Beyond the confidence gap: What really holds women back at work

In this episode, host Camille sits down with Erin Davis, an award-winning strategist, speaker, and inclusion expert, to discuss the invisible barriers women face in leadership, from childhood messaging to workplace inequity. They explore topics including imposter syndrome, the confidence gap, ambition, pay inequity, and the systemic changes needed to create truly equitable workplaces.

Visit www.kindofboldpodcast.com or Instagram for more.

Transcript

Intro

Camille 0:01

By the time women walk into their first office, boardroom, or performance review, many have already spent years absorbing quiet and not so quiet messages about the roles they're expected to play. And even though they now make up as many university graduates as men, women remain dramatically underrepresented in leadership. In this episode, I'm joined by Aaron Davis, an award-winning strategist, speaker, and inclusion expert with over 20 years of experience helping organizations build more equitable leadership cultures. Erin is the founder and lead inclusion strategist at Erin Davis Co. and a three-time Canadian delegate to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Together, we go beyond the so-called confidence gap to talk about invisible labor, imposter syndrome, ambition, pay inequity, and why women are still expected to do it all. And we ask what's really holding women back and what it would take for a system to finally catch up. I'm Camille, and this is Kind of Bold. Erin, many young girls are often told that the ultimate goal is to get married and become mothers. And that is perfectly meaningful and respectable. It actually is deeply fulfilling for many women. What I mean is that it's often treated as the default as opposed to a choice amongst many. And on the other hand, you've got boys, and for them, you know, the focus is on being successful and having a career. Where do you think these messages come from and how do they become so ingrained so early on?

Erin Davis 1:41

Yeah, Camille, I think that there are so many parts of a child's exposure in the different environments that they are in that allow them to paint this picture of this is what success can look like for me. And if we actually looked at the statistics and we looked at the numbers, a lot of women do become mothers. Not all women become mothers, but a lot of women do. And what's the framing that they're exposed to? Did their mom go out into the workforce and have a career, or did their mom stay at home? And so if they aren't exposed to different stories, different possibilities, different ideas, then I think this sort of becomes programmed and over time just becomes, like you said, normalized as this is this is the pathway. And I think on the other side, because it's very important to talk about different gendered roles, for young boys who become men, I think that they are often conditioned around this provider role that I have to provide for my family. Success is defined by what I can offer in that sort of perfect family dynamic. And to not do that means that they aren't successful. And so that's probably been conditioned in their minds unconsciously for a really long time. I think that certainly there's a frame of who we grow up with and in that story of our family. But what do we see in movies? What do we see on TV? What do we see positioned for women as the heroine and men have to save me? There has been some commentary in recent years that we really want to see that female role change, that she can decide on the direction of her life. She is the one ultimately making those decisions. And I think we also want to see what is success redefined in that world. And so there are many ways for us to define success. And I saw a post online the other day that the United Nations posted. It is, you know, a sad one. But in the post, it's the top 10 countries that have reached gender equality in the world, but there are no countries on it. And did you post that? Did I see that on you? Yes. So we're both thinking about this.

Camille 4:05

It's very powerful.

Erin Davis 4:06

Yes, exactly.

Camille 4:07

You talked about being exposed to different models and scenarios. If someone has a boy and a girl and the same role modeling takes place in the home, how come the prospects are different for the girl and for the boy? I have a son, and when he was very little, I bought him a doll, and he didn't even look at it for a second, right? Like he was not interested. But on the other hand, he was obsessed with trucks and anything battle-related. Like he's always been like a typical, what you will call a typical boy. I don't have a daughter, so I don't know, you know, how different it would have been. But how would you explain these differences with kids growing up in the same household?

