It is an exciting time to be a woman. History is being made, and we are all a part of it. Women are breaking through glass ceilings of unimaginable thickness in government. Iowa has its first woman serving in the U.S. Senate. Within days, we’ll have the opportunity to vote for a female CEO of the United States of America.

While we have a lot to celebrate, we still have a lot to do. As unbelievable as it may seem, in this modern first-world country of ours, women continue to be objectified and discriminated against.

In 1983, when I graduated from Iowa State University (20 years after the Equal Pay Act of 1963), the typical woman working full time earned only 79 percent of what the typical man earned. And 35 later — 50 years after the passing of the Equal Pay Act — there has been no progress. 

Today, white non-Hispanic women can expect to earn 79 cents for every dollar a man earns. Now, that is deplorable. And more deplorable yet is the fact that the gap is even greater for African-American and Latina women, with African-American women earning 64 cents and Latina women earning 56 cents for every dollar earned by a white non-Hispanic man.

According to the White House Council of Economic Advisers Issue Brief from April 2015, “Decades of research shows that no matter how you evaluate the data, there remains a pay gap — even after factoring in the kind of work people do, or qualifications such as education and experience — and there is good evidence that discrimination contributes to the persistent pay disparity between men and women. In other words, pay discrimination is a real and persistent problem that continues to shortchange American women and their families.”

Although much has changed and there are many more women in the workplace, corporations are still a man’s world and it’s rare to see women in top leadership roles. Pay continues to be disparate without women in top leadership roles. Why is this? Sure, we continue to overcome sexism and stereotypes in the workplace. But these aren’t the only things holding us back. There are many reasons, of course, but I took particular note of one significant barrier over the course of my corporate career.

Women hold each other back. As women compete for a very few positions available to them within a corporate hierarchy, they don’t support one another. Rather, they compete. In fact, women can be covertly — or even openly — hostile. And those who make it to the top hesitate to bring others along with them. This has to change.

Without women in leadership roles in America, we are underutilizing and underpaying 51 percent of our talent pool and missing the opportunity to provide female role models and mentors for young women and men deciding on careers and those just entering the workforce.

Without women at the big conference room table or on the golf course, where casual Saturday morning corporate decisions are made, we fail to capture diverse and important viewpoints.

The corporate world could learn some valuable lessons from the nonprofit sector. While women make up nearly half of the employee pool in Fortune 500 companies, only 4.4 percent have made their way up to CEO. Nonprofits, especially in the health and human services arena, seem to be more estrogen-friendly. Women make up a larger portion of the nonprofit workforce and there are more of us in leadership positions. Female leaders in the nonprofit world seem to be open, willing to share … more collaborative. Plus, we have the opportunity to hire, mentor and promote more women.

I’m not saying the nonprofit world is perfect and equal for women. We still face challenges. We still have to do more to prove ourselves. But in my new world, the shareholder does not wag the tail of the dog as it does in the corporate world. Instead, a well-informed volunteer board is able to focus on operational effectiveness and long-term sustainability.

That being said, as the CEO of a nonprofit, it is my responsibility to build a strong and balanced board. I have to earn the trust of that board — made up of both men and women. That’s another piece of this puzzle. Corporate or nonprofit, women in leadership have to learn how to work effectively with their male counterparts. But first we have to get more women in top roles, and we cannot do that without women supporting women.

Michelle Book is president and CEO of Food Bank of Iowa. Prior to this position, Book led community and academic relations at DuPont Pioneer. Book serves on several community boards and commissions. She was named a Business Record Women of Influence in 2014. Book is originally from Jefferson and currently lives in Des Moines. 

Connect with Book on LinkedIn.