“I Don’t Do Imposter Syndrome” with Sallie Krawcheck

Over the last 20 years, there’s been shockingly little progress towards closing the gender wage gap. In 2022, women earned 82 cents for every dollar a man earned, but in 2002, we earned 80 cents… In other words, it took us two decades to gain two cents. 

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And while you could argue that real progress takes time, when we look at the numbers in the 20 years before that, women gained 15 cents — from 65 cents on the dollar in 1982, to 80 cents in 2002. In other words, our progress has slowed to a trickle. And the most maddening thing about it is: We don’t know exactly why. 

All of these numbers are from a new piece of Pew Research called the “Enduring Grip of the Gender Pay Gap. ” Basically it says: “There is no single explanation for why progress toward narrowing the pay gap has all but stalled in the 21st century.”

We know what we’ve always known — that women lose financial ground when they leave the workforce to raise children and that men are more likely to say they want to be managers than women. We also know that women are less likely to embrace investing than men — women keep far more of our money in cash, and that sets us back when it comes to making sure that we have enough money to retire, in part because we live a lot longer than men.  

READ MORE FROM OUR INTERVIEW: How Sallie Krawcheck Is Changing The Money Messages We Send Women

When we talk about women embracing financial confidence and investing more, there’s perhaps no one better to talk to than Sallie Krawcheck. Sallie is the CEO and co-founder of the wealthtech company Ellevest, and she is on a mission to get more wealth — via earning and investing — into the hands of women. Her road to creating Ellevest was winding and full of setbacks, but she says she’s always believed in her abilities. Listen in as she shares details on the experiences that got her to where she is today, including her time as CEO of two of the largest banks in the US (Merrill Lynch and Smith Barney) and CFO of Citigroup. You’ll quickly see why Forbes ranked her as the seventh most powerful woman in the world.

As CEO of Smith Barney, Sallie went from managing 300 people to over 20,000, but says she never doubted that she could do the job. “I don’t do imposter syndrome. I’ve worked with people who self-identify as the smartest people in the world. And they are smart, but they’re not that much smarter than any of us,” she says. (We LOVE that attitude!) 

Our favorite one of her philosophies? Nothing bad happens when women make more money. Amen to that. For more great conversations like these dropping every week, subscribe to How She Does It on Apple Podcasts. 

READ MORE: 

• HerMoney Podcast Episode 257: How Women Over 50 Can Reclaim Workplace Confidence And Power 
• 3 Empowering Steps for Women to Build Financial Confidence
• The New Rules For Being And Finding A Mentor in 2021

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