Erin Davis 4:55

I think again, it starts at a very young age. We have conversations about the so-called gender reveal parties that happen even before children are born. And to qualify it, it's really the determination of the baby's sex, um, not their gender. Those are two different concepts, but we interrelate those two terms and we say pink is for girls, blue is for boys. That is very typical for a lot of households. So you come into the world with a pink room or a blue room, and then we go into different spaces, and everything is categorized by these two binary ideas. And so you go down the toy toy aisle, and if you're a boy, then you get socialized to the trucks and the cars and the, you know, typically, typically male toys. And then for girls, they're the ones that are socialized with the dolls and with the household items, and all of these elements start to just take them down a pathway. And if those pathways aren't interrupted, and it's not saying, oh, you can't play with a doll if you're a girl, and you can't play with a truck if you're um a boy, it's just saying, why don't we just put everything in one room and you can go in and try everything out and see what you like? So that's another reason. When we go into the class into classrooms, we also see that separation. And I remember distinctly, and this was a long time ago because my kids are much older now. But when my son was in kindergarten, I was volunteering for the classroom, and the teacher had us putting pennies, um, which are no longer a currency here in Canada, putting little pennies in bags to replicate money. So they would each get 10 pennies, and then those would, you know, translate into an activity that they would do in the classroom. And the teacher was really sweet. She had written everyone's names on these little cards and gave us ribbons to secure the names to the little bags. Guess what color the ribbon was? Pink and blue. And so that was very my journey. And I, you know, I have to determine like where I'm going to provide my feedback. And I didn't have a strong relationship with the teacher to be like, hey, had you ever thought about like maybe just using all blue ribbon or like yellow ribbon, or like, why does it matter?

Camille 7:24

Yeah.

Erin Davis 7:24

What if we accidentally use the pink ribbon for the boys' names, you know? And I always thought about that. I the teacher didn't mean any harm by doing that, but that again perpetuates the stereotype. And so I think for parents, if they're listening and they're going through what can do, it's really about disrupting the default.

Media Representation & Role Models

Camille 7:45

And in media, so you mentioned television and movies. When we ask young girls to describe themselves, they rarely describe themselves as leaders or aspire to become presidents one day. And kids who draw scientists and geniuses, they tend to draw men. Well, kids who are exposed to all kinds of media. Like, how can we ensure that, you know, they see themselves in what they watch?

Erin Davis 8:10

Well, uh I think that there lots of progress is still required. I and that's a great example. You ask little kids what do they want to be when they grow up. You know, I think a lot of girls say a teacher because they see the teacher in front of the room as representing them. And quite often the numbers show us that teachers in elementary schools are women. And for boys, they say police officer or firefighter or, you know, roles that have typically been held by men. So if we don't see that in the world around us, and that's what I mean where progress is still required, that we want to be able to walk down the street and experience anyone in these positions. If we turn to media, then we need to start to see representation in a different way. And I think this is where my work comes to life to say when we're writing a script, when we casting a role, when we are thinking about the stories that we want to tell, tell the stories of the minorities because there are male teachers in elementary schools. There are women who are firefighters, there are women who are police officers. We don't necessarily tell their stories as loudly. And there's this huge momentum in sports right now, women's sports. And it makes me so excited for these little girls who between the ages of 12 and 14 often leave sports. And there's a multiple reasons why. I think part of it is that they don't see themselves on this pathway to the same in the same way that men are like, I'm gonna go to the NHL, or I'm gonna go play professional football, or I'm gonna go play professional soccer. There's a huge gap within professional sports for women. So that can be at play. There's also the confidence for little girls as well, and the pressures that they feel at that young age to show up and be perfect and be, you know, we can even even talk about the Barbie movie and why that was so transformative in the last few years, right? Because Barbie was really this like symbol of you need to be skinny and blonde hair and look a certain way and show up and like, you know, be subservient to Ken. And the movie really started to open up the idea that no, like, no, Barbie can be like amazing on her own. She doesn't need anyone there to support her or lift her up. She can accomplish whatever she wants to accomplish without the support of a man. So I think those are the those are the pieces that we need to see more of. And I would say in our world of polarization, because that movie people loved it or they got angry about it, right? I don't know if we necessarily allowed enough conversation to happen to say what didn't you like about the movie, or what did you like, and have that conversation and have that dialogue and say, oh, maybe you didn't like it because it disrupted the narrative. It disrupted what feels comfortable for you. Let's let's dive into that a little bit more and try to understand it.

