hey it's patti scharf CPA and co-founder of catching clouds the leader in
e-commerce accounting welcome back to another Saturday slow down where I like
to remind everybody to work on their business and not just in their business
today I'm talking about women in business I started this topic last week
what really drove this was for years I've been thinking you know why aren't
more women in the upper echelon of management positions leadership position
CEO roles the you know any of those c-level positions in business like why
why are there so few women compared to men and last week I and you can see the
video here I talked about self-limiting beliefs so as part of the reason really
we have to kind of take responsibility for our own internal dialogue what is it
we're telling ourselves what what's keeping us from expecting more of
ourselves trying more trying to you know break out of that mold today I want to
talk about the external factors what what I'd like to call the real world so
this is not gonna be talked about sexual harassment there's no me to stuff
there's no triggering stuff it's just a couple of stories that I want to share
from my own personal experience these both happen within the last two or three
years so it's not like this is 20 years old or anything like that that this kind
of stuff is going on still so let me start with my first story first a little
bit of background on me I grew up pretty much a total tomboy I I have a brother
who's three days short of be me or older than me and we every neighborhood we
lived in there it was just full of boys there but there was no girl anywhere
anywhere it was it was just me playing cops and robbers and playing football
and playing Legos and matchbox car Matchbox cars and things like that so it
was just me and the guys hanging out all the time from when I was a wee little
kid all the way up through high school and into college like all my best
friends they were they were guys so I was absolutely in my element I was at
this conference it was somewhere tropical so there there was like a pool
and stuff like that and a bunch of guys were hanging out so there were like four
guys including Scott and me hanging out in this pool we're just tossing a ball
around and chit-chatting and like each other a hard time whatever and then
one of the guys guy number one is like hey Scott guy number two and I challenge
guy number three and you to a game of cornhole and I'm like alright I guess
this is the part where I become invisible and you know but that's fine
I'm like totally used to just hanging out and watching guys flex muscles and
crap like that so so we all get out of the pool they start playing cornhole and
I'm just sitting on the sidelines kind of watching and stuff and then guide
number one orders a round of beer for the guys and I'm like seriously and so
and it doesn't even really drink beer that much like once like maybe once
every three months he might have a beer I am a much bigger fan of beer than he
is so the beer comes and so I stand up this is so passive-aggressive I'm kind
of embarrassed about it but I stand up and I go over I take a drink of the beer
or sit down and you know put it down and go sit down so at this point guy number
one is mortified like so mortified I felt bad for him because I know he is
the nicest of guys he did not do it on purpose it was not intentional in any
way shape or form okay he immediately like offered to buy me a beer and
everything else it was it was not a problem
but here's the point women are being excluded without anybody even really
realizing it deals aren't made in the boardroom they are made out on the golf
course they're made at cornhole they're made at the bar after work whatever like
this is where the guys are congregating this is how they're becoming friends
everybody wants to work with their friends and I can't fault them for
wanting to build camaraderie or make deals with their friends but the problem
is when you're consciously or unconsciously excluding women from your
reindeer games they get excluded from the boardroom
that's just natural so it's no wonder that women aren't advancing at the same
rate as the men okay here's my second story
so a couple of years back I went to a conference and during the conference
there was a women in business breakfast and I attended it and was really excited
about it because you know this is kind of my hot-button issue and they had some
great panelists had great points lots of ideas for helping to advance women in
the accounting industry and at the end of the breakfast I raised my hand
because I had this question that had been eating at me since the day before
because the day before they announced the outside leadership board basically
people would apply to be on this like outside council kind of thing to to help
like provide feedback and direction of where the company should go and things
like that and LA and previous years there had been
like 20 percent women on on this leadership board and the day before the
breakfast they announced the new people on the board and there were only 25%
women again like the day before they had a whole breakfast on women in business
so I raised my hand and I was like look I think it's really important to have
women in positions of leadership to help create the direction of where you want
the company to go you know so if you're gonna create this board shouldn't you
have 50% women like duh and and the response was that not enough women had
applied and that they hadn't applied they suspected they didn't apply because
women don't have enough support systems in place that women can't travel because
they don't have they have a problem getting childcare and things like that
so they can't travel and if you can't travel you can't be on this board and
you don't if you don't have support systems in place and you can't network
and basically you can't do that things that are required of you to
participate on this board now up until that point I was just kind
of annoyed and concerned but when we got to the response that I got I was livid I
was like this close to leaving the conference because I was so pissed and
let me tell you why number one this was said in a roomful of like
standing-room-only women who had traveled to this conference to improve
their knowledge to network with other people that many of them I'm sure had
were away from their kids or you know they had to come up with some kind of
childcare or something like that so some of these like lack of support systems
thing was just kind of disingenuous at best and then the other issue of not
enough women applying I applied so and then after I asked the question somebody
came up to me and said thank you very much for asking that question because I
applied and I didn't get an answer why I just I got a rejection but I didn't know
why I was too rejected and I didn't care that I wasn't on the board because
honestly that year was like the worst year possible for me I was like so
insanely busy when I found out I wasn't on it I was like oh thank god I'm not on
it but like Scott had been on it before and he's not even an accountant and I
just and and it's totally possible that they had had their fill of catching
clouds representation I am good with that but the fact that the answer of
there wasn't 50% women on the board was because women didn't apply basically
what was happening was they were blaming women for their own lack of
representation on the board which just pushed me over the
like I'm still kind of ticked off about it but my whole point here is that women
are showing up they may not be showing up in the sheer quantities that men are
showing up but when they are showing up we need to support them we need to give
them a little nudge and and hear what they have to say and by all means
include them in in situations where you can so this was absolutely a situation
where they should have and could've walked their talk that's it now with all
that said I know that there's more to be done and I'm I'm not quite sure what
that looks like yet I'm still kind of simmering on that if you have any
suggestions or groups that you're involved in or something like that
please leave comments down below I'd love to hear it
it seems like a lot of the organizations that I found or even some of the
conference's that I've seen they're really geared more towards people who
are like accountants in a big for and how to like work your way up to the top
of that whereas I'm just in this small business that I already pretty much run
myself so with a little help from Scott and so I guess maybe my contribution for
the moment is just ranting and raving about inequalities on YouTube but I I
don't want it to be just that I want it to be more than that I just don't know
what that looks like yet so I would love to hear from you tell me if there's
anything you're involved in any ideas you have or anything like that just
leave them in the comments below and that's it for today I hope you liked
this video if you did please like comment and share if you haven't already
please subscribe and all catch you later