It truly amazes me after all my years in business, especially after all the women’s rights movements, the billions of ad dollars spent on female empowerment, all the inclusion and discrimination training available, and laws for equal pay, that women are still widely discriminated against in business. What’s worse is that this is still going on in today’s world – during a world-wide pandemic, financial crisis, rioting, dust storms, murder hornets, and the rise of discrimination against black people –, a time when people should be coming together instead of continuing to divide. Although, as I list these things, I realize why wouldn’t women be discriminated against? Along with the GLBT community and nearly every other minority, particularly during times of heightened fear? Isn’t fear what drives all discrimination?

In the long history of women (and every other minority) fighting for their voice and equality, it has always been a struggle despite their best efforts. The fear or misunderstanding that someone else is smarter, better suited, more qualified, more aware, or the myriad of other fears that unconsciously come up for people causing them to discriminate, has dominated the world since the beginning of time. Now instead of battles being over empires and continents, it’s now over jobs, career advancement, and board positions.

Based on these facts, I really don’t know why my most recent run-in with male chauvinism and discrimination threw me for such a loop; I have dealt with it my entire career, hell, my entire life in some form for that matter…so why’d this one hit home so hard?

Because it wasn’t just by a man. It was also by a high-level female employee that took on the same chauvinistic, discriminatory characteristics of her male boss to perpetuate the bullying and flat out discrimination against me and my company. When compared to my male counterpart, to whom I introduced to them, they were willing to pay his hourly rate for services, but not ours and they were identical. Making the scenario even worse, after I facilitated their relationship to be a connector for the good, they requested that he not tell me.

In today’s dog eat dog world, I really want to give kudos to my male colleague, who I am quite proud to work with and who has impenetrable integrity. It’s rare to work with someone who stands up for what’s right and then does the right thing, especially in business when money is at stake. I suspect he has daughters ;) – but certainly not said to take away from the great respect I have for him or his integrity.

Her behavior took the cake.

I have been used to not being listened to, having our ideas and strategies turned down because it was not the male client’s idea or having an idea not be good enough until a man from another agency sold the same service, idea, or strategy (which was now outdated 😜) for three times the price. BUT to have a male bully us and treat us poorly throughout a project, then have his female high-level executive do the same thing and then she treated our male colleague with respect, dignity and paid him appropriately, really made my gears turn.

How could she possibly treat her female colleague this way? What propelled her to discriminate against her fellow sister in business? What was she afraid of or what didn’t she understand that perpetuated her fears to behave in a male chauvinistic and bullying manner? I could certainly guess that after decades of being in the male-dominated corporate world that she had been brainwashed to behave like her male counterparts, picking up their discriminatory behaviors against women to become “one of the guys” to advance in her career or to keep her job. Because that’s the only way a woman gets ahead in the corporate world, right?

Sadly, this is the mentality that many women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s were brought up in the corporate world to believe and internalize. I even got some of that brainwashing while I was coming up in the corporate world in the 2000s, but as you can see, I have clearly broken free from that mentality. BUT why is this still a thing when women have been talking about it for years and have been working hard to stop this archaic view? AND why are women discriminating against other women?

After a quick google search about women discriminating against other women, I realized that no one is really talking about it. It barely brought up results with the exception of a light article about the unconscious bias women have against one another written TWO YEARS AGO. This certainly isn’t a new concept. I experienced it time and time again in my 20s with my fledgling agency. I would reach out to other women in the agency world only to be shunned, talked down to, and just ignored. There were very few women that truly supported one another and the only one that comes to mind that was kind, supportive, and was not afraid of a young woman coming up in the agency world.

So, I did a little more research.

That research reminded me that the gender pay gap really hasn’t changed in years and no one is talking about it anymore. Again, it’s certainly not a new concept; so why is this discrimination against women – and women of color have it worse than white women – not talked about anymore?

One school of thought could be that this bias has led to a rise in women startups, which if you know anything about me or my company, I love that and support that all day every day, but we are still discriminated against, as evidenced by my most recent experience. We didn’t become entrepreneurs to truly escape the bias or discrimination; new and improved ways to discriminate were created. And not only that, there are other real statistical biases that women face as entrepreneurs that men don’t…and sadly, I have experienced ALL of them along with millions of other women.

I have never really considered myself a feminist; even today, I don’t consider myself a feminist. I won’t be marching in any marches or leading any charge against what I believe are heinous (and yes, I believe that it’s heinous to discriminate) and ridiculous behaviors of men in business, but I will continue to do my part in my corner of the world.

I will keep encouraging and supporting other women.

I will keep this conversation going about the unfairness in business for women.

I will not accept being treated unfairly or poorly in business.

I will continue to fight the good fight for women, helping to pave the way or even the playing field for women in younger generations. And I hope you will too.

Maybe I might be feminist-light. ;)