Camille 11:34

We now see as many women in university as men, yet far fewer in leadership. How do you explain that?

Erin Davis 11:43

Yeah, I think there are, again, multiple reasons why. I think that we still have a stereotype of what success looks like in leadership roles. We in Canada have not seen a woman in the role of prime minister for a full term in the United States. We still haven't seen that. And I use those examples because they're very close to home, right? We are here in Canada and we often look down to the south, or we have historically looked down to the south. And so that's one example of like a very significant leadership role that girls don't see themselves being representative in. And I think we can give lots of examples looking at Fortune 500 companies where we are still stuck at less than 10% of CEO roles being held by women. So there, the whole notion of like you need to see it to be it and believe that that's possible, it's still there. And the other part for me and in the work that I do is what is the culture inside of an organization like? Are we setting up everyone for success? Do we have inclusive spaces? So if we talk about it from a political perspective, when women run for office, when they run for these positions, they are often judged on their appearance. They're often judged on how they show up in a room, not on their politics, not on their ability to do the role, what they've accomplished in their career. That's often left to the side. And so we are using the wrong criteria to measure success, or even the wrong criteria for the conversations we need to have. So that also really needs to start to shift. That we are actually looking at performance for individuals rather than at looking at people at the surface level.

Self-Advocacy & Confidence

Camille 13:40

Actually, there's research that shows women judge their performance poorer than it is, and men judge theirs better than it is. Men ask for what they need and what they're worth, and women not so much, or avoid negotiating. Do you see that in your field of work? And how can we support women in advocating for themselves in the workplace?

Erin Davis 14:05

My initial instinct is to say lack of confidence, but I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that in absolute terms, but there's a lot at stake. When you are looking to continue to grow in your career, you're going to analyze a lot of different components. And so if you are the only one who is being given this opportunity to advance within your career, and you have a lot of evidence from the roles that you've had, the experiences that you've had in the workplace that have told you to stay quiet, to just take what you've been given, not to ask those questions, not to bolster that confidence, not to lean in to say, yes, I deserve this. This is what I'm worth, this is what my performance is going to be. Judge me on that, then there might be that voice inside of us that says, accept what is given to us, don't push back. Because if we do, maybe we risk losing it all. And I don't think that's an inherent trait that all women necessarily have within them to say, no, I'm going to be strong, I'm going to show up, and I'm going to present myself in that phyllist form. And I may think that women can work on building that for themselves. I guess I'm sort of talking about it as this double standard, right? That there is that fear of that pushback that saying, no, pay me what I'm worth is not gonna land well and is it worth it? And so women can often stay quiet.

Camille 15:53

And we can mute our achievements. I'm the vice president of a not-for-profit. I never say that when people ask me what I do. Uh, I say, Oh, I work for a not-for-profit, and people are all like, but what do you do? And I'm like, uh, you know, I do a lot of you know, team management. When I started at that organization, I started an entry-level communications role. I worked really hard, but not only that, I put myself out there. Uh, I pitched ideas to leadership. In 2020, during the pandemic, when I became manager, I had a two-year-old in my lap while I was working 14 hours a day. I mean, all that's to say that I deserve to be where I am today. I worked really hard, and yet I don't say my title. Why am I not saying my title? You know, and I was talking to a female CEO the other day, and I was I was telling her just this, and she was telling me, yeah, totally, it's embarrassing. Um why is it embarrassing? Right? Do you think male CEOs say it's embarrassing to say that they're CEOs of an organization? So why are we not saying it?

