Post 39

I was nominated for MD at a tier one bank having the best production year of my career. I had been paid up in a down year and my review had given me the green light for additional headcount on my team. When I shared I was pregnant less than 4 weeks later, I came in one day to a room of 4 men I reported to or had some part in the business I ran all in a room waiting for me. I was told it “wasn’t working out” without explanation. it was glass and open and my team witnessed the entire interaction on the floor next to the office.

It was something you would see in a Mad Men episode not a modern workplace and it was just a few years ago. I refused, obviously, and they made the next few months hell. The push out was every bit as bold. They put a lower performing and less experienced male from the desk in all the meetings I had been and took him to my clients and introduced him as new coverage while I was still there. Later I learned the narrative was there must have been an “event” or something that made this happen. There was a cultural resistance to accepting discrimination can happen this way. There was no “event” other than my pregnancy.

I quit on orders from my Dr because the stress almost made me miscarriage.

One of the hardest parts of this experience is I looked for women in senior positions to at least witness what was happening and I couldn’t find anyone that felt like taking the risk of speaking up was worth the impact in their careers and saw through that process how many of the women felt vulnerable and unempowered even if their titles said otherwise. This perhaps was as hard as dealing with openly embolden sexism.
I had participated in many years of women empowerment groups that talked about comrade and internal support and I mentored and elevated/ promoted several women in my career. when I was in the most vulnerable of my career if not life, I found backs from senior influential women.

Within a year my entire team quit and 2 of them quit while i was there and told HR formally it was incredible and disgusting to watch blantant discrimination unfold. Several colleagues came to my house after I had my son with gifts and have stayed in touch with me. Those managers remained and were never fired by the bank. HR was an enabler yet performed “advocacy” throughout the process to gather information around the team about the situation.

I lawyered up of course and settled but frankly it was a year of salary and my bonus would have been more than that. The lawyers seemed like a different dysfunction and they also seem to know one another on both sides. I had a very big firm that is always in the news. The case was worth 3mio apparently but suing was long, stressful, public. I walked away.

The layers of injustice even in the legal process was overwhelming. I was of course forced to sign something that essentially said this never happened.

To this day, I’ve never understood how being pregnant could be so offensive. I’ve had therapists since and struggle with the “why”. I’ve seen discrimination in other ways as I’ve gotten back into the climb, but what happened to me in this bank I’ve carried since. The trauma is real.

Thank you for doing this. I’ve felt there is no voice. I’ve noticed people act as if things have “changed” as we see more women in leadership. I see the marketing but I have not seen the shift. The women seem younger in announcements and the formal dress pictures/ black tie is back from the 90s but there is still no nursing rooms.