schedule and alleviate costs. Saujani believes that companies that have adopted greater flexibility “are actually benefiting from getting back talent, because ... workers are saying ‘I need flexibility.’”

But again, we need to be aware of biases that can show up, Saujani says. Female caregivers who return to the workforce and take advantage of hybrid options are often seen as “not committed to their job or somehow less valuable as a worker," she notes. For companies offering these options, it’s key to make sure that working parents are not being penalized for taking advantage of that support.

👉 Check out the “Planning Your Family Leave and Return” LinkedIn Learning course to explore strategies for returning to work as a caregiver (free until 3/31).

Gender representation on technical teams leads to more equitable tools

When biases and gaps exist, pivotal decisions can be acted on in a vacuum, which is especially problematic when it comes to technologies like generative AI and machine learning that have the potential to reshape work across industries. In a male-dominated tech workforce — in which women make up only 22% of AI professionals globally — gender disparities can lead to biases within these tools.

“If you have a group of people that’s creating this AI technology and you don’t have a woman on the team, I think it’s pretty obvious that there's bias in the product,” says Stephanie Espy, founder and CEO of MathSP. The more diverse technical teams are, “the better representation you have to make sure that you can limit the amount of bias that exists in the tool.”

Upskilling more professionals can help bridge gaps in representation across tech fields. “Whether you have a technical background or not, continuous training is critical for everybody,” Espy says. Companies need to create a culture in which they "walk alongside their employees" and are welcoming of those who want to transition from a non-technical role into a technical one.

And having representative teams helps ensure that those building powerful tools fundamentally understand the groups they're targeting. “If you’re creating a tool that’s going to help a pregnant African American woman,” Espy says, “then you need to make sure that you have been in the room with hundreds of pregnant African American women and you know what their challenges are.” Making sure that women are a part of the process from ideation through creation will help prevent against bias and "only make your product better and more useful," she says.

👉 Check out the “Women Transforming Tech: Breaking Bias” LinkedIn Learning course to hear about ways of increasing gender representation across the tech industry (free until 3/31).

About this article

This article features experts from LinkedIn's Top Voices program covering gender equity. Top Voices is an invitation-only program featuring a global group of experts on LinkedIn covering a range of topics across the professional world, helping members uncover valuable knowledge relevant to them. You can learn more here.

Who is eligible to be a Top Voice

LinkedIn members who meet high trust standards, are consistently active on the platform and share valuable expertise are eligible to be a Top Voice, with the exception of LinkedIn and Microsoft employees, members who have violated LinkedIn’s User Agreement — including our Professional Community Policies — or individuals currently running in a political election for an executive, legislative or judicial position.

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