Erin Davis 17:01

I think for me personally, I am such a relationship builder, and I love to get to know someone beyond that title. I actually am the owner of my business and also don't use the title CEO because I think there's sort of a colonized language embedded in chief the chief part of CEO. And I suppose I always want to be different, so I always look at it differently. And so maybe there's a new way forward, is that as women, we don't need to replicate what men are doing. Oh, interesting. But maybe there's a new way of interaction in North America. It is very cutthroat, it is very much about how big is my title, how fancy is my car, how big is my house, like all of those notions that have really been embedded, I think, in a lot of people who work in the business world. And it's like, is that what it's all about? Because there's a point where you reach in your life where you realize that that is not what it's all about.

Camille 18:15

So I'm basically subconsciously doing the right thing and leading the way.

Erin Davis 18:20

Yes.

Imposter Syndrome

Camille 18:21

But I I love what you said. Like well, being a bold woman, it's not about replicating what men do. I absolutely love that. Yeah. It's leading the way on our own terms. Yes. Right. And I am also a relationship builder. I think of the person first. I want to get to know them first, and that's totally what matters more than any title. So I can totally relate to that. Um, I want to dig a little deeper and see if there's also a bit of imposter syndrome and self-doubt in the way that we present ourselves at work, the way we ask for what we need. Many capable women struggle with imposter syndrome. Why do you think that is?

Erin Davis 19:05

I've had conversations with people about imposter syndrome, and I have to say that I've actually had men express the same type of I think it's lack of role models. I think it's lack of mentors in our life, people who are going to help us go down that pathway. How are we supposed to know? Right? We're we're figuring it out. And so if we have those people in our lives who can help us maneuver that, I think it diminishes to a certain extent that imposter syndrome. I think it's the systems that we operate in as well that are causing us to bump up against like, do we feel that full confidence? Can we show up in that room? Was it built inclusively for us to begin with? No. So then we feel like a bit of an imposter when we come in. But I think within the work of imposter syndrome, it's our inner work that we have to do. It's understanding who we are, how can we show up with our own authenticity and say things like, I'm not ready, I grow as I go, I don't belong in this space becomes I earned my place here and my voice matters. Thinking in our heads instead of thinking others know more than I do, saying my lived experience is a source of knowledge. From I have to prove myself to why I don't need to prove that I have already lived. And this idea of like, what if I fail becomes what if I fly? And so I think it's a mindset shift. And if we don't have those people in our corner cheering us on, we don't have, like I said, those role models or those people we aspire to be, it becomes harder to sit in the positive and we become harder on ourselves and we really judge our inner critic to say, maybe, maybe I'm not worthy of being here. But just saying that out loud, of course, you deserve to be here. Of course, everything in your life has brought you to this moment, and you deserve to be successful and you deserve to move forward. And it's the one thing in our control to work on how we show up as individuals in a circumstance. Yes, there's a bunch of systems operating around us that may bump up against that success. That's the work I do. But I always say within this piece of imposter syndrome, how can we work internally to say with authority, I'm meant to be here.

Leadership Perceptions & Stereotypes

Camille 21:52

So being relationship builders, there's this idea that women must be nice. Right? And this choice between success uh versus likability and sometimes calling a woman ambitious sounds negative. Women who lead are sometimes called bossy when men are seen as decisive. How do you explain these differences of perceptions of women's leadership versus men's leadership?

Erin Davis 22:26

I think it's the stereotypes that we have built over time and we continue to perpetuate them in how we view and assess women and men, to be honest. So let's let's take the leadership example. If we predominantly see men in leadership roles and we're assessing their ability to lead in a certain way and a woman comes in and shows up with authority shows up in confidence shows up as the boss what are we judging her against are we judging her against the man and what he is done in his role or are we judging her in terms of the stereotype that we think about women holistically we're we're judging in the wrong way and remember how I said before we have to start to really measure people on performance how are you going to show up in this role if the role requires you to show up and be assertive then be assertive then that is the value of a strong leader. Not oh you're a woman and you're being assertive like that makes me feel uncomfortable or you're not supposed to show up that way. We have to stop taking things at surface value. And I say that because we've got a lot of reprogramming to do we've got a lot of ways in which we've been told women need to show up in a lot of ways which men show up and and the thing is it's true for men too. If you show up as a feminine man in a business scenario what are people gonna say they're gonna place judgment in that because you're not showing up as we have typically maybe seen in that boardroom scenario. But what's their performance like how are we actually measuring the outcomes that they have been asked and assigned to do so you know I I I do think it's part of our work to really unwind what we have thought of in terms of what success looks like and you know maybe we think oh she's being really bossy pause why are we thinking that unpack it a little bit and then either maybe she really is being bossy or maybe we are putting this unconscious bias on top of what she's doing and defaulting to the way that we've always thought about what leadership needs to look like.

