3 Ideas to Avoid Needing International Women's Day Next Year

Johanna Rothman, known as the "Pragmatic Manager," offers frank advice for your challenging problems. She consults with leaders and teams to help them learn about practical and possible options. They can then decide how to adapt their product development. Her most recent book is "Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility." See www.jrothman.com for all her books.

  Career Development   Organizational Culture  

The world has changed since I started my career in 1977. While most of those changes are great, several things have not changed—and a lot of that is how women experience the world of work.

Women still experience a gender pay gap. Too often, women experience trouble finding new jobs, especially if they took time off to care for young children. And third, too many workplaces do not have diverse teams. That puts extra pressure on project managers to refocus the teams to recognize their ideal customers.

While most project or program managers can’t do anything about these issues directly, they often can influence others. However, they need to notice these issues.

I’ll start with the gender pay gap.

Idea 1: Address and Eliminate the Gender Pay Gap
Think back to a recent time when you read a job description. It doesn’t matter if you were the one looking for a job or the one interviewing candidates. What did that job description highlight?

Too often, especially in technology (my field), job descriptions highlight tools or technology experience. Yet, that’s the easiest thing to learn. When companies highlight tools or technology experience, they have a subtle—or not so subtle—bias to people who like to play with tools and technology.

I love technology and I have been known to geek out about certain tools. However, my tools …

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