When Rachel Bondi-Campellone made her way to the top of the corporate ladder in her field, she discovered what other women before her had encountered time and again: a male-only world of executives.
A technology expert, Bondi-Campellone climbed the ranks of Fortune 100 companies, handling multimillion-dollar deals for AT&T and becoming the first female business development director in Microsoft’s interactive television services division.
It was no secret to her that there are vast disparities between men and women in the workplace; after all, this is an issue that women have battled since the 1960s, she says. But rather than accept the status quo, Bondi-Campellone of Dana Point decided to do something about it.
Last year she founded Earning Power, a Web-based company and online community that connects men and women with the goal of finding solutions that break past barriers to equality in the workplace.
As readers may recall, in the past few months I’ve written about issues working women face when they start families, decide to become stay-at-home moms or choose to continue with their professional careers.
What prompted the columns was the growing rate at which women are leaving the work force – one of the many issues that Bondi-Campellone has researched as a corporate anthropologist here in Orange County.
The result of this research is her first book, which will be published in the next few months: “The Wealth Gap: Eight Unique Barriers to Women’s Wealth and How to Overcome Them – Eight Reasons Why Men are Richer and How Women Can Change It.”
In it, Bondi-Campellone says there isn’t just one issue holding women back; there are at least eight gaps, such as sex, education and wages, but that to overcome these, women must stop seeing men as “the enemy.”
“If a woman is going to have a career, men really matter in their success and earning ability,” says Bondi-Campellone, 37, a mother of four. “This is especially the case for how men participate in raising children.”
She found that wages for women have declined from 78 cents to 76 cents for each dollar earned by men this year compared with last year. (Men earn 20 percent to 25 percent more annually.)
After having children, women’s pay goes down while men’s pay increases, creating a wage gap.
Ninety percent of women have at least one child by age 40 and lose out on a tremendous amount of wealth, estimated at several hundred thousand dollars per earning lifetime, when they take unpaid leave to raise their children, writes Bondi-Campellone.
The loss of wealth also occurs because of biases they experience when they return to work and are passed over for promotions, projects and bonuses.
About 85 percent of corporate boards are men, while 70 percent to 90 percent of Congress, and news editor and university faculty positions are held by men.
And while women make up about half of the work force, statistics show that men still dominate most mid- and senior-level positions.
Bondi-Campellone says that every company she worked for had flexible time and Family Medical Leave Act options, but men don’t take advantage of these options as much as women – 8 percent compared with 47 percent.
Ironically, when Bondi-Campellone surveyed men and asked them if women had helped their careers, every man answered yes.
“They believe women are smart, capable and successful,” says Bondi-Campellone. But when she asked the same men what holds women back, they blamed child rearing.
Mary Jean Durán, president of Durán Alvarez Solutions, a business development and public affairs company in Newport Beach, has noticed the trend of women leaving corporations to start their own businesses.
While this is heartening in the sense that women have more options today, for the corporate world, it’s extremely concerning, she says.
“If you’re trying to field a team – the best team possible – and you’re only recruiting from less than 50 percent of the population, you’re not getting the best,” says Durán, a former director of diversity for Disneyland and senior adviser for the Small Business Administration.
After 15 years at international corporations, Bondi-Campellone left her job at Microsoft and co-founded Citipacific Mortgage in Irvine with her husband, Guido Campellone. There, they advise women on how to make up the wage gap by investing and therefore relying on residual income instead of a salary.
At the corporate level there is still hope that the leadership and wage gaps can be eliminated, Bondi-Campellone says. There are men who see the benefits of having women in the work force, but they haven’t been given the tools to make this happen, she says.
As her book points out, “The truth is, our gap is wider because of both genders, and so it’s important to incorporate both sides into the solutions.”
Contact the writer: Cabrera’s opinions on local news appear every Tuesday and Thursday. She is a former metro reporter who has covered issues including immigration and higher education. Contact her at 714-796-3649 or ycabrera @ocregister.com.