Camille 25:15

What's hard is that the assessment of performance is also biased in its own way and based on those schematics. And and so how can we strictly focus on performance for the sake of performance and forget about gender forget about stereotypes forget about perceptions that's really hard right because we are we are intrinsically biased. Yeah well unconscious bias is real right like we can't we can't avoid it yeah it is can we?

Erin Davis 25:45

We can't eliminate it but we can interrupt it and we interrupt it with certain very simple tactics of pause slow down fully assess don't rely on the way that we've always thought about performance at the beginning you know often inside of organizations we set up what our performance measures are at the beginning of the year and then we assess them at the end of the year. Be really purposeful about the time allocated to really understand what are those performance measures, how are we measuring them? How is success determined? And this is the hardest part for me if someone's performed well, then they need to fall into the process to say you're on the pathway to growing in your career. You accomplished what we set out for you to accomplish so now you're on this pathway to a promotion you're on this pathway to work on a bigger project but too many times I see individuals being stalled even when they perform well women predominantly because there's unwritten rules happening inside of the organizations promises made about who is going to continue to have access to roles and responsibilities and I'll give a really easy example that still happens to this day where individuals will say oh well she's of childbearing years. Oh she has a little one at home I wouldn't want to burden her with more work excuse me I've heard that ask her have the conversation do not make the assumption and so it's not negative intent. We probably think we're doing a good thing right even in that example I wouldn't want to burden her like she's got all these responsibilities at home does she what is that share of responsibility?

Pay Equity & Career Pathways

Camille 27:49

Or maybe she does but she also wants to advance her career and she wants to have access to all those opportunities. So yeah it needs to begin with a conversation for sure it's difficult because you are being assessed against those really tangible KPIs of key performance indicators but you also have this whole soft skills component right and so there's this objective component of the assessment and you have this subjective and you know potentially biased component to the assessment and that's where women find themselves being perceived in a certain way in their leadership position. Women working full time in Canada earn about 89 cents for every dollar earned by men what can we do about this I'm wondering if you could speak to how women negotiate their salaries negotiate for promotions is there something there that is not happening that is sort of perpetuating the gender pay gap?

