Women's History Month: A Legacy Extended

As a recruiter at CFW Careers, this Women’s History Month, I find myself reflecting on today’s challenges around building and sustaining diverse, equitable and inclusive workplaces, and how different the considerations are from those of decades past. Regarding gender equality, today a major challenge remains setting the conditions for women’s career progression and growing the representation of women in leadership and on boards. It’s a challenge that’s been compounded by the pandemic with attrition of women in the workplace skyrocketing this past year. In contrast, not too long ago in the ‘60s and ‘70s, activists and allies were “making the case” for women in many business areas like sales. They brought forth a shift in social consciousness that not only made it possible for a young Latina like me to unflinchingly enter the business world in 2017, but also made a compelling case for CFW Careers, the women-run and women-owned businesses I’m a part of, to even exist.

CFW Careers was founded in 1973 as “Careers for Women” by David King, the first man to champion women in executive sales (he actually wrote the book on the subject!). David founded CFW as a free sales and marketing school for women in New York City. He worked to propel a significant attitudinal change regarding the role of women in business and helped thousands of women achieve economic independence by giving them the tools and opportunities to succeed.

I was the first employee to join CFW Careers after David’s retirement, and, while I didn’t get to work alongside him, I got to know him in my own way. My first project was to clear a walk-in closet of filing cabinets filled to the brim with David’s notes from lectures and media artifacts celebrating David and his work. I was compiling highlights to make a book documenting our company history and saving valuable files to donate to a fitting historical archive.

As I sifted through David’s handwritten notes, I imagined my way into the corporate sales offices of 60’s-70’s Manhattan: Don Drapers everywhere with clouds of cigarette smoke wafting though high-rise buildings--all set against the backdrop of a feminist movement building traction right outside their doors. So many of these notes contained ideas that, while revolutionary at the time, are already taken for granted today. One note I stumbled upon from a 1975 lecture outlined the things women should keep in mind in their job search and career pathing:

“What to look for in a job

1. First--does it lead to a “career” or is it just a job?

2. 5 year plan

3. Movement within the industry and outside of it.

4. How to take advantage of being a woman

a. Have men like you, not hate you

5. Is the money good in 5 years?

6. Don’t go where the women are-- go where the men are.”

When I first read this note, it clicked for me that CFW’s focus on women in executive sales wasn’t just about getting women through the door, it was about getting them through the glass ceiling. Executive sales was the perfect starting point because it provided the clearest path to leadership and economic freedom. While the way we go about advancing David’s mission at CFW has evolved through the years, we remain committed as ever to empowering women professionally and economically, and today we work to help clients attract, hire, and retain diverse (across all dimensions) teams.

One of the thousands of women who came through the Careers for Women seminars is Cynnie King-- my boss, mentor, and friend who ultimately married David King and today serves as CFW Careers' co-owner with Rachel Fagnant-Fassler. I sat down with Cynnie to talk about Careers for Women, how the challenges CFW addresses around building gender equity in the workplace have evolved through the years, and most recently during the pandemic, and what we can all do about it.

HC: What was it like to attend the Careers For Women’s lectures run by David? What was at stake for you and other women at the time?

CK: In 1985, I was a few years out of college, embarking on my dream of living in Manhattan when I realized that the profession I’d fallen into, public relations, wasn’t playing to my strengths. As I was trying to figure out what my next step would be, a saleswoman from Xerox told me about David King, a man who was speaking out about women’s potential to go into sales, and holding seminars drawing women from across the city.

I still remember that feeling of sitting in the classroom, surrounded by those other women, all of us a bit mystified yet intrigued, captivated by this man holding forth, explaining in the most engaging way that what had made us good at other things (friend-making, relationship-building, listening skills) could make us well equipped to step into a “business-to-business executive sales job.” He recognized our potential to do things we never imagined ourselves capable of doing-- in a man’s world of work. He said that I could be selling anything from copiers to aircrafts, from widgets to staffing services. If I was poised, professional and smart enough to learn the basics of the job and industry, I could step into a role making at least $20-30,000 in the first year, $30-50,000 in the second year, and over $100,000 in years thereafter. Imagine that!

In the next seminar we learned the attributes of a good sales job, how to take an interview, how to handle the business lunch. I took notes and landed my first sales job, selling for an industrial design firm. After I made my first sale, I felt an electric charge, as if I’d suddenly taken flight. At the heart of it all, what was at stake for me was my ability to not only find a job, but build a career-- one in which I felt capable, confident and empowered by every dollar I earned in commission.

HC: We’ve talked about those early days and how David was, not only planting these seeds of career possibility for women, but also traveling to meet with leaders across the US at Fortune 500 companies like Ford, J&J, Time Inc. to make the case for why they needed to hire their first ever saleswomen.

