Fix Systems, Not Women

Strong Feelings

What would you do if you found out you were being paid $25,000 less than your peers, and that while they were allowed to work from home, you were expected to show up in person?

Kate Rotondo had both happen while working at one of the largest and best-known tech companies in the world, and the experience profoundly changed her relationship to work. Kate joins Sara to tell her story of institutional betrayal—and how it took her from working in code to working in clay.

I had to let go of the responsibility of providing for my family. I had to let myself become expensive. I also had to shift my sense of what's important to me from getting my career back and earning that money to reclaiming my time—to becoming rich in something else, if it wasn't going to be career accolades, and it wasn't going to be respect at my job, and it wasn't going to be the money that came from that. I kind of had to shift and think, 'What I'm asking for here at work is to have the same lifestyle as my colleagues.' My colleagues wake up in the morning. They don't drive three hours to get to work…So how do I get that? How do I get the quality of life that the men around me have? How do I regain a sense of entitlement to that time? That I'm entitled to have free time. I'm entitled to have passions.

—Kate Rotondo, founder, Equal Clay

Links:

• Kate Rotondo
• Equal Clay
• Break the Good Girl Myth
• IGNITE: Design Your Creative Purpose
• Blind to Betrayal
• Institutional Betrayal
• Active Voice