Fighting about "Equal Acccess" is missing the point of how advancement actually works...and what leaders need to do differently
The case that's launched a thousand questions...
Years ago, I was a copywriter at a well-known Chicago catalog company. One of my colleagues, let’s call him Bob, began dating a bright young woman in the inside sales department. We’ll call her Shelly. Time went by, and eventually Bob and Shelly married, and within a year, they were on their way to raising a family. We all toasted to their happiness.
The day after Shelly gave birth, Bob was called into HR and given a 20% raise—recognizing his new role as a father and provider. When Shelly returned to work, she did not receive a similar increase.
If the question of fairness has not yet entered your mind, consider this: Bob had four colleagues – 3 female and one male – none of whom received this off-cycle wage increase.
Years later, Bob and Shelly moved on to other firms. Bob’s starting salary was higher because of the earnings level he’d already achieved, a wage disparity that never closed.
Ultimately, they divorced – and Bob paid child-support toward the care of the 3 children left in Shelly’s care.
With primary responsibility for raising 3 children, Shelly’s once-promising career never progressed into management, and the household standard of living remained lower than that of Bob’s second family until the children moved out and began careers of their own.
While such overt examples of pay inequity are much rarer today than they were a few decades ago, it is through the inequity lens that many a DEI program was born with an eye toward leveling the playing field and helping address structural gaps in career advancement that is often lost as women enter and embrace their child-bearing years.
That’s why programs designed to ‘level the playing field’ are now being challenged. Consider a recent EEOC case against a Coca-Cola bottler, which raises a provocative line of inquiry:
If a leadership opportunity is offered only to women, is that discrimination?
Legally, the answer may be yes.
But strategically, the question is far more complicated, because equal access to a program doesn’t necessarily mean equal access to opportunity.
Before we debate fairness, it’s worth looking at a few more real-world outcomes:
- Women hold ~49% of entry-level roles -- but only 29% of C-suite positions
- Only 93 women are promoted for every 100 men at the first critical step to manager
- Women earn ~82% of what men earn overall, across all wage levels
- Mothers earn closer to 74% of what fathers do
- The motherhood penalty can exceed $500,000 over the course of a career
- This puts women at risk of having less money available to cover their costs through their retirement years
Women don’t lack ambition or capability. They lack equal access to the conditions that drive advancement.
These are not small gaps. They are systemic patterns.
Which raises a critical question: If opportunity is equal between men and women, and remedial actions are unnecessary, why are real-world outcomes so consistently unequal?
THE COCA-COLA CASE
The EEOC lawsuit centers on a women-only leadership event that included company-funded travel, lodging, and development workshops. Approximately 250 women attended the event, and as the program content was developed to help women advance, men were excluded.
The claim: This women-only event denied men equal access to a career-advancing opportunity.
From a legal standpoint, that argument is straightforward -- but from an organizational perspective, it exposes something deeper.
HOW ADVANCEMENT ACTUALLY HAPPENS
In practice, advancement doesn’t happen primarily through formal programs. Those who advance to the C-Suite do so through sponsorship, visibility, informal access to decision-makers, and proximity to power.
Many of these ‘off the books’ opportunities often happen after hours, in small groups, and in conversations that are never formally documented. Advancement is often decided before the formal consideration process ever begins.
THE HIDDEN IMBALANCE
Now layer in reality:
- Women are more likely to carry primary care-giving responsibilities within the family;
- They are more likely to step out -- or step back -- at key career moments such as when others are receiving their first supervisory or management roles;
- Women’s caregiver time commitments also mean that they are less likely to have time or access to informal “after-hours” networking environments.
This unequal access to informal opportunities isn’t about capability. It’s about care-giving constraints. The system rewards those who are more visible and present with continuous access, regardless of whether the recipients display greater or equal potential.
SO WE ARRIVE AT THE REAL ISSUE…
Which yields greater career dividends? Formal equality vs. practical access
- The law asks: Was anyone excluded from a particular event or opportunity?
- Reality asks: Who had benefited from regular, uninterrupted access to opportunities… all along?
The case scrutinizes access to a women’s conference aimed at leveling the playing field…while ignoring who has been included and had ongoing access to the conversations where career advancement opportunities are decided.
Leaders who employ high-performance women may find themselves wondering how this case and its implications are sitting with their team. You certainly do not want to create programs that put you in a compliance predicament – nor do you want to disadvantage women whose work may play a notable role in your company’s success.
Equality in access to programs does not correct inequality in access to opportunity.
WHAT SMART LEADERS SHOULD DO
Good leadership in the equity space does not need to be about choosing sides. It should be about designing better systems. That’s why high-performing organizations are shifting from developing one-off programs to designing more equitable advancement systems that provide ongoing structural access to opportunity.
What that looks like:
- Transparent promotion pathways
- Formal sponsorship programs (not just mentorship)
- Leadership exposure built into roles – during the workday, not after hours
- Deliberate multi-level networking that is inclusive by design -- not by default
- Manager accountability for performance-based talent advancement
- Re-balanced networking and relationship-building opportunities so they are accessible across schedules, roles, and responsibilities (rather than relying solely on after-hours or informal settings)
The goal of this new approach isn’t to advantage one group over another. It’s to remove the hidden barriers that have shaped advancement outcomes for too many years.
If we don’t address how advancement works -- through access, visibility, and sponsorship -- we’ll keep debating fairness while reproducing the same uneven outcomes.
And that’s not just a talent issue -- it’s a business performance issue.
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