Erin Davis 28:53

Yeah I mean to the latter question yes presumably there is there's a lot of systems to navigate inside of organizations and beyond HR, your leader also plays a role in what that pathway looks like for promotion I would say how do we start to address that the biggest piece for me in the equation is that women aren't in higher earning roles. Oh yeah. And so that would change that number systemically if we actually had women at a higher earning potential I think about women who maybe work in roles like caregiving and how we undervalue that as a society. And so at the surface I think if I asked people like how important is caring for children, they would say it's fairly important. And so shouldn't those individuals be earning a higher wage and income so that's a starting point right like how are we valuing these roles in society? And how are we assessing women inside of organizations as well and being very clear and transparent in process. So it's sort of the same thing I was talking about with performance reviews is you can't just be really wishy-washy on how you look at providing someone with a promotion providing someone with a salary increase I've done this research inside of organizations and so if we truly are comparing apples to apples which is like tricky to do all the time men and women are earning the same if they're doing the same role if you are a business analyst in you know we normalize for you're gonna earn more money working in this city than this city. The cost of living is more expensive. So we've equated that into the actual salary that's being paid to an individual but what we start to do again is we start to see this gap where men get promoted, get into a higher earning bracket and then the separation starts to happen. I have a very close friend of mine her and her husband both graduated with engineering degrees from a university in Germany. So they both came in with this really great engineering degree to Canada but had two young children. My friend the mom chose to work part-time to navigate the childcare needs within the household so at that time their earning potential was the same but her husband was able to take the courses get more hours working in Canada and was able to start moving up in the organization and attain a higher salary even though they both had the same level of education so is that the right solution it was the right solution for their family. Now behind the scenes it was really hard for her to get her professional engineering designation. She eventually did but I feel like I had a small role to play in saying I think you should continue to pursue this because she was told you're gonna time out with your hours. You don't have enough hours after 10 years and she was like well maybe it's just not worth it. And I was like no it is worth it because once you have that designation your earning potential starts to increase and she's got more experience. She's got more skills but on paper we're not gonna pay her as much money because she doesn't have those letters behind her name. And so these are the nuances in the system that we really need to take time and pay attention to and maybe we need to create different pathways for that success because we can't just put women into the same structures and expect the same outcome.

Parental Leave & Unpaid Labour

Camille 33:17

I love that story. That's such a good example I can't help but wonder what I would have done. I've always been a very career driven woman but I have such a deep bond with my child and so does his dad by the way but I feel like if there was such need I might have been the one working part-time I don't know if there's something about mothers there right mothers who are working who are perhaps more willing to sacrifice their careers for the sake of their children than men are perhaps I don't know if there's something there that you think is is valuable to explore.

Erin Davis 34:00

It's undeniable that a young child needs their mother you know we provide for them things that fathers physically can't right and and so there is that there is that difference from a young age I think society really puts these pressures on families and households there's definitely Scandinavian countries that have made this policy change incentivizing men to take parental leave more than just a few days can can we share it 50-50 right and and really saying like this is foundational to a child's life and you being a part of that is an important part of the equation. So that's a potential policy change that Canada could start to look at because right now paternity leave is up to 18 months but the data doesn't tell us that a lot of women or men, like it's mostly women taking parental leave, but they're not taking 18 months off because that's not financially viable for them. So in our household my husband took two years away from his career and made people so uncomfortable when he took that pause and it was just in terms of where he was working there was this opportunity I was starting my business we had the conversation what's going to work best for our family and what worked best for our family for us was for him to be sort of the stability at home while I worked to build the business. And so when he was leaving his final days at the organization and I should also say he works in the skilled trades so it's not an office environment works with mostly men. I said did you did you ask your colleagues like do they do they understand what you're doing what you're doing meaning like not working he was like no they don't understand they cannot compute that he is gonna stay at home I was like huh yeah that's that's something that we need to like have a broader conversation about because when I explain it to say this is like what works best for our family I think people would go oh okay you know did my husband love it not every day is he working now yes but if I asked the question to mothers did you love every day of being at home with your child the answer would be no you know like there are good days and there's bad days. There's days that are hard there's days that we love like that is life right.

Camille 36:37

It's such hard work honestly it's the hardest job in the world so much easier to sip coffee and meetings you know on my laptop I went back to work after seven months and and even that was too long for me and parental leave is definitely not a vacation it's interesting how when you go back people are like oh did you have a nice break it was not a break it's so hard and aside of women not working only exists because unpaid labor isn't counted as work. And it's not just caring you know for children it's just also looking after the household.

Erin Davis 37:14

Yes there's another perfect example of where we need to disrupt the default it is not a vacation it is not that you aren't doing a job it is a job defined in a different way and if you really talked to leaders about how successful working moms are in the workplace they work harder than anyone you people can argue with me on this but they know what their boundaries are because they have to leave at a certain time to pick up their kids. And we're starting to see this a little bit more with men because we also are living through a lifetime where if you are in a household with two parents both parents are working like we gone are the days of like for a middle class family to just have one person working right both of my kids are in sports and so that's a full-time job just you know driving them around to all of these sporting activities and making sure that they have what they need. And so there's a lot of pressure on parents and we have a pretty hard system that's like get back to work be in the office all the time be on technology has not enabled us to be smarter. It's enabled us to be connected all the time.

