I was recently asked my thoughts on the statement,

“Fix the system, not the women.”

In case you haven’t heard someone say this, the idea behind it is that women are not what’s broken. The system is broken. And that’s why women aren’t getting promoted, being paid equally, and are facing bias in the workplace.

Before I dive into my rationale around why this doesn’t work, let me first say I absolutely agree with this statement. I believe that the long-term solution to many of the challenges women face is to fix the system.

I also feel strongly that women are not broken and are often better leaders than our male counterparts. And the data backs this up, so it’s hard to dispute.

So why, you may be thinking, do I disagree? It’s not because the statement itself is incorrect; it’s that it’s not enough.

So in today’s newsletter, I’m going to share why I believe focusing on this statement isn’t serving women, and what I think we need to do instead.

Let’s dive in…

Am I saying we should fix women?

First, just to reiterate for anyone who may be activated by the title of this newsletter, I really do believe we need to fix the system, and I do believe that women are not broken.

I work with some of the most impressive women in leadership, and I’m constantly amazed at these women’s strategic ability, insightfulness, and sheer work ethic. In fact, I believe that if we had more women in leadership, that would be best for everyone, and that is why I work with women to help them get their seat at the table and thrive there.

My issue with this statement is that it puts all of the emphasis on achieving something that, over the past number of decades, we’ve struggled to impact in a significant way.

First of all, it’s not actionable

My first issue with the statement, “Fix the system, not the women,” is that it doesn’t tell us who needs to fix the system or how they are going to do it. Are we supposed to be involved? Who’s owning this task?

As we all know from our corporate jobs, for a project to succeed, there needs to be clear accountability. This just doesn’t exist with blanket statements like this, which is why these ideas are great in theory, but often not effective in practice.

Fixing the system is slow, at best

If we look at the numbers from last year’s Women in the Workplace report (prepared by LeanIn and McKinsey), we see that women still only make up 29% of C-suite roles. Less than a third.

We also see that certain statistics have moved backwards in recent years, such as the percentage of women promoted to the first level of leadership, where women were gaining momentum, and that has since reversed. What this tells me is that what we’ve been trying to do (i.e., fix the system) is not really working.

Stats around the pay gap are equally disheartening. It’s currently projected to take another 100 years to close the gender pay gap, at the rate we’re going.

DEI rollbacks

On top of this, earlier this year and in response to executive orders issued by Donald Trump, a number of companies (including Meta, Google, Amazon and Salesforce) announced that they were rolling back their DEI initiatives.

Let’s be honest. People freaked out.

Interestingly, though, not much changed in terms of the percentage of women at the leadership level. And there’s a really easy explanation for why. Most of these policies were idealistic and not practical, or were not ingrained in the company’s actual behaviour.

By that, I mean we had companies listing DEI initiatives around women’s equality on their websites, but if you looked at their leadership team, women were a minority or were sometimes not even present at the C-suite.

When we rely on the system to do the work for us, we often discover that people’s behaviour does not follow the policies they’ve put in place.

What I think we should focus on instead

So what’s the answer? I’ll tell you.

I feel strongly that the key to solving this problem lies in helping as many women as possible get their seats at the table. I believe that more women in leadership is not only better for everyone, but is at the core of solving this problem.

Data backs this up. When you have more women in board positions and C-level leadership, there is less biased language used throughout an organization, meaning the impact of bias trickles down from the top.

Instead of waiting for policies or systems to change, we need to do everything we can to get more women into senior leadership (and help them thrive there) so women can champion this change from a place of power.

But I thought women weren’t getting promoted?

Yes and no. Yes, the overall statistics can feel disappointing, but last week alone in my community, I received the following messages:

  • Woman A just got her first VP offer and will start in a few weeks
  • Women B and C both shared that they were recently promoted
  • Woman D is telling me that her new role came with a $90K pay increase
  • Woman E is sharing that she has 3 competing VP offers for her first VP role!

Ladies, we can move the needle. And yes, I’m doing it one woman at a time, but it’s working!

This isn’t about fixing women. It’s about giving women the tools and support they need to show up as the best version of themselves, the version that’s recognized and offered a seat at the table.

If you want to join the growing list of women in my community who are taking my proven system and turning it into promotions, registration is now open for the ​Own Your Seat at the Table program​! This is my proven program to help you land that VP (or Sr. Director) role, and thrive there.

And until Dec 1st at 10 am ET, you can join with a $900 discount!!

If you have any questions or want to chat with my team to see if it’s right for you, you can ​book a call here​.

Until next time friends… ✌️💜

Katy