CK: Right. And that wasn’t an easy sell! In one memorable exchange, a corporate leader told David that he was thumbs-up on Careers for Women, and he’d hire 10 women tomorrow, as long as each of them had 10 years of sales experience-- which, of course, virtually no women had.

HC: We’ve progressed to the point where the main challenges around gender parity in the workplace are no longer about having to “make the case for women,” and yet challenges remain. What comes to mind?

CK: While it’s commonly known and accepted that women can excel in many professions, there’s often a huge disparity-- both in terms of representation and pay-- in certain functional areas and across industries. In corporate sales, for instance, women hold 25% of mid-level management positions, and just 19% of sales leadership roles. And the stats are worse in certain sectors like tech. This is particularly significant because, as David noted long ago, one of the best and most common career paths to leadership is through sales. If we know that women can excel at sales, if there’s a ton of evidence that companies that have greater gender diversity do better across all metrics, why does that disparity persist? There are many contributing factors, cascading from fewer women at the top, which impacts corporate policy making and culture-shaping, to hiring practices that don’t prioritize building a diverse slate of talent, to lack of intentional retention and advancement strategies.

A core challenge is: how do you create a culture that sets women and other underrepresented populations up for success, making them want to work for you? How do you help them stay on track and progress to leadership when they don’t see themselves yet represented in those leadership ranks?

A few of the most compelling issues that need to be tackled in corporate culture are:

1. There’s a glaring lack of women on leadership teams-- Only about 8% of Fortune 500 Companies are led by women, and only 3 of those 41 CEOs are women of color. Corporate leaders, VCs, PE firms, investors need to recognize that missing as a detriment to the company and an impediment to success. How to remedy that is both a short- and long-term play, relating to top level recruiting as well as talent building from entry-level on up.

2. Hiring practices, particularly in sectors in which women are under-represented, need to allow for hiring that’s not just based on experience, but also, to some degree on potential. Which is where we began in 1973 as David placed the first women in sales-- women who didn’t have a record of commission-generating proof of their value, rather confidence in their innate ability to step in and achieve as much as any man.

3. Pay inequality, is an issue laid bare by the numbers. This is about level-setting compensation across functional areas, which, yes, is about comp & benefits, but also what’s communicated to employees about corporate values-- how individuals are valued. And it’s about establishing a culture of transparency and fairness.

HC: How have you seen the pandemic exacerbate these challenges?

CK: In myriad ways. Large numbers of women have had no choice but to leave the workforce; fewer opportunities to return to work are available to women, and economic challenges are compounded by the fact that women earn significantly lower median incomes.

It’s pretty alarming... but not actually all that surprising given that our economy wasn’t originally built with the participation of women in business in mind, and work and social culture didn’t automatically recalibrate once women entered the workforce. Women’s participation in the workforce wasn’t at once accompanied by an immediate shift in social expectations, nor the introduction of programs and policies supporting working women.

We were and still are expected to shoulder the lion’s share of household and caretaking responsibilities; childcare didn’t suddenly become cheaper nor has it been made universally available by the government (the cost of childcare is prohibitive for many women eager to work); add to this inflexible work schedules and the fact that advancements in communication technology have created an unsustainable “always on” work culture leading to employee burnout and/or attrition…. you can see the odds are stacked against working women. It’s important that the pandemic has laid this all bare as it highlights how essential broad systemic change is for any lasting progress towards gender equality in the workplace.

HC: We’ve certainly got our work cut out for us! Where do we go from here?

CK: The onus can’t be on women. Women are simply exhausted by the burden they’ve been carrying. If we’ve learned anything this year, seeing a pandemic wipe out nearly a decade in progress towards gender equality in the workplace, it’s that progress isn’t permanent if the culture and systems we all exist and operate in remain unchanged. We need companies to step up and commit to effecting change-- not just because it makes business sense, but because it’s also the morally right thing to do. We need legislators to step up and commit to effecting change, too. And we need male allies like David King who will champion women’s cause. For us at CFW Careers, it’s about continuing David’s work through our Equitable Search practice, through our Career Coaching practice, through Changing the Conversation, and by, again, issuing a rallying cry to others to join us.

In honor of Women’s History Month and in response to unsettling news about how the pandemic has affected women in the workplace, CFW Careers has created a pledge to protect and advance progress made towards women’s equality in the workplace. Check it out here, and join the many business leaders and allies who have signed.

Helena Chávez Núñez has been working at CFW Careers since 2017, and is currently a Senior Talent Consultant. Please reach out to her at Careersteam@cfwcareers.com for more information on CFW's Equitable Search practice and Career Coaching program