The Leadership Catalyst is where municipal power and womenโs leadership collide. I expose how staff culture builds or breaks public trust, and why women leaders must set the standard for their teams and their communities. This is unapologetic strategy, rooted in SCALEโข, for leaders who refuse to carry the weight of broken systems alone. Subscribe and join a community thatโs rewriting the rules of government leadership.
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Issue 49: The Job Doubled. The Paycheck Stayed the Same. | The Seatโข Series, Part 3 of 5
You know what 2 a.m. looks like on the ceiling above your bed. โ You have run the numbers in your head so many times you could recite them in your sleep, except you are not sleeping because the grievance you have not resolved yet is still open somewhere behind your eyes.
The Catalyst Perspective
When I became Village Manager, the HR function was in transition. While I searched for the right person to lead it, I absorbed the work myself: 25 grievances sitting unresolved, new ones arriving weekly, and police, fire, and dispatch contracts that had gone two years without resolution.
You know what that kind of load does to a body.
The tight jaw you did not notice until it started aching. The way your shoulders live somewhere up near your ears now. The meal you cannot remember eating because you were reading a grievance file while you chewed.
Nobody sat me down and asked if I could sustain that pace. It just became normal.
Widen this out, because the same weight shows up in elected seats too.
A mayor runs an organization that, in most cities, moves millions of dollars a year. No one would expect a man leading a company that size to do it without a chief of staff or real infrastructure around him. And no one would expect him to carry that scope while managing every ounce of public scrutiny alone.
Women are elected mayor of organizations that size constantly and walk into offices with none of that support built in while every misstep, every late reply, every human moment gets watched more closely than it ever would for the man who held the seat before her.
Photo Credit: Plainfield Shorewood Area Chamber of Commerce
Here is a comparison worth sitting with, not as complaint, but as evidence. As Mayor under a strong mayor form of government, I held both the executive function and full oversight of daily operations: one title, one salary, for the entire scope of a multimillion dollar organization.
A majority-male council never raised a concern about that workload while I carried it. Once a man was elected to the same seat, his need for support was recognized and validated. The city created its first City Manager position in its history, now paid $150,000 a year. โ He deserves that support. But I carried the identical operational load for four years, and no one at the table ever asked if I needed the same thing.
That gap did not stay contained to four years of missing income. It lowered the base my pension calculation was built on, a number that should have reflected two jobs and only ever reflected one.
That is not a loss you feel once. It compounds quietly for the rest of your working life and into what comes after it.
And the cost was never only financial. It showed up in my body and in what I had left over for the people closest to me at the end of a day that never ended. โ This is not incidental, and it does not land evenly. The Institute for Women's Policy Research found that in 2024, women overall earned roughly 81 cents for every dollar paid to men. Black women earned about 66.5 cents for every dollar paid to White men in 2023. Latinas earned about 58 cents. These gaps hold across education, experience, and occupation, and absorbing more scope without renegotiating pay only widens the gap that already exists.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, Linda Babcock, Lise Vesterlund, Laurie Weingart, and Brenda Peyser, spent over a decade studying what they call non-promotable tasks: work that keeps an organization running but does nothing to advance the person doing it.
Women are more likely to be asked. Women are more likely to say yes.
The SCALEโข Framework For Public Sector Leadershipโข
Photo Credit: Mayors Innovation Project
S โ Strengths-Based Leadershipโข - Holding grievances, contract negotiations and daily operations together did not mean the structure was fair. It meant you were capable. Know the difference. โ โC โ Confidence and Cognitive Reframingโข - Treating absorbed scope as simply what the seat requires keeps the gap invisible. Naming it as a pattern backed by real data changes how you negotiate for yourself. โ โA โ Aligned Values and Boundary Negotiationโข - If your title has a slash in it, the scope deserves to be named directly, in writing, to whoever can change it. I worked with one mayor to assess her staffing and together we built the case for a support position that had never existed for her office.
L โ Leadership Longevityโข - A role that quietly costs you sleep, ease and peace of mind, year after year without title, support, or pay catching up is not sustainable, no matter how well you are doing it.
E โ Emboldened Ecosystem Buildingโข - I worked with a municipal director to build the confidence to articulate her record clearly enough to advocate for herself. That work led to an increase of roughly $25,000 in her salary. Every woman who names this and negotiates it makes it easier for the next woman who inherits the same gap.
Take Action Now
If you are a leader reading this, look at your own staff.
Are any of your directors, clerks, or managers holding a title with a slash in it doing the work of two people on the salary of one?
This pattern shows up most often among women.
And you are in a position to notice it, name it, and correct it before it costs your organization someone it cannot afford to lose.
If you are the woman living this right now, what has this role quietly taken from you that never shows up on paper?
You are not imagining the gap and now you have the data to name it clearly. Reply to this email and tell me what that cost has looked like for you. I read every reply myself and I am here to help you strategize what comes next.
If you are ready for direct support building that case, the Catalyst Strategic Advisory Retainerโข is one option worth knowing exists. โ This is not another program asking for hours that do not exist in your week. It was built for a woman with none to spare. Private, one-on-one, built on the SCALEโข Framework.
Know a woman living this? Forward this to her today. Know a leader who should read this too? Forward it to them.
Final Thoughts
Your body has been telling you something for a while now.
The tension you carry into every meeting. The sleep that will not come easily. The bracing you do before you have even walked into the room. โ None of that is weakness. โIt is what two jobs on one salary actually costs and almost none of it shows up anywhere except in you.
Naming it is not overreacting. It is the first honest step toward closing the gap that created it.
In two weeks, Part 4 asks what it costs to grieve a job in private with no one around you who understands what you actually lost.
Strategic Counsel for Women in Public and Civic Leadership Former Mayor | Village Manager | City Councilor | Congressional Staffer Creator of the SCALEโข Framework for Public Sector Leadership
The Leadership Catalyst is where municipal power and womenโs leadership collide. I expose how staff culture builds or breaks public trust, and why women leaders must set the standard for their teams and their communities. This is unapologetic strategy, rooted in SCALEโข, for leaders who refuse to carry the weight of broken systems alone. Subscribe and join a community thatโs rewriting the rules of government leadership.
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