Episode 53: A technical problem

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December 1, 2014

"It's not just about women not feeling engineering is their thing...it's about the culture of the place that makes people not want to be there even when they have the skills." - Hannah Kuchler

"The team I'm on, we have a fair number of women programmers...but even then I've had the experience of I say something, and it's just not believed until it's repeated by a guy."    
- Talia Fukuroe

21 minutes.

This has been a big year for stories about women in tech, ranging from depressing tales of sexual harassment at startups to controversy over egg freezing and advice from a prominent CEO on *not* asking for a raise. The spotlight is shining on women in technology far more strongly than when I first covered this topic on the podcast in 2012. Hannah Kuchler

In this episode we focus on Silicon Valley, the tech capital of the world. My first guest is Financial Times reporter Hannah Kuchler. She says women making their way in the heavily male tech space face obstacles large and small - and not all of them are discussed publicly for fear of retribution. Talia Fukuroe knows some of this first hand. She works for a Silicon Valley company she says is trying really hard to get things right for female employees. But the gender ratio means that just being female can present a few problems on the job - problems that can't be taken care of by company policy.

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Episode 52: When women work for free

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November 18, 2014

"If you don't believe in yourself, if you don't believe you're worth what you're charging, other people won't - they'll smell that fear and they'll try to haggle you down." - Adrienne Graham

"There is an expectation in some ways that women are going to give, that we're going to be supportive. It's how we're raised, and the messages we get." - Kathy Caprino

19 minutes.

Women have a problem valuing themselves - both setting prices and believing they're truly worth something in the marketplace. A lot of us charge too little for our work. Sometimes we don't charge at all. Adrienne Graham

It's a complicated, multi-layered issue, and it's part of the reason women earn less than men. As someone who squirms whenever I have to talk about how much I'm worth, I knew I had to tackle the topic on the show. I talk to businesswomen Adrienne Graham, author of a viral Forbes post, No, You Can't Pick My Brain, It Costs Too Much, and Kathy Caprino, who's written extensively about women's relationship with money. If you too find it tough to name your price, tune in - both women have great insights into how we can get comfortable charging what we're worth, and working out what that is in the first place.

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Episode 51: The curse of comparison

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November 3, 2014

“It’s taboo to talk about who we envy, it’s taboo to talk about the fact that we do it, and it sort of doubles down on the internal blocks.”           - Lauren Bacon

"We understand that intrinsically it doesn't feel healthy...comparing yourself, feeling small, 'Why does she get to have what I don't have?'"   - Tanya Geisler

18 minutes.

Who hasn't compared herself to someone else at work, envying the relationship that person has with the boss, or the attention they get for their work? Then there's the other side of comparison - boosting your ego by assuring yourself you're better than that woman down the hall. Later we feel horrible for indulging in all this envy and disdain in the first place.

The comparisons we make at work can hold us back in our careers, whether we work for a company or for ourselves. In this show Canadian leadership coaches Lauren Bacon and Tanya Geisler explain how we can tame our urge to compare and turn it into something much more constructive.

Tanya Geisler (l) and Lauren Bacon (r)

Further reading: Lauren and Tanya's online program is at BeyondCompare.ca

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Episode 50: Starting a business

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October 20, 2014

“Stepping outside of your comfort zone is really, really hard…I did not want to raise venture capital at all. But I did want to have a big successful business. And I got to the place where I realized I’m going to have to go pitch all those guys in suits.” - Julia Pimsleur

"One of these days Mark Zuckerberg is going to hit me, but I believe that if I grew up in a household where I was told to do what I was good at and go after my talents, I would have created Facebook or something even better than that.” - Denise Barreto

24 minutes.

Female entrepreneurship is rising fast. In the US, a third of businesses are now owned by women. But look a bit deeper and you find nearly all these businesses are 'solopreneurships' - they don't have any employees and they don't bring in much money. This is sometimes by design, but not always: many women are unprepared for the inequities that still exist in entrepreneurship. Julia Pimsleur

In this show we meet two ambitious entrepreneurs who want to grow their companies: Julia Pimsleur and Denise Barreto. They have advice about how to survive in the male-dominated world of fundraising, why hiring other people is a must even when you can barely afford it, and how passion for your work isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Denise Barreto

Further reading:

Julia Pimsleur is CEO of Little Pim. She has also founded Double Digit Academy, which holds regular training sessions for women who want to raise money for their companies.

 

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Episode 49: The pace of progress

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October 5, 2014

"I often walked away from the school playground thinking, why am I doing this? I am disheveled, I am tired, I am exhausted, and it is just relentless. But then I'd get to work and think, 'This is what I am doing.'" - Carola Hoyos

"When you look at the whole career path it’s such that women just can’t be bothered. They think the workplace they’re in, at universities especially, is just so lousy that they leave.” - Curt Rice

23 minutes.

Carola Hoyos

So much attention is focused on women in the workplace these days that you might think progress is everywhere. Yes, more women are joining company boards, and some prominent women have top jobs. But other numbers haven't shifted much. In this show Financial Times journalist Carola Hoyos laments the slow pace of change in Britain in particular. But she says one upcoming move could turn things around.

One country that seems to be getting a lot right on work and life is Norway. Curt Rice has lived there for 25 years. He's steeped himself in research on why women lag behind. Still, he's optimistic about gender balance in his world of academia and at companies - partly because of an experiment his university carried out.

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Episode 48: Professional women, no kids

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September 21, 2014

"We can’t change as much as we’d like to how society looks at us, but we can certainly change how we look at ourselves...we are not second to mother." - Melanie Notkin

"The reason I didn’t have kids is not because I wanted a career instead of children. It’s because I just didn’t want to have children of my own. And I think that’s a valid choice too." - Jennifer Rapach

More and more women are reaching their mid-forties without having children. Sometimes this is by choice, and sometimes it's not. But here's what both sets of women have in common: they're operating in a world where being a mother is still considered the default setting for women. Discussions of women in leadership usually assume every woman has to juggle her work with children. But where does that leave the rest of us? 

In this show we meet three successful women, childless and child-free: Melanie Notkin, founder of Savvy Auntie and author of the book Otherhood, Sara Hinkle, who works in academia and is tired of feeling left out of conversations about work/life balance, and Jennifer Rapach, who has been married for 20 years and has never wanted children. Try explaining that to the rest of the universe. 25 minutes. 

 

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