Breaking the Glass Code

In search of the femme-algorithm to find equality in the workplace

The year is 2025, 30+ years into my career, and the questions are still the same - where are the women in leadership?! How has the femme-algorithm not created a full 50/50 split on the C-suite yet? As my male-dominated life at work continues, I look around and say, “Where’s my ladies, my girls, my chicas?” Why am I alone up here, and how do I change it?

It’s hard to imagine a world where women are 60% of the workforce, yet they fall off after mid to senior management. I was reading the McKinsey & Company: Women in the Workplace 2024 report, where something hit me like a bolt of lightning when they said in the report that the “path to parity” is most likely still 50 years away. What?! 2075? No! Come on, Stop! I can’t anymore, I really can't. My daughter will be past her retirement! You’re telling me that the leading authority on tracking female equality in the workplace is saying that we have 50 more years to wait to reach even parity, that’s just to get to 50/50. No…not on my watch.

Women dominate the workforce, outpace men in higher education, and achieve more than at any time in recorded history. That’s why ‘we’ (you and me) are going to create a new “femme-algorithm” and change this NOW. We are going to change the fact that women have accepted being less than what equality demands. I challenge my collective of courageous readers to think big, think beyond, grow big, and grow past these limiting beliefs once and for all. I appreciate what McKinsey did in the work to explore the state of females in the workplace, but geez, we cannot accept that it will be fifty years before women are at par in the workplace.

Call to action time, femme-algorithm time, so listen close. Today, think of the women in your life (yourself, sister, cousin, mom, aunt, friend, daughter) and realize that if we don’t change this dynamic, the ladies will forever be considered less than for the same work, same role, same efforts until we say ‘no’, change it and demand more. This will not be a sideline sport; this will require full-on engagement and resilience.

I remind us that women are 70% of our HR Professionals in our workplaces today. It’s been this way for well over 30 years. So, how is it that inequity still reigns supreme in female roles, pay, and promotions? I’ll tell you why: it is because women do not fight for other women at work. There I said it. (I’m not saying all women, all the time,

but when it matters, we often can’t or don’t) It’s not that we don’t want to, it’s that we believe we can’t without risking our equity, calling attention to what we might have quietly achieved by sneaking in past the men, or worse, we may risk our power and lose what we achieved by speaking up. I am not saying it’s right or justified, I don’t like it, yet I know it’s true, and I do want it to change. More than wanting it to change, I will change it, and hopefully, I’ll convince all of you to change it with me. Let’s break the glass together.

Femme-Algorithm (n.)
Pronounced: fem·al·guh·ri·thm

A radical reprogramming of workplace power structures designed by women, for women — to rewrite the rules, recode the culture, and rewire the path to leadership.

It’s not just about breaking the glass ceiling. It’s about rewriting the entire system that built it.

The femme-algorithm exposes the hidden formulas that keep women underpaid, underpromoted, and underestimated — and replaces them with bold new variables: equity, visibility, voice, and unapologetic ambition.