It’s Time to Channel Your Inner Two-Year Old and Throw a Tantrum About (Un)Equal Pay
What can I say about equal pay that hasn’t already been said? If you are reading this, chances are you know the stats. Women’s median annual earnings is 82% of men’s. Even less for women of color: 62% and 54% for Black and Hispanic women, respectively. Even less when you factor in part-time and part-year workers, who tend to be primarily women simultaneously managing childcare and other care giving work. Let’s just say 82% is on the high, generous side.
As we read or hear these numbers, it is easy for us as women to shake our heads and roll our eyes. “Ugh, society,” we mutter, “totally messed up” and go about our daily business. We may not realize the pay gap applies to us personally, and if we do, it may feel entirely theoretical. The world of electronic transactions and automatic deposits and online bill pay creates a sense of distance between us and our cash. Coupled with the culture of opacity around what people earn at work—who really knows what the dude next to you gets paid?—it is easy to chalk up the pay gap to something that happens to other women “out there”.
Enough, ladies. You know what I want for you? I want you to get pissed. I want you to demand more. And I want you to get paid. So join me in a little visualization exercise to help facilitate a full-blown, drop it likes it’s hot, toddler tantrum fest.
Imagine you get paid on a weekly basis. Everyone in your office, or your place of work, lines up shoulder to shoulder. Your immediate supervisor starts at one end of the line and make his or her way down to the other, pulling out stacks of cash, counting the bills, and placing them in the hands of each worker. The other three members of your team, Jim, Kayla, and Marco, hired the same day you were for the same job you have, stand on either side of you. When your boss gets to Jim, she counts out $1,010—the median weekly earnings for men’s full time work. You are next. You hold out your hand and your boss peels off a series of $100 bills. Nine of them. Plus a bit of spare change. You look at the stack in your hand: $930—the median weekly earnings for white women’s full time work. Huh. Not as much as Jim.
Kayla, a Black woman, is next and receives seven bills. Finally, the boss hands over $1,010 to Marco. Wait. What? You worked hard this week. So did Kayla. Just as hard as Jim and Marco. And this happened last week, too, and the week before that. What is going on? Jim and Marco look at you. They look at Kayla. They look at the stack of bills in each of your hands. So does everyone else in the line. They make judgments about your contributions to the team based not on your work, but on your pay, and what that pay communicates about the value of your work, skills, and expertise. Not as good. Not as important.
You exchange a glance with Kayla and look down at your weekly salary. The frustration you feel is mixed with shame and embarrassment; you know Kayla kicks ass and there is no way she deserves less than you or anyone else on your team.
If this happened to you week after week, would you sit idly by? Would you accept $80 less each week than Jim and Marco, for the same work? Would you remain silent as Kayla received $300 less? I hope not. Afterall, that $80 per week adds up to over $4,000 per year and roughly $800,000 throughout the career of a college-educated woman. I hope you’d speak up. I hope you’d ask questions and I hope you’d ask for more. And if you are Jim or Marco, I hope you’d speak up, too.
To fight the pay gap, start by talking to your colleagues at work. Ask them—women and men—what they make. Share information. Find out how it would look to stand shoulder to shoulder with everyone else in your office and watch as weekly salaries were distributed. The next time you look at the line item of your paycheck deposit in your bank account, imagine the scenario I have posed here.
Stop pretending the pay gap is not real or doesn’t matter. Get mad and get paid.