Jan 23, 2018
An op-ed by PL+US Founder and Executive Director Katie Bethell on how parental leave can address the leadership gap for women.
While the gruesome details vary – massages in hotel rooms, the button under the desk, men literally just showing their penises in the office – every #MeToo story has something in common: powerful men working in industries with very few women in top leadership positions.
As the #MeToo conversation begins to turn towards solutions, we need to implement policies that address the barriers to women leading. While women and men launch careers in equal numbers, starting at around 30 their upward trajectories to leadership start to seriously and increasingly diverge, with women falling behind and men moving ahead. There are, of course, many confluent factors – bias, rampant harassment, lack of mentorship – that contribute to this widening gap, but one stands out: caregiving.