ASPIRATIONALLY, AMY
Tools Women Need to Lead and Succeed
CAPSTONE
The National Committee on Pay Equity designated March 14 as Equal Pay Day for the year 2023. The recognition of Equal Pay Day started as a public awareness campaign in 1996 to illustrate how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. While the lack of pay equity for women can be attributed to a number of social and economic factors, my project aims to address the associated lack of gender diversity in leadership, which I see as a critical solution to the gender pay gap. The goal of my capstone project is to contribute to the growing body of engaging and widely accessible digital resources that help women and female-identifying individuals (femmes) develop their leadership skills so that they are set up for success when asked to lead in the workplace.
DISCIPLINARY GROUNDING
This project’s disciplinary grounding draws together formal theoretical perspectives on communication and the perspectives of business authors (rather than academics) who are writing for an audience that consumes popular print and digital publications about female leadership and career development.
ETHICS
On March 1, 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that “the gender-based wage gap in the United States has narrowed in recent years, but disparities remain: national median earnings for civilians who worked full-time, year-round in the past 12 months was $53,544 for men compared to $43,394 for women." Women make $.81 to every dollar earned by a man, according to these numbers, despite making up half of the workforce and over half of college-educated workers in America. While the numbers have improved over time (up from $.60 on the dollar in the 1950s), the narrative remains largely the same: women make less money than men.
As a woman, this makes me angry.
ARTIFACTS
The Aspirational Assessment is a short, interactive quiz designed to help identify which leadership style you should try to implement, based on your current situation and your existing approaches to leading.
The Leadership Style Library pairs with the Aspirational Assessment to serve as a digital resource hub where you can learn more about your leadership style suggestion or other approaches to leadership that work well for women.
LEADERSHIP AND DIVERSITY
When I reflect on my current position and the career path I followed to get there, I struggle to identify the professional development opportunities I received along the way that were specifically designed to help me succeed as a woman in leadership. I lacked actionable resources that were designed specifically for my growth as an aspiring female leader. In some ways, I designed this project for myself – for the younger me who was eager to learn how to act like a leader, and for the me today who is still practicing different approaches to leading.
DESIGN PROSPECTUS
While both of my capstone's artifacts can be consumed independently of one another, I designed them so that they are complementary to one another to create an engaging and informative experience for users interested in learning more and expanding their own approach to leadership.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
I came into the capstone project knowing that I wanted to build upon the project I originally created for COML 530 – Women Communication and Leadership. When I designed the initial project, my goal was to create an interactive experience for women seeking to explore new leaderships styles and to curate a bank of easily accessible resources about popular leadership styles. These same goals guided me throughout this semester as I further developed the work into results that I am incredibly proud of.
REFERENCES
Ammerman, C., & Groysberg, B. (2021, May-June). How to close the gender gap. Harvard Business Review, 99(3), 124–133.
Cullen, Z. B., & Perez-Truglia, R. (2022). The old boys' club: schmoozing and the gender gap [Working paper]. Harvard Business School. https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=57091
Cunningham, C. M., Crandall, H. M., & Dare, A. M. (2017). Gender, communication, and the leadership gap. Information Age Publishing.
DeFrank-Cole, L., & Tan, S. J. (2022). Women and leadership: Journey toward equity [eBook edition]. Sage.
Ely, R. J., & Padavic, I. (2020, May-June). What’s really holding women back? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/03/whats-really-holding-women-back
Ghazi, R. (2022, September 12). Why the world needs more women in leadership. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2022/09/12/why-the-world-needs-more-women-in-leadership/
Helgesen, S. (2017). Gender, communication, and the leadership gap. In C. M. Cunningham, H. M. Crandall, & A. M. Dare (Eds.), Gender, communication, and the leadership gap (pp. 3-11). Information Age Publishing.
Ibarra, H., & Obodaru, O. (2009, January). Women and the vision thing. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2009/01/women-and-the-vision-thing
McKenzie, K. L., & Halstead, T. (2017). Narrowing the leadership gap: Communication strategies to combat microaggressions. In C. M. Cunningham, H. M. Crandall, & A. M. Dare (Eds.) Gender, communication, and the leadership gap (pp. 29-45). Information Age Publishing.
Netflix (2020, April 17). Explained | Why women are paid less | FULL EPISODE | Netflix [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/hP8dLUxBfsU
Orr, M. (2019). Lean out. Harper Collins Leadership.
Sandberg, S. (2013). Lean in: Women, work, and the will to lead [eBook edition]. Alfred A. Knopf.
Singh, L. (2021). "A seat at the table" isn't the solution for gender equity [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/lilly_singh_a_seat_at_the_table_isn_t_the_solution_for_gender_equity
Unites States Census Bureau. (March 14). Equal pay day: March 14, 2023. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/equal-pay-day.html
Vox (2016, September 7). What people miss about the gender wage gap [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/13XU4fMlN3w
Wood, J. T. (2005). Gendered lives: Communication, gender, & culture. Thompson Wadsworth.