Onlys face more challenges in the workplace than otherwomen; half of these women said they need to provide more evidenceof their competence than others do. (Photo: iStock)

The last time Kaitlin Savage attended a meeting that includedanother woman was months ago. Savage works in the solar industry,in which men outnumber women 3 to 1. The majority of hertime is spent surrounded by men, who at times, she said, underestimate her work, flirt with her, callher after midnight for “personal reasons” and give herinappropriate compliments.

“It's emotionally exhausting,” said Savage, who's consideredswitching to a less heavily male-dominated field, like oil and gas.

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She's part of a group that a new survey from LeanIn.org andMcKinsey & Co. calls “Onlys”: women who are often or always theonly female in the room at work. One in five women place themselvesin this category, according to the survey of more than 64,000 U.S.employees at 279 companies. That number rises to 40 percent forwomen in senior or technical roles.

Onlys face more challenges in the workplace than other women,the survey found. Half of these women said they need to providemore evidence of their competence than others do. Onlys are twiceas likely as other women surveyed to be mistaken for someonejunior. These women are also almost twice as likely to be subjectedto demeaning comments and twice as likely to report havingexperienced sexual harassment in their careers.

“This was my entire career, basically,” said Kristen Fanarakis,who spent 15 years working in finance. She was a part of manyall-male teams and didn't have a female friend at work until shewas in her 30s, she said.

Although Fanarakis had many supportive male colleagues andmentors over the years, she said, other men treated her withdisrespect. One boss told her she could “handle the nappies,” sherecalled. Another held her to impossible standards, giving her poorperformance reviews even though she brought in new business and metall of her goals, she said.

These experiences are even worse for women of color. Almost halfsaid they're often the only person of their race at work. Thesewomen are more likely to feel excluded, scrutinized and closelywatched, the survey found. Maura Cheeks, an MBA student, haswritten about having her identity mistaken for another black womanin the office and having to explain her credentials tocolleagues.

More than 90 percent of thecompanies surveyed said diversity and inclusion is a top priority,but for the fourth year in a row, Lean In and McKinsey found thatcorporate America has made almost no progress in increasing women'srepresentation in the workplace. Women make up 48 percent ofentry-level employees but only 22 percent of the C-suite, ascompanies fail to promote women, the study found.

Even those who do make it past the early stages of their careersaren't likely to stay. Onlys are more ambitious than other women,the Lean In/McKinsey study found: Almost half said they want thetop job, and almost 80 percent said they want to be promoted. Butthey're less likely to stay at their own company; more than a thirdof Onlys said they're thinking about leaving their jobs in the nexttwo years.

“You have a group of women who are put in very isolating andscrutinized positions,” said Rachel Thomas, the co-founder andpresident of Lean In. “You would hypothesize the reason they areleaving is because they are having an experience that is markedlyworse than other women.”

Fanarakis, for one, eventually left her finance career behind.Being an Only “takes a physical and emotional toll,” she said. Shewent to business school, wrote a book, and in 2017 launched awomen's workwear startup.

Thomas suspects that many companies check the diversity box byhiring just one or two women. It's a strategy that hurts more thanit helps, she said.

At her first job out of college, Molly Oswaks was one of twowomen on staff at the tech news site Gizmodo. She said hercolleagues posted pornographic content in the company group chat,adding that readers would harass her in the comments section of herstories, saying she'd slept her way to the job. “There was norespect for the fact that women were there,” she said. “It was justlike, I was the girl that they plucked to have a girl on staff.”(Gizmodo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The benefits of diversity don't kick in with tokenism. Studieshave found that if women make up 20 percent of a group, theyaccount for only 10 percent of the conversation. Women need toconstitute a supermajority to make up 50 percent of talk time in agroup.

“These companies want a diversity of ideas,” Thomas said, buthiring the bare minimum number of women produces “a diluted form ofdiversity.”

Read more: 

• How do women and men experience workdifferently?
• Women and men still have very different careerexpectations
• Young women aren't closing the Great Americangender-pay gap

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