3 Rules of Equality: How Women Can Use Their Own Mindset To Shine in Any Environment

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Topics: Career Development, Organizational Culture

To celebrate Women's History Month and International Women's Day, we asked some of our contributors to reflect on their experiences being a woman in the project management workforce.

Women today continue to improve their status to be treated as equals, both legally and in the actual way they are treated day to day. I began my career at a time where women were considered to be of less value, for no tangible reason.

For example, my first job out of college was teaching in a high school. I had graduated from college summa cum laude with majors in education, history, psychology and sociology. My first position was teaching the last three subjects at a high school in my hometown, alongside a male colleague who graduated from Wichita High School North the same year I did.

I knew him well, and while he was quite nice…I had the A+ average, and he was mostly a C student. I discovered within the first few weeks that he had been hired for the same job with a salary $200 a month higher than mine, a 5% bump. The explanation? He was a man, and he might possibly need to support a wife and children.

There are several options for reactions to such an unfair practice. I chose to do extremely well at this job, with the idea that I would then have a strong recommendation to move into an organization fairer to women. After two years, I applied and was hired by IBM …

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