5 Takeaways You Need to Know from WomenWerk’s WOC Equal Pay Day Panel
Written by WIN Staff
When one stops and actually thinks about it: the fact that some women must work through the end of October of the following year to earn the same amount as a man doing the same job, is a crime. It is hard to believe that, on the verge of 2022, we are living in a country where women are still suffering from such pay inequities. As of March of this year, due to the global pandemic’s disproportionate effect on women, dire projections show it will be at least 135 years before women reach equity.
To bring awareness to this issue, WIN’s Executive Director and CEO Daniella Kahane spoke on a panel this week on Equal Pay, hosted by our partner organization WomenWerk. Alongside Ronda Carnegie, the Chief Innovation Officer of The Female Quotient, and Genaira L. Tyce, Esq., Labor & Employment Law Partner, Akerman LLP, and moderated by Nekpen Osuan Wilson, Founder of WomenWerk and WIN Coach and Trainer. This panel of phenomenal professional women discussed salary negotiation, organizational culture in the workplace, and how women could move the needle forward for themselves around pay equity. Below you’ll find the top takeaways from this event:
1. Don’t leave money on the table. Women of Color leave close to an estimated $2.5M on the table and white women leave more than $1M over the course of a career, by choosing not to negotiate their salary.
Before you go to negotiate: prepare, prepare, prepare. Preparation is your best ally in a negotiation. Think about the following:
What do you need out of this negotiation? What does your counterparty need?
Find two “Rehearsal Buddies”. Preferably, one person within your field and one person outside of your field. Ask them to review your ask and help to simulate the conversation. Or, work with a negotiation coach for the week or two between the interview, the offer, and the negotiation as this is a short but critical time when investing in an expert who can guide you can really pay off in spades.
Do your market research. Female Quotient and 81 Cents both have tools to make sure you are getting compensated fairly and there are others too. Do your research beforehand to make sure that you know what is fair value for your industry and title.
While in the negotiation:
Lead with empathy - use your natural style to steer the conversation and show your counterparty that you are genuinely interested in hearing them.
Know your value! Be confident in what you have to offer. Come in prepared with your talking points that demonstrate this as such.
Know that their first offer is not their best offer. There is always room in an offer and you have to believe to be the case and re-anchor higher than you think they will go.
Think holistically beyond the salary number. Work-life balance and well-being, as well as growth-potential in a company are other truly critical aspects of a job. When negotiating salary, think beyond the dollar number to other perks such as workplace flexibility, paid time off, parental leave policies, professional development opportunities, equity or stock options, job title, etc and remember that though some companies might not have the greatest resources they might be able to offer other perks that are just as valuable to you.
Remember you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. This is an opportunity for you to find out what the company culture and values are to ensure the work environment is a good fit for you. It is also a good opportunity to learn how they relate to pay transparency and what their gender equity profile is.
2. In many states it is illegal for companies to ask you about your previous salary. If they ask (whether because they don’t know or don’t care about the law) you can reframe the question in this way: “Based on my experience, and skill level, I should be making between X and Y, or it would be fair for my compensation to fall between X and Y.”
3. Being in the not-for-profit world does not mean that you do not deserve to be paid fairly. You can want to do meaningful work and get paid fairly for your time doing it. Know the annual operating costs of the not-for-profit by doing your research and then you will get a sense of what might be fair and realistic compensation based on the individual non-profit’s size and scope.
4. Don’t fear hearing ‘no’. Embrace the ‘no’ as it is often the thing that will unlock learning something critical or help you in making a necessary change to your approach.
5. Finally, adding more teeth to the existing legislature around equal pay will be necessary if we want to propel progress. Pay transparency and legality around asking for employees’ former wages as well as additional legislation that helps fight against the motherhood penalty is just one step in the right direction. We’ll need to continue to give more young women and girls exposure and opportunities around tech and computer literacy.
Individually, we’ll need to bring more exposure to the conversation around pay disparities. We should be speaking up about it and sharing our friends and talking about it with our colleagues. And yes, choosing to negotiate for ourselves and our value as much as possible. Each of these ways we can help ensure that we can co-create a better future for ourselves and the next generation of women.
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