I’m Open About Pay. Here’s Why I Think It Helps Women

Helen Racanelli
5 min readApr 9, 2019

Women are behind in pay equality. Let’s use one of our strengths to catch up.

Photo by Jessica Da Rosa on Unsplash

Picture it: Mid-aughties. Toronto. Four women are eating at New Generation Sushi, an inexpensive Japanese restaurant in a busy corridor of the city, gathered around a table laden with tempura, edamame, sushi and a chicken teriyaki bento box for the one loser who doesn’t like seafood (that would be me!). Are we talking about romantic relationships? Sometimes. Gossiping about other friends and coworkers? Don’t be a ding-dong. Of course we are.

So far, so typical. We all work in the same industry (magazine writing and editing), and there is oftentimes one other topic at the table. How much we earn. Not in a general sense or in a range, but actual dollar figures [I discuss mine in depth in the Medium “Why My Lifestyle Journalism Careers is (Almost) Over” which I’ll link to at the bottom of this article].

These conversations, which included frank discussions on job moves, work strategies and salaries, were among the most important of my career. Whenever one of us got a new job in our respective climbs up the masthead, or accepted a freelance assignment or turned one down, we talked about the money.

Not wanting to make any unfair pronouncements on what women are like versus what men are like, I will say that in my own experience, most women are communal souls and make an effort to keep their social networks robust. Chatting with friends about life, work and stressors tends to make us feel better. And that’s great. That’s why women are amazing. We catch each other when we fall.

But we can do better. I would add that in order for us to catch up pay-wise in the workforce, we should start talking regularly about what we earn, as well. Women in Canada, where I live, make 87 cents to a man’s dollar according to Statistics Canada. It’s wrong and it’s stupid.

How can we catch up when we don’t know what’s going on with others who work in the same industries that we do? The more we share and the more open we can be, the more we women stand to gain. Do you think Ellen Pompeo of the TV monster-hit Grey’s Anatomy hurt or helped women actors by revealing she makes $20 million a year?

So, do you have to reveal the contents of your bank account to anyone who asks? Or how much you overpaid for a last-minute vacation somewhere tropical? No, of course not. You need to be strategic, and this goes for everyone of every gender. If you have industry friends you trust, talk about what you make. Cultivate friends and mentors who you can talk money, as in salary and wages, to. These are going to be some of the best conversations you’ll have in your career.

When you start to talk about how much you earn openly, things can and probably will get awkward. So what? Life is full of awkwardness. A few different things can happen but one of the most likely is you find out how much (more) someone is making and you feel jealous or resentful. Well, that’s on you, and let me tell you, it’s going to motivate you to ask for more and to make more. Eventually sloughing off the taboos around money-talk won’t feel awkward, it will feel good.

Women are notorious for not asking for more money and not negotiating pay, and when they do, they feel they need to legitimize their requests. (I’m not just talking out of my ass here, read this article from Harvard’s Program On Negotiation if you don’t believe me.)

I’ve seen this myself as a manager. On a larger scale I’ve presented offers of employment (the paperwork including salary info for a full-time job) to several women, and on a smaller scale I’ve offered hourly wages to women for short editing gigs. I’d guesstimate only one out of about 15 have pushed back for more money. Money that I might have been able to give them, but since I wasn’t asked, I didn’t offer. I’m guilty of not asking, too. Not having worked nearly as much with men, I’m not sure how this all would have gone down, but I suspect that the pushback would have been higher than 1 in 15.

Another way that my eyes have been opened when it comes to earnings was when women that worked for or with me left for other jobs. The more honest they could be about the amount of money they left for, the more it helped me as a manager, and in my very own career. The more it helped me up the pay for the next person coming into the job. Typically a pivot point seemed to be a $10,000 per year pay increase. When outgoing employees would tell me that, I had a solid figure I could tell my own higher-ups to leverage more pay.

If you’ll allow this tangent, in more recent years since the sushi squad hangouts I had an office job where our boss was, let’s say, sex-positive. During an all-hands-on-deck meetings she would extol the benefits of frequent sex with her husband. This emboldened some of the other women to talk about their robust marital relations as well. Great. I’m all for sex-positivity but to be honest, talking more about hetero-normative sex isn’t really going to help us out in the workplace. We already know married people smash.

“What I wish is that we could use that time being more open about money. That’s the thing women don’t talk about enough in groups,” I said to my coworker. I was expecting her to disagree, but she tilted her head slightly and said, “You know… You’re right.”

So fellow women, if you’re reading this and made it this far, I hope you’ll consider finding or making a friend/colleague group, be it in-person or online that allows you to talk about what you earn. I’m not talking some Lean In bullsh*t that nobody has time for, I mean opening yourself up to being honest about what you earn with others who care, and being receptive to hearing what others make as well. No sushi required.

If you enjoyed this story, give me a clap, won’t you? Follow me on Twitter @helenrac.

You can read my other Medium articles: “Why My Lifestyle Journalism Career is (Almost) Over” and “The Starbucks Factor: Apply It To Every Freelance Job You Do.”

--

--

Helen Racanelli

Freelance Writer, Editor and Content Creator. Former Managing Editor of TORONTO! Magazine. Bylines: CBC, Chatelaine, Toronto Star, Style At Home, Cdn Living