The Latest Insights from Leading NOW

Over the last few years or so we have noticed a number of CEOs who are being praised in the news for understanding that gender dynamics are real and when they level the playing field for all of their employees they help their company as a whole. In one of Leading Women's blog posts from May 2015, we wrote about Michael Simonds, CEO of UNUM who wrote with deep understanding about women's advancement and closing the leadership gender gap. Our latest nominee for a CEO Who "Gets It" - Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff - was in the news in March 2016 for ensuring pay equity by conducting wage equity audits and making the requisite adjustments, and for naming their first Chief Equality Officer in September 2016.

Not long ago Leading Women CEO, Susan Colantuono, was working with top executive women and men on a discussion of executive presence. She asked everyone to write down the first quality that comes to mind when they think of "executive presence." Then they took their words and stood next to flipcharts labeled Personal Greatness, Engaging Others and Achieving Outcomes. To their surprise, over 50% of the room had words that fell under Personal Greatness, about 30% engaging others and under 20% on achieving outcomes. BUT this wasn't to our surprise. To find out why...

While on Facebook the other day, I came across this post from a friend, who works in HR for a well-known US-based health insurance company, and I could not get what she wrote out of my head.

Leading Women is excited to announce our new full-time location in Europe! I am delighted to be establishing Leading Women's permanent office in the the European Union. Having a European base in Luxembourg will give us the opportunity to better serve our European and British clients.

With Father's Day in the US last weekend, it got me thinking about working families and what companies are doing to keep and support both working mothers and working fathers. The US Department of Labor reports that 70% of women with children under 18 years old participate in the labor market in some way, signaling a change from the days where father went off to work and mother stayed home and raised the children.

Today, Tuesday, April 12, is Equal Pay Day in the United States. Equal Pay Day is day when women’s earnings finally “catch up” to men’s earnings from the previous year. Want to know how best to "celebrate" Equal Pay Day this year? Try these: Ask your HR team when the next wage equity audit will be conducted - and encourage your colleagues to do the same. Share well-researched information about the wage gap. For example: the WEF Global Gender Gap Report and Glassdoor report or any of the other articles listed below. Urge your elected officials to support wage equity. If you can self-nominate for advancement, do so. Contact Leading Women to see how we can help your company close the gender gap!