Mary Kay Ash

  b. 1918; d. 2001 | American entrepreneur

At The Bottom

— 1963

Even worse than the lack of equal pay was the lack of respect she received for her ideas.

Mary Kay Ash had spent more than two decades building a career in a world of business dominated by men.  She was a tough woman, having endured a heartbreaking divorce after World War II, when her husband returned from the war and left her with three young children to raise.  After the divorce, she entered the world of sales and became quite good at it — so good that she was eventually hired as a trainer. For the previous ten years, she had been working as a training director for a Dallas-based company and had grown increasingly frustrated by the treatment she received from her bosses.  For years, she watched as new male employees — men she’d trained herself — vaulted over her in the company hierarchy, where they were offered salaries that were nearly twice what she earned.  “What really angered me,” she wrote later, “was when I was told that these men earned more because they had families to support.  I had a family to support, too.”  Even worse than the lack of equal pay was the lack of respect she received for her ideas.  On numerous occasions, Ash presented new marketing plans that were dismissed with the explanation that she was “thinking just like a woman.” When she was passed over once again for a promotion in favor of a man she’d trained , Mary Kay Ash could no longer stifle her frustration.  She resigned.  She didn’t know how she’d earn a living, but she was determined not to give her best effort for a company that didn’t value it.