March 8, 2021, is International Women’s Day, observed each year since 1911. This is not just a day to celebrate the achievement of women around the world. It’s a call to action. This year’s theme is #ChooseToChallenge.
Ask yourself: How will you help create a gender equal world?
For B2B marketing professionals, this question impacts our day-to-day lives as well as the future of our industry. How are women in our workplaces treated, trained, and promoted? Which aspects of our culture hold women back? Is our business losing ground due to pervasive gender inequality?
According to McKinsey and LeanIn.org’s Women in the Workforce 2020 Report, women make up nearly 50% of all entry-level positions, but less than 30% of VP positions and about 20% of C-Suite positions.
The past months have set women in business back even further. According to a recent article in Forbes: “The pandemic may be sending us backwards when it comes to gender equality.”
In part because of increased caregiving duties, women in senior positions are leaving the labor force. “This will have a lasting impact on families and the U.S. economy.”
Make space for women to thrive
It’s critical that we ramp up our gender parity efforts despite the tumultuous times. How will you #ChooseToChallenge this year?
Losing sight of gender equity right now is likely to put you at a real disadvantage when the pandemic begins to recede, writes the Harvard Business Review.
Efforts must include ways to improve opportunities for women of color. The 19th cites research noting the “barriers to entry for many Black women who find themselves underrepresented, undervalued and, often, disrespected at work.”
Not only are they inadequately represented in leadership positions. Black women are being promoted at far lower rates than their White male counterparts despite seeking promotions at similar rates.
To commemorate International Women’s Day, learn how four successful female marketing leaders navigate their career paths and make space for other professional women to thrive. Get answers from experts in our informative panel discussion webinar: Women in Marketing: Career Advancement Strategies & Advice. See how our experts rise to the challenge of advancing women in business.
Get answers from female marketing experts
In this Art & Science panel discussion, Tom Riddle, Director of Survey and Research Solutions at ViB, is joined by distinguished panel of female marketing experts:
- Caralyn Quigley Stern, VP of Americas and Global Channel Marketing at Sophos.
- Xina Seaton, VP of Customer Experience at BluePrism.
- Robin Caputo, Chief Marketing Officer at Datavail.
- Jen McAdams, VP of Demand Generation and Field Marketing at Progress.
Over the next few weeks, ViB will share highlights from this webinar and expanded answers to the questions posed by attendees.
You’ll get advice, strategies, and tactics along with key career insights from our panelists.
Learn career tips and strategies
Watch the video, and look for future ViB blog posts, to learn tips and strategies from our expert panelists.
You’ll get answers to questions about how women leaders navigate their marketing careers, including:
- What best practices they’ve employed to grow their careers
- How to advocate for and mentor other women in your company and field
- Opportunities for aiding the career advancement for women of color
- Best practices to build bridges between the sales and marketing functions
- What men can do to be allies and support women in business
- and more!
Preview answers to attendee questions
Our panelists fielded questions about women in marketing. They offered advice about career advancement and on-the-job strategies and tactics.
Here’s a preview sampling of their answers.
Q: What best practices have you employed to grow your career?
A: Results matter. Attitude matters. Passion about the quality of your work matters and people notice. And that’s something you have control over. -Robin Caputo
Q: What opportunities for global career advancement are there for women of color that you can give, as hope to others?
A: More and more companies are embracing work-from-anywhere. When hiring in a specific location the talent pool may not be diverse, but in a WFH world, the best candidate can be considered. Also, a lot of companies have or are creating employee resource groups [or ERGs] for people of color to support career advancements. -Jen McAdams
Q: How do you handle being criticized for being too helpful? I’ve been told I’m too helpful, and that I should just let things fail.
A: I think we’ve all experienced where they’ve cut teams down, and the workload has gone up at the same time. So many of the people in marketing, with their behaviors and characteristics, are just willing to take on more and more.
I think the question is: Who is telling you to let that fail? And how do we want to communicate the workload challenges in a different way? Because I would say, “No, don’t let it fail, but still serve up the problem.”
So, if you can control it, do what needs to be done first, but don’t sit quietly. If we’re not serving up to the business that this isn’t sustainable, we are misrepresenting to the business what resources it costs to deliver the outcome. And they think it costs X, but really it costs Y. And we need to be able to serve that productively to the business. -Caralyn Quigley Stern
Q: How do you advocate and mentor for other women in your company and industry?
A: We specifically reach out to women within the company within the community to help them learn new skills, to help them learn about the environment and the career opportunities.
We tend to think promoting women is a woman thing, but it’s an everybody thing. And when our male colleagues will get on board and actually begin to act on our behalf, that’s when we see a lot of change happening. -Xina Seaton
Advocate for women in your business
Advocating for the career advancement of women in business is important every day of the year. Find ways to support working women and #ChooseToChallenge. Learn more by watching the entire episode, Women in Marketing: Career Advancement Strategies & Advice.
If you are interested in learning about ViB and our effective marketing programs, contact us.
