Members of Leading Ladies Connecting participate in a team-building activity.
Despite decades of fighting for workplace rights such as fair wages, women make up far less than half of executive positions in American companies, but female students at this university are coming together to work toward overcoming career challenges.
Leading Ladies Connecting, a new university organization, seeks to give women of all majors networking and career opportunities. The club held its first meeting Monday night.
Kimberly Godfrey, club president, and Taeler Wilson, vice president, founded the group after learning there are far fewer women in leadership positions than men. In 2012, women made up about 8 percent of executive officer top earners in the Fortune 500, according to Catalyst, a nonprofit aimed at expanding opportunities for women in business.
“There’s research about women shying away from those leadership positions because men are usually the ones in charge,” Godfrey said. “We are promoting women to rise up and take force of these positions.”
Godfrey, a junior accounting and finance major, said she realized there were no clubs focused on helping women jump-start their professions and felt there was a need to reach out to female students.
Issues such as wage disparity still affect women in the workplace despite legislation such as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 that allows individuals to challenge pay discrimination, according to the National Women’s Law Center. On average, women working ful time earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, according to the White House.
Leading Ladies Connecting hopes to give young women the confidence to challenge discrimination and climb to the top of the ladder in any field they choose, Godfrey said.
Although the group is open to students of any major, this semester will be focused particularly on arts and humanities, business, communication, environmental science, government and politics, journalism and STEM majors because there is a large disparity in women’s pay compared to men’s pay in these fields, Godfrey said.
One of the group’s main events will be a networking session on Nov. 18 with professional women representing a variety of fields, said Wilson, a junior communication and English major.
Ernst & Young professionals and recruiters, law professors from the University of the District of Columbia’s law school and university alumni will be among those talking to students, recruiting and helping them form connections, she said.
Lara Fu, a freshman government and politics major who attended the first meeting, said she is looking forward to talking to successful women in her field.
“If I want to go into politics, men are definitely looked at as stronger public figures,” Fu said. “I like the fact that [Leading Ladies Connecting] is helping advance women in terms of careers and jobs.”
The group will sponsor other events, such as a resume workshop and etiquette session on Nov. 4 and a study session near finals week, Wilson said.
During homecoming week, the group will join the Student Homecoming Committee and others in writing letters and preparing care packages to send to troops overseas, she said.
Leading Ladies Connecting allows female students to socialize with one another while working toward their career goals, Wilson said.
“People can sometimes be restricted to only knowing others in their dorms or in their classes,” she said. “We want them to be able to work with a lot of females on campus.”
In the near future, Godfrey said she hopes to see more women occupying top positions across different job fields.
“There needs to be more women in these positions,” she said, “because we bring a different perspective to those roles.”
