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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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Changing The Roles

Sitting in the corner of a chocolate shop in Encinitas, four millennial women crowd around a small table. They are schooling me on everything from Maslow’s Hierarchy to the prevailing gender bias in corporate America. They interrupt each other often (and enthusiastically) as cups of hot chocolate teeter in their gesturing hands.

This small sampling of San Diego women perfectly represents the data collected on millennial women over the years. They are bold, ambitious, well-educated and unabashedly feminine. And they are unyielding on their place in the workforce.

Often cast with their male counterparts in the generation of industry-disrupting twenty-somethings, it’s easy to forget that millennial women — separate from the whole — are a force to be reckoned with.

This generation of women, ages 18 to 34, has entered the workforce in droves over the last decade, slowly nudging the scale toward equal gender representation in business. Pew Research reported earlier this year that millennial women are not only graduating college at a much faster rate than their grandmothers, but they’ve also begun to outpace men in earning bachelor’s degrees. This influx of highly-educated females may be a sign that the wage gap between women and men will continue to narrow, albeit slowly, according to Bloomberg Business.

As millennials flood the labor market, their unconventional qualities are being noted by employers and market researchers. This generation of 80 million people (half of whom are women) have $200 billion in annual buying power, making millennials the focus of piles of industry research.

Market insights have shown that growing up as the first generation with access to the Internet (from diaper days to adulthood) has shaped millennials into one of the most dynamic subpopulations in history. And their take on business — including women’s role in it — is fundamentally different than previous generations.

Internet Shapes Millennials

Lauren Avenius, 32, swirls her hot chocolate as an extra-large dose of caramel whipped cream threatens to spill over. Avenius is a senior consultant for the high-tech and aerospace industries, a gig she earned after leading internal innovation at Sony Corp. She recently launched a co-working space, consultancy and event management company called Innovators Collective with her business partner Amber Brandner, 30, giving them both the flexibility to frequent Chuao Chocolatier regularly. Their “second office,” they call it, laughing.

Avenius and Brandner are passionate about young women in business, and are both involved with Global Shapers, a network of entrepreneurial and socially engaged young leaders connected through city-based hubs across the world.

“Unlimited access to information has made millennials less insular as a generation,” Avenius said. “Even though I grew up in an affluent community in Orange County, I was extremely aware of the growing wealth gap in America. I had friends all over the world who were experiencing something different than me.”

The women go on to describe social movements they’ve observed over the years via Twitter and YouTube, from watching riots of desperate young men rebelling during the Arab Spring to stories of the refugee crisis in Europe.

“The millennial’s perspective is global,” Brandner said. “We are choosing to make decisions and to live our lives in accordance with a greater perspective because it’s available, and it’s always been available to us. We’re not going to shut off that access to information.”

A Global Perspective

A global perspective has shaped much of the millennial woman’s worldview, including her definition of career success.

“We’re aware of all the crises happening globally, from the labor market crisis to the student loan debt bubble,” Avenius said. “We’re constantly aware of the challenges facing us. We’re the first generation in documented history that will die younger and live poorer than our parents. That’s real to us. We want to be happy, and live a fulfilled life.”

That feeling of fulfillment, according to market research, is the key driver of the millennial generation. Even in business, young women (and young men) cast fulfillment as the No. 1 definition of career success, over compensation, ladder climbing, health care and retirement perks.

“It’s not enough anymore for your employees to come to work, get paid, get benefits and get vacation,” Avenius said. “People want to know that what they’re doing matters that they are contributing to the world or community in some way.”

Millennial Values

This is where Lolita Taub jumps in. Taub, 30, is the most reserved of the women seated at the table, but when she speaks, it’s with authority.

Taub is vice president of sales at Glassbreakers, a women-led enterprise software company in Silicon Valley focused on diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Taub has a rich history of elevating millennial women in business.

After climbing the sales tech ladder at IBM and Cisco in her 20s, Taub took a corporate sabbatical to found a video series focused on millennial women entrepreneurs. The F SHOW, as it’s called, highlights the inspirational stories of over 80 female millennial entrepreneurs whom Taub met while traveling to 20 countries on six continents. The show was featured in Huffington Post, TEDx, and Startup Grind.

