Women’s Equal Pay Day: Do Our Organizations Practice Meritocracy?
Leadership and Culture Tell the Real Story
Women’s Equal Pay Day is not just a symbolic reminder of the wage gap—it’s a reflection of how deep the disparities run in our workplaces. Despite the talk of meritocracy, the reality many women face tells a different story. This is not an issue of capability. Women are just as talented, just as driven, and often outperform in the roles they’re given. Yet time and again, they are not promoted at the same rates, stay in supportive roles longer, are not released from roles timely, and are not measured by economic and capital outcome standards but rather something far less tangible.
Let’s call it what it is: This is not a meritocracy problem—it’s a leadership and cultural one.
When Merit Is Not the Measure
Too many organizations claim to promote based on merit, yet quietly operate on influence, proximity to power, and politics. Some leaders rise not because of sustained performance, but because they know how to advocate louder, influence powerfully, align politically, or simply coast on results from the past. Meanwhile, others in supportive roles—often women—are sidelined or overlooked, even when they’re the ones doing innovative and creative work that drives impact.
I’ve seen firsthand how complex initiatives are handed to underperformers as “tests,” while capable, proven women leaders are either left to carry the burden or are left out altogether. And in some cases, their work is later co-opted by someone else more politically connected. Sometimes this isn’t even done quietly—it’s blatant.
If you have ever been asked to “get someone up to speed” so they can present your work as their idea, just because they were expected to be the face of the update—then this story is not new.
Here is what is new: Let’s start asking more intellectually honest questions. Where’s the integrity in taking credit for other people’s work? Why are the people creating the new solutions and strategic work not the leaders of the organization?
Let me tell you one of my stories.
When “We All Know Who’s Doing the Real Work” Isn’t Enough
I remember sitting with a leader I respected—someone I genuinely enjoyed working with—who, when I raised concerns about another leader planning to present my work and that of my team’s work as their own, simply said:
“We all know who’s doing the real work.”
And while their tone was empathetic, that moment didn’t sit right with me. Not because of them—but because of the water we were all swimming in. It wasn’t meritocracy. It was something else.
You see, I had been asked to join a task force to solve a long-standing issue. The project had passed through a few hands previously—none of whom had made meaningful progress. Eventually, it was given to a team of people who weren’t known for strong performance. They were being “tested” to see if they could rise to the challenge, to lead, and to perform. I knew this because I was on the inside. I was added because, in the words of someone close to the effort,
“We need someone who can actually get the work done.”
That should’ve been a red flag. But I believed in the work. I believed in the potential for meaningful impact. So, I joined the team and helped to shape the conversation. My team and I quietly started building a solution—an intellectual solution and a technical solution. We stayed under the radar because we knew there would be resistance to the technical solution. And we were right.
The task force leader—uninterested in the details and not building a solution in a meaningful way—was asked to give executive leadership an update. They asked me to get them up to speed so they could present the solution. They said they were expected to lead in the design, so they needed to get up to speed to present the solution as if they were involved. When I shared my views with my leadership, I was told that once executive leadership realized the task force leader didn’t know the details—and since I would be in the room and more than likely speaking up—the credit would naturally come back to me and my team.
Think about that. We’re saying we value honesty and accountability—yet we ask people to stay quiet while others present the work as their own, because eventually the truth might come out.
In a culture of real meritocracy, such conversations and situations shouldn’t even exist.
Why Transparency and Accountability Matter
Until we start measuring what really matters—and making those measures transparent—we will continue to see the same cycles repeat. Promotions, raises, and project leadership assignment should be tied to economic and business objective results, not less tangible metrics like relationships, proximity, etc. To truly lead, leaders must:
Track actual contributions with clear, measurable KPIs.
Track progress through longitudinal reporting—to see job migration, progress or lack of employee progress, contributions, successes over time.
Remove subjective performance standards—we should be measuring real creations, real results, real financial impact.
Acknowledge family responsibilities, which often disproportionately fall on women, and yet roles are designed for success for individuals who do not have family responsibilities.
Stop rewarding proximity to power over innovation, productivity, and financial and business outcomes that align with our business strategies.
