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We were so sure it would be great.

1980s — We couldn’t wait to do the math

We had our shiny degrees, our short skirts, our conviction that if we could just work a little harder than everyone else, we would win at the whole life thing. The too-warm shoulder squeeze, the pat on the back that lands further down, the jokes, the innuendos—they were parts of a math problem women did every day. Each day they went into one side of the equation, and if they didn’t equal the cost of complaining—losing your job, your career, your lover, your reputation—then you ignored them. You moved on. It was life then. It was going to get better. If not for us, then for our daughters. For sure.

1990s: The math isn’t adding up.

The Hub and I were academic gypsies, moving on to new places as his career developed. I was at home with four kids, which we agreed was an important and essential role. I read books about healthy ways to raise children, started a home business that employed several local moms, and began writing for local newspapers.

Then we made one move too many, and found ourselves on the south side of Chicago. I went to drop off the kids for their first day at the local public school. Before anyone could even get out of the car, a gunshot rang out. It looked like a young man who had been dropping off two small children was lying on the ground. I drove the kids back home, called the nearby private schools, and started looking for a job to pay for it.

My professional background was rusty, and our need was immediate. A manufacturing company with a long history of making cameras for the movie industry was looking for a technical writer, so I sent them a writing sample. “We liked your writing,” the human resources manager told me. “But they want one of the guys from the technical staff to do it.”

A few weeks later, he called me back. “Well, our engineer wrote up the manual for the assembly line, and nobody can understand it. We want to hire you to write something we can actually read. But you understand we can only pay you half of what he was getting, because we’ve already spent over budget. Plus, you know, he has a family to support and years of experience.”

I could have pointed out that I had a family too, not to mention my own years of writing experience. And (unlike his) mine would actually get the job done. I could have insisted that if I was doing the same job (only better), I deserved the same pay. I could have…

I did the math.

It wasn’t just their salaries that I envied my male colleagues. They could wear trousers, a shirt, and a tie. They could wear the same ones for days in a row. But it was the time of employee dress codes, so I had to wear a dress every day, along with pantyhose and heels. And every day, those hose were torn to shreds as I kicked off the heels to crawl into and over large pieces of equipment, seeing firsthand how each piece of the assembly line worked so I could document it for the manual. I was relieved to get the salary. I liked my coworkers. I laughed at their jokes, worked more hours than they did, and had to walk to the next building over for the nearest women’s bathroom.

I did the math.

I didn’t ask why it felt like everyone else was moving forward while I— the only woman there who wasn’t part of the secretarial team—was falling behind. I didn’t wonder if there would be a point when all the jokes I ignored, the times the guys on the line would tell me to smile, the ‘friendly’ pats, or the promotions I didn’t get would add up to more than I could afford to pay.

I did the math.

2000s. The math was getting harder.

Eventually, I had the corner office, the sexy job title, the decent salary. When the company was sold and layoffs began, I processed generous severance agreements for my male colleagues, but had to get a lawyer involved to get a similar package for myself.

Frankly, the math sucked.

2024: New math.

There are generations who have been born and grown up in the world we didn’t fix for them. But that’s okay. They have a chance to fix it themselves, beginning with the most important math of all.

Vote! It’s the only solution for the math. (You’ll probably still have to juggle though.)