Camille 38:34

And even with the introduction of hybrid and remote work since COVID 19 and and the flexibility that that gave to so many women still workplaces don't line up with school hours, childcare or basic life logistics, right? So now it's like oh you you were given all that flexibility but essentially you are working two jobs and so I think perhaps society is catching up a little bit we're being more flexible but we're not quite there yet what are ways that workplaces and employers can support that work-life balance?

Final Advice: The Power of the Pause

Erin Davis 39:11

I think a lot of organizations are getting stuck in making decisions without data there's a huge push in 2026 to return to office the the pressure is from managers who feel more comfortable with individuals being in the office versus working remotely there is a push towards comfort of that's how we used to do it that's what I know that's what I can manage. And the pressure of the physical space right organizations own buildings own leases they have office space it's part of an ecosystem in which we've sort of created a world where everyone comes together to do work in the same space and we aren't asking the questions of what's the next iteration of how we work systemically there are organizations that still offer remote work but we really aren't pushing the edges of what's possible. And we also aren't using the data of what employees are telling us meaning they want that flexibility. They want that autonomy over their day and I was talking to someone recently about their childcare arrangements. And so within their workplace they have a return to office that's slowly creeping up first it was like one day two days three days they're certain it'll be full time by the end of the year and full time means 8 to 530 I think the focus is on the 530 their childcare closes at 530. So the hours of childcare have actually shrunk since the pandemic because we put so much pressure on this and daycares are saying no, we don't want to operate these really long hours these are our new hours and so it's putting pressure points onto parents to be able to pick their kids up. And so for this mom who has to drive you know through rush hour traffic to try to get her kid at 530 it really doesn't work. And so what they had historically done was either you know work from home or leave the office early at 330 to avoid the traffic rush with lots of time to spare pick up their kid and then you know if they need to sign in in the evening they do that. But I don't know necessarily if the leaders making the decisions on the workplace dynamic are understanding that example or other examples that really showcase why hybrid work flexibility is so important. And the other piece here and you know I think about this a lot in the back of my mind is the is intersectional identities and we learned during the pandemic that we were able to offer a lot more employment to persons with disabilities. And when you think about that the idea of someone who has a disability for them to leave their home, get all the way to work be 100% on through that process I often think of my friend who uses a wheelchair and that's just one of many different disabilities it takes her a long time to get ready in the morning to even like be able to physically get to an office. So to have that flexibility to work from home huge benefit for her. And so we have to think about that. Do we want to have people who are able to do the work or do we want to force everyone into a system that we know that doesn't work

Camille 42:53

Erin if you were to advise one thing to our listeners today for them to take away what would it be?

Outro

Erin Davis 43:01

The power of the pause I think through everything that we talked about if we can slow down which is tricky in our world where we're asking a lot of people because we are constantly on we are constantly being bombarded with information and deadlines and work deadlines and all of all of that pressure to perform better if we can slow down and say is there a better way am I excluding someone am I leaning in to a bias and through that pause we bring in more information and we take a little bit of a different pathway I think we can start to create the momentum of creating more inclusive spaces where we are conscious to the needs of women we are understanding of The challenges that they face. And even through our conversation, too, I want to acknowledge that there are people who don't identify as male or female, right? Like we also live in a world of folks who are authentically showing up as themselves. And so the world is even harder for them because there aren't a lot of people who understand that. So if we can be more conscious to each other and hold space for differences, I think we can start to move forward in a better way.

Camille 44:39

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it or found it helpful, you can follow wherever you get your podcast or share it with someone who might need to hear it to. Until next time, be bold, be kind, and don't apologize for holding both. I'm Camille, and this was kind of bold.