The first year of your job matters more if you’re a woman. How your company pays you do as an entry-level rookie either sets you up for successful pay equity or sets you back a peg relative to your male counterparts.

Envision the climb to senior leadership at your company as a ladder. That very first rung is the most unreliable for women. According to McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace, women are significantly outnumbered in entry-level management positions. They hold just 38% of manager-level positions as opposed to men who hold 62%. In other terms, for every 100 men promoted only 72 women are.

This step, known as the “broken rung”, is a woman’s biggest obstacle to senior leadership. While a lot of ink has been given to the glass ceiling and the poor representation of women in the C-Suite, the breakdown in that trajectory turns out to be not the last promotion from Vice President to President, but instead the first step in your journey: the promotion from entry-level to a managerial position.

Entry-level positions are also notoriously difficult for young people just starting out. Adjusting to the workplace, figuring out passions and career paths, and finding your professional voice comes with experience. And in an entry-level position, you might not have that experience to bolster your confidence.

This brief work record leads to what Sheryl Sandberg explains to be a bias against women and favoring men. She says, “These are all workers at the entry-level– they haven’t built long track records, they all have similar work experience, and they were all good enough to be hired in the first place. There’s no good reason why so many more men than women are being tapped for promotions, only a bad one– bias.”

Courtesy of GreatBusinessSchools.org

This bias is costly for women as once you miss that first promotion it’s an incredibly hard fight to catch up on. This broken rung leads to a domino effect resulting in fewer women in leadership positions. Additionally, the cycle continues circularly as studies have shown that men are more likely to promote another man, and women are more likely to promote a woman.

While it’s nice to dream that the corporate world will right the “broken rung”, history has proven that corporations move glacially slow when implementing social change. As women, we have to empower ourselves in entry-level positions to ensure the promotion and get past this first hurdle early in our careers.

Here are some ways to clear the rickety, old “broken rung”:

• Find a mentor. Mentees are promoted 5 times more often than people without mentors, according to Forbes. You want to have someone in your court when it comes time to discuss promotions. Find a senior-level mentor to learn from and who will advocate for you when the time comes. You can learn how to effectively network online by reading this guide.
• Interrupt bias. When you see bias rear its ugly head, stop it dead in its tracks. The Catalyst assembled an infographic on the double-bind dilemma, which goes into depth on how women are stereotyped in the workplace. “Damned if you do, doomed if you don’t. Too soft. Too tough. Never just right”, is the dilemma many women find themselves in at work. Instead of being categorized by these labels, speak up again bias and interrupt it whenever you see it playing out in the workplace.
• Make yourself visible. Wave your flag loud and proud. While it’s easy to be mousey in your entry-level position, try little, but effective ways to make yourself visible. For example, if you have a hobby, talk with your HR department and try to start an internal club that you lead based on your hobby. If you like reading, start a book club. If you like collecting plants, start a succulents club. Think creatively about how to make yourself visible to the entire company.
• Take on responsibilities early. If you want to get promoted, do the work of the position you want before receiving the title. Expel any questions of your capabilities by cementing a track record that you are up for the job.
• Empower yourself to learn. A rising number of women are attending business school which is an encouraging indicator that the workplace landscape may change in the coming years but not guaranteed. Empower yourself to get an advanced degree or learn new skills as your expertise is one of the many things employers consider when making discussions on who to promote. As we know stereotypes are real around who makes the best leader so it is good to have as many quills to your bow as possible to counter fallacy.
• Believe in yourself. The most important thing, but also the most undervalued. Despite bias and discrimination in the workplace, know how valuable you are. Believing in yourself will allow you to be bold, be visible, and be a leader despite whatever obstacles you face.

Usually, when discussions are had about women in the workplace, the emphasis is on the poor representation of women at the leadership level. That spotlight creates a blind spot in the actual cause of this discrepancy. Tracing the disparity back to entry-level promotions and understanding the “broken rung” is important to inform processes that company need to develop to ensure equal pay from day one. Women can support each other and how we can advocate for ourselves early on but it is the systemic elements that ultimately matter.

Progress must be made by corporations to abolish this misstep and while that is happening, men and women can empower each other to propel past the first hurdle and go on to have a successful career.

This is a contributed article and therefore the views expressed here are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com