“No matter where I went, no matter what country I was in, there were three main values of the young female entrepreneur that were consistent” Taub said. “All of these women wanted to create something of value, to create change in the world in terms of progress, and to create wealth. Now, the definition of wealth varied. Some people defined it in terms of compensation, and others defined it in terms of personal fulfillment.”

Asked why millennials seem to value personal fulfillment over compensation, Avenius is quick to make a distinction.

“I would challenge that completely,” Avenius said. “I do not think our generation is less concerned about money. We’re very money-conscious.”

Brandner adds, “Fair compensation is part of the package of what we want in our lives, but we’re not willing to compromise some of our other values for the sake of the dollar. Money is a vehicle to get the things we truly value. We are a generation of experience-driven individuals. That’s why travel is so important to millennials.”

Blurring Lines Between Life and Work

Here Brandner hits a chord, and the women speak passionately about the importance of traveling to reach personal fulfillment. The lines start to blur between the definition of career success and the definition of personal happiness. Asked to bring the conversation back to business, yet another characteristic of the millennial rises to the surface.

“There’s an element of openness with millennial women,” Avenius said. “We want to bring our personalities into work. We care deeply about balancing work and life, and that doesn’t just mean bringing yoga into the office. It’s about understanding that we’re human, and we fully own all of our time. When we’re at work, we don’t see a reason to compartmentalize work time, friend time and family time. It’s fully integrated.”

Blurring the lines between work and home life is reflected through trends in progressive companies. Ping-Pong tables in work rooms, cafeterias stocked with healthy foods, and yes, yoga breaks during work hours.

“Those values are permeating,” Avenius said. “It’s not just a millennial value. We’re seeing 30-year work veterans who are adopting those values because it speaks to something true in humans. I think it’s a response we’re having culturally to the last few decades of unsustainable work values and corporate structure.”

Breaking Through Gender Bias

But when asked about the future, millennial women are wary. Seventy-five percent say the U.S. must continue to change if gender equality in the workplace is to be a reality, according to Pew Research. Just over half of those women say that society favors men over women.

When asked if they’ve experienced gender bias in the professional world, all three women nod their heads. First, they tell stories of being the only woman in a room full of male entrepreneurs, investors and leaders. Then they describe encounters with potential business partners who called them “just a pretty face” or demeaned them with sexual innuendo in the boardroom.

The concept of being “the only woman in the room” is a story told countless times by generations of ambitious females in business. Brandner said she believes startup culture is more averse to females than corporate culture due to the relatively low number of young women entrepreneurs. These professional barriers came as a surprise to Avenius, she said.

“I wasn’t raised with gender bias; in fact, I was always told that I could do whatever I wanted to do,” Avenius said. “The first time I encountered gender limitations was when I went to work.”

The belief that “the sky is the limit” is a common thread among millennials ― men and women alike. In fact, twenty-somethings are often shamed for being part of the “participation trophy” generation. The idea is that millennials were coddled by their parents, resulting in a strong sense of entitlement. This entitlement, however, may be the key to breaking through gender bias.

“We as millennial women refuse to accept gender bias and refuse to be limited by it,” Avenius said. “So we are going to show up at the table, even if it’s a table filled with 42 men and one woman: Me.”

A Nod to Previous Generations

Although millennial values may push change forward in the workplace, it’s important to note that progress is the result of previous generations, Taub said.

“Boomers and Gen Xers have provided a comfortable situation for millennials, and because of that we have more education and more opportunities,” Taub said. “How many articles have you read about millennials who started a business out of their parents’ garage? Thanks to our parents’ sacrifices, we have been provided stability in a lot of ways.”

It’s like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Taub said. Once the basic necessities of food, shelter and safety are met, humans can aspire to self-actualization.

“There’s been a shift in needs,” Taub said. “Past generations have taken care of lower rungs of the pyramid: food, safety and security. Millennials now have the freedom to be philosophers. We can wonder about the meaning of life, fulfillment and happiness. We can take risks financially and not fear that will we have no food or shelter as a result.”

Not to mention, Brandner adds, previous generations of women have helped level the playing field between women and men in the workplace after decades of oppression.

“I think it’s important to realize that there have been women throughout history who have fought an uphill battle to make these values in business a reality,” Brandner said. “But today we are at a place of critical mass. That excites us, because we need critical mass to create change.”

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