Create intellectually honest environments where employees, through the use of transparent data, can ask more first-principles questions—root cause analysis questions—without risking retaliation or exclusion.
Women Are Not the Problem—The System Is
Women are often placed in supportive roles that are herculean and critical to holding up departments—but because those roles are “quiet” or not seen as strategic, they’re left out of promotion pipelines. And in cases where a leader doesn’t want to lose a reliable person, high-performing supportive employees are, at times, held back because their advancement might make things inconvenient for that leader.
Let’s be honest: that’s not meritocracy. In those moments, leaders are serving their own comfort, not the critical work of the business—and certainly not serving the rising employee.
We need to make long-term investments in the business where the best employees are put in key roles to drive the business.
And when women do rise, they’re still often measured differently. Home responsibilities don't go away. In fact, they grow over time. Even in the most equitable households, data shows women take on more of the invisible labor. The system, meanwhile, rewards those who can be “always on”—a luxury often afforded only to those without caregiving responsibilities.
Do the Math: The Numbers Don’t Lie—But They Do Demand Questions
Let’s take a step back and ask some intellectually honest questions. Start with a simple and real example that I saw first-hand:
If two-thirds of your promotion pool are women, and only one-third of those promoted are women, while two-thirds of the promotions go to men, then:
Men are being promoted at 2x the rate of their representation pool.
Women are being promoted at 0.5x their representation.
Maybe that’s a one-time event. Maybe the sample size (12) is small. But if this happens year after year or across large datasets, then the issue is no longer anecdotal. It's systemic.
This is why longitudinal data tracking and reporting become important. It’s more work, but anything worth truly understanding is work!
So, we must ask:
If our organizational and business performance is strong, who is driving that performance? If two-thirds of the workforce is women, yet they are only getting promoted at 0.5x their representation pool, are we truly then performing well?
If we believe we are performing well as a company, is the success coming from a small pool or is it more widely distributed in terms of employee contributions?
If we have mostly employees who are succeeding and achieving in our organizations, then we can start asking why the math works out that we have more from one population, yet they are less likely to get promoted. And why is that?
Why are we not promoting more from the larger pool that helps us get the results?
Can we tie those results back to individuals?
Do we value some work differently than others?
Do we value less the support roles?
Are those individuals in support roles—especially women—being given more opportunities to lead, innovate, and grow so we can then measure them on work we do value for promotions?
We have to ask all these kinds of questions. Because if women are consistently outperforming but under-promoted, one could argue we are not only failing to recognize excellence—we are actively suppressing it.
Let me be clear: Women and men both support organizations. This isn’t about one group carrying the other. But if we’re not willing to look at the math—and more importantly, what lies underneath it—then we’re not doing our jobs as leaders. We’re being intellectually lazy, or worse, intellectually dishonest.
Real meritocracy would never allow that dynamic to exist.
Leadership Is a Choice—Not a Title
It takes courage to lead with truth.
It takes strength to stand up for your team when someone more senior wants to take credit for their work.
It takes clarity to challenge norms when those norms are cloaked in a culture that rewards silence and discourages pushbacks.
But those moments matter. They define not just our own leadership—but the cultures we help create.
Eventually, I had the opportunity to present our team’s work directly to senior leadership. I wasn’t looking for credit. I was looking for truth, integrity, and recognition of those of us who did the heavy lifting. It was the right thing to do—and it sent a message to my team that their contributions, their innovations, their efforts mattered.
What Now?
If we want to honor the spirit behind Women’s Equal Pay Day, we have to do more than post on LinkedIn or host a panel discussion. We have to:
Look at the math in our organizations –not just this year, but the last few years.
Ask harder questions once you have the data.
Tie performance to strategic and business outcomes—not just personality.
Ensure recognition and opportunity go where the work is truly being done.
Because a culture of meritocracy isn't something you declare—it’s something you build. And sustain. Through transparency, accountability, and consistent courage.
Until then, the path will remain harder for women who operate in those herculean support roles—not because of their ability, but because of the systems surrounding them.
And still, women rise—because sitting still has never moved progress forward. We are contributors, innovators, builders, and leaders—and moving progress forward isn’t just what we do, it’s part of who we are.
I’m In! Are you?