MONEY TIP 001 - The Gender Gap is [STILL] Real.
Nothing in this post is a recommendation.
“On average, women employed full time in the United States lose a combined total of more than $916 billion every year due to the wage gap. … Less than 1/3 of women believe they are paid fairly. Just 28 percent of U.S. working women say they are confident they are paid the same as their male counterparts.” National Partnership for Women & Families.
See links at bottom of blog.
HERE’S THE THING YOU MIGHT ALREADY KNOW; Women are different than men. Here’s what you might NOT know. Women work a large part of their lifetime FOR FREE. Women work an average of 7 YEARS (*1) outperforming men in household, and caregiving work. This disproportionate, unpaid workload costs us real dollars, lifestyle, income, and comfort. With this $431,360 unearned by many women in the United States, you could buy 2 homes, 14 cars, put all this money to earn interest for your retirement, earn 7 four year college degrees at a state school OR feed a family of 4 for 37 years. Tell us quick! How do we fix this?! ASAP?!!! Women must demand pay transparency and work at companies with pay transparency. Women must step into leadership roles. Ask for more pay, raise hand repeatedly for promotions, and stay informed. And above all, don’t take no for an answer. We make up more than half of the work force at 57%. We have more power than we use.
It is shocking to see the disparities in the work force and that the gender gap is real in almost every country on Earth. In the US, the sited gender pay gap is that women make 82 pennies for every $1 a man earns. The uncontrolled pay gap is 79 cents and the controlled pay gap is 98 cents. Meaning that the measured median salary changes for men and women with and without the same job qualifications. Still, the majority of women can’t actually utilize the resource of pay transparency to be confident that they are indeed making the same as male counterparts. If you are a minority it drops lower than that gap significantly and gets wider as you get older. The most controlling factor is that women are less likely to hold senior rolls. With more women in executive and board seats, the more transparency can be demanded. But this requires women to lead as women, not as women impersonating men. The statistic that I hold closest to my heart is that “65% of Venture Capital firms still have zero female partners, which makes funding female companies more challenging than for males.” (*2) I personally felt the effects of this when I tried to raise money for my own start up back in 2011 and again in 2014. “Since the public launch of our organization in 2018, we have seen a 4% improvement in the percentage of female decision-makers in VC, from 9% to 13%” Medium reviewed in their article (*2) below. Finance seems to be one industry where women still have the largest gap while pharmacists seem to be the closest to men, earning 99 cents for every dollar a man earns in the same role with the same qualifications.
So, ladies. It’s time to make SMART career choices, pick companies, industries, and roles wisely and grow our confidence so that when we stand up and ask for promotions, they agree that it is time for a change. If you haven’t listened to the podcast with Stef Caldwell, please do. She discusses how raising her hand for a promotion, essentially launched her side hustle Manifest Her, which is now changing lives for hundreds of ambitious women.
Women must fill roles of leadership to effect this change faster. We, literally, can not afford another 40 years of this situation. Think if we had a $1T fund to invest in women’s start ups from all of the money we don’t get currently. Imagine all the lives that would change, save, and assist. Imagine how much good it could do, to reach this goal. The change is happening, is irreversible and it is for us to push on through. WE MUST RAISE OUR HADS AND LEARN TO ASK for the raises, the jobs, the roles we want AND DESERVE. We must find jobs in industries that are closing the gap and that have the growing number of jobs we can participate in accelerating at. If we join an industry that has a larger gap, we must be strong and persist, but not settle for less for too long. I work in an industry where the gap is widest. How do we change that? We grow and ask. We step into the roles we know we can do but have been conditioned for lifetimes to be afraid of earning. We must educate ourselves on the realities of our work, the amount of money our employers see fair to pay us versus men in the same roles, and the equally split the responsibilities we take on within our families. See additional reading and resource links below for added value to your knowledge base.
Onwards, upwards, and over,
Mel Rose
Please read this March 2020 fact sheet from the National Partnership for Women and Families:
*1
BOOK SUGGESTION
Melinda Gates; Moment of Lift
USE OVERDRIVE to read for FREE with a library card! <3
*2
https://medium.com/allraise/more-women-became-vc-partners-than-ever-before-in-2019-39cc6cb86955
https://www.overdrive.com/media/4176454/the-moment-of-lift
https://builtin.com/recruiting/gender-pay-gap-statistics
https://www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap
https://www.verdict.co.uk/gender-workplace-inequality/
