Meredith Bennett-Smith’s article on Quartz yesterday is so on point right now. She shares her own personal experience of being severely underpaid, but not knowing enough to ask for more. Some great takeaway points from her article are as follows:
If you are underpaid at your first job, you will likely continue to be underpaid for the rest of your career.
“One thing we see a lot is that pay is set in your last company,” Joelle Emerson, leader of a strategy firm that works with tech companies to promote diversity, recently told Fast Company. “If you were being treated unfairly at your last company, that’s just going to follow you throughout your career.”
Reddit’s move to end negotiations doesn’t really help us address income inequality (see also my rant on this exact issue from a few days ago):
Over at Reddit, interim CEO Ellen Pao thinks she has a solution for gender-based wage discrimination. [...] It’s a bold move, and Pao’s strategy may help the company’s weakest negotiators, but it won’t address the fates of employees who have been “systematically underpaid.”
The best way for us as women (and anyone else really), individuals, and employees to fight this is to TALK TO EACH OTHER.
Yes yes yes. Thank you Meredith Bennett-Smith!!