Millennial women having midlife crises? Here’s the cure

An important article published in The Cut has been making the rounds this week: The Ambition Collision. TL;DR: Millennial women are suffering a "midlife crisis" — their professional lives are leaving them feeling discontented, much like the discontent their work-in-the-home grandmothers felt. It hit the bullseye and left many women who read it nodding their heads in agreement.

Here’s a quote from the article:

“The ‘promise' used to be domestic happiness. Now another bullsh*t promise has taken its place, and another generation is waking up. The men in charge are still in charge. It is impossible for women to continue to have faith in a vision of their own empowerment, when that empowerment is, in fact, a pose."

Perhaps it’s no wonder.

When this cohort of Millennial women graduates started their careers, many thought for sure that the career-stalls their mothers and aunts and older sisters experienced were a thing of the past. That was then, and this is now, and things are different.

What this group has had is the first prescriptive guidebook on how to navigate the world of work. It was complete with instructions on how to take your seat at the table, lean in, how to know your worth, and provided the *tips and tricks * for success at work. “Do x and y, and get promoted, just like I did.”

As for home life? Well, here the media chimed in, investing countless Gigabytes and dead trees in a steady diet of "Can we have it all?" The continued asking of this question, ad nauseum, implied that we can, in fact, have it all. Or somebody can. And if somebody can, why can't that somebody be me?

It all felt pretty great, because these career doctrines purported to put control in our own hands. They gave women the recipe for "empowerment", and they gave us role models. They gave us hope.

One small problem: it hasn’t worked. The gender pay gap hasn't budged; the number of female CEOs is declining (though the law of small numbers may be at work here); and women-owned businesses raised 1/45th the venture capital dollars that businesses run by men did in 2016. And there are fewer young women in STEM jobs than the generation before them. Here’s the thing: these numbers mean we aren’t just setting ourselves up to move forward or even go sideways. We could arguably soon be moving backwards.

So much of the conventional advice to women on “how to succeed in business” tells us we can do this, as if it we were operating in a vacuum. But as individuals, we can’t accomplish this on our own. Instead, we need to remember that “every important decision about our careers is made when we’re not in the room.” (H/T to Carla Harris at Morgan Stanley.)

I am repeatedly struck by how many successful women I know have had very successful (most often, male) mentors, who gave them opportunities, who helped smooth the way for them, and who fought for them. I’ve had that: Lew Sanders at Sanford Bernstein and Sandy Weill at Citi.

I’ll be deeply honest: that has often been the make-or-break difference between my friends’ successes or face-plants. It hasn’t always been smarts, or hard-work, or great ideas; it’s been who helped push and pull them along the way.

But here's the crux of the issue: almost everybody hits a bad boss in their career. My worst was a CEO who told me I was on my own to figure out the conflicting feedback I received that I was both too aggressive and not assertive enough. Gee, thanks. (To be clear, men hit bad bosses too; but in the swirl of gender norms and expectations in the workplace, there are simply more issues that can trip women up.)

So, while the men remain in power — and a key to success can be to have a great (I’ll reiterate, likely male) mentor — a key to failure can be having a bad boss. It may be no surprise then that the term "empowerment" — a word that has been stretched in so many directions that most of us have forgotten what it means — actually means "to be given power."

“To be given power.” Hmmm.

All fine and good if you have someone who wants to bestow power on you...no strings attached. But this generation of women is beginning to recognize what Gloria Steinem first noted decades ago: few groups of people in power want to share it. Power has to be taken.

So if we can’t do it on our own – and what we’ve been doing isn’t working – what do we do instead?

Let’s do this together.

We’re not stuck. There are solutions to this issue...and IMO, many of them revolve around getting more money to women. So kiss the idea of being "empowered" goodbye. Money is power. More women, with more money, equals more power. This breaks the cycle.

This is why I founded Ellevest: to provide equal opportunity for women to earn the returns potentially available (i.e., get more money) through investing. And from there, a lot of great things can happen: women funding women, women buying from women-owned-businesses, women hiring women, women inviting women onto their boards, and women buying from companies that respect (and promote) women.

Indeed, we can form our own financial ecosystem.[1] Not excluding the guys. In fact, not excluding the guys at all. Just us consciously including other women. And recognizing the power we already have to change this. Together.

So, what’s in the next guidebook of how to be successful? Invest in yourself. And then we can change the world however we want. Let’s do this.

#FinancialFeminism

Sallie Krawcheck is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ellevest, an innovative digital investment platform for women. She is also Chair of Ellevate Network and of the Pax Ellevate Global Women’s Index Fund. She is best-selling author of Own It: The Power of Women at Work.

For information about Ellevest, a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registered investment adviser and its financial advisory services, please visit the firm’s website (www.Ellevest.com) or the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website (www.adviserinfo.sec.gov).

[1] H/T to Cindy Gallop on the concept.