Essential Career Advice for Women – Equal Pay!
Can women get paid on an equal footing with men? Can you get what you’re worth? Well, you can blooming well try!
Women get paid less than men. There are a myriad of reasons why that is so, some of which are outwith your control as an individual. Focus on changing that which is within your control.
There are gender differences in pay levels. Fact. You are not being a hysterical woman if you point that out.
You are not being rude by asking what the salary levels are in your organisation and how they are determined (although a reluctance to tell you is giving you a lot of information!)
Being the longest serving post holder does not automatically deserve more pay. Career breaks need not necessarily mean less pay. Be clear about what you have gained during that break, what you bring back into the organisation. Don’t assume that you deserve lower pay.
Not knowing your worth may mean you get paid less. If an employer can get you on the cheap they will. And if an employer gets you on the cheap they will, albeit subtly, value you less.
If you are giving of yourself cheaply, you may value yourself less.
If you value yourself less you won’t ask for more pay.
Know your worth.
Know the worth of the job you do.
Know the industry norm for the job you do.
Know what your organisation pays others.
Know you have the right to ask for your worth!
You owe it to yourself (and all the women coming after you) to be paid equally with men. Go for it!
P.S. Speak Up! is a brand new course devised by me and launching in November. If this post has been useful to you, take a look at the course – you’ll love it!
Are You Unhappy at Work?
One of the effects of our economic recession is that feeling that if you’ve got a job, you’d better hang onto it! That’s fine if you’re happy with your job, but what if you’re not? What if you’re really unhappy at work but can’t see a way out? There are always bills to pay and very few of us can take the risk of unemployment for any length of time, however tempting it feels on a Sunday night to just chuck it all in!
Research in Happiness at Work
Stephen Wood and L.M. De Menezes of the Cass Business School in London, published some research earlier this year* which supports what I have been saying for some time. When you can’t actually switch jobs, working on making your existing job better, improving your working life, will increase your sense of well being and happiness at work.
They advise trying to make your job as enriching as possible and taking opportunities to be more autonomous and grasp opportunities which may enhance your CV. So no falling into the “I won’t help ‘them’” trap as actually being more co-operative can actually help you!
They also found that knowing what was going on, being kept in the loop, helped employees feel more content with their lot. This is no surprise as in any times of stress and change we need to feel we have a say in what is happening, that we can exert some control somewhere in the process. And one way of doing that is to increase communication with your manager or your HR department. Find out what’s happening in your business, whether it’s your immediate company or your industry as a whole.
Plan Ahead for Next Job
Don’t see this time as ‘dead’ time. Yes, you need to hang in there for a while but there are still opportunities to plan ahead. Don’t wish your life away but a bit of judicious planning for the next step, when it becomes available, is good career planning. Maybe get yourself on a course within work, or invest in one yourself outside of work; (a lot of participants on my Renewyou course are doing exactly this).
If you don’t know what that next step is, but you do know that you don’t like what you’ve got, listen to my free visualisation and see what it comes to mind!
You spend a lot of your life working, so it needs to work for you as well as your employer! Make a start now on enriching your working life!
Photo Credit: Gokan Kohur
* High Involvement management, High Performance Work Systems…Journal of Human Resource Management 2011
If you’ve enjoyed this article, check out these 3 Essential Questions for Women
Why Do Women Earn Less?
Women in both the UK and US do earn less than men. I am frequently told, usually by men, that this is because of the occupations women choose to go into, and because they work part time.
Leaving aside how much actual genuine choice is involved, and why occupations which are traditionally female dominated should be valued less, I went to look at the figures again. And this is what I found on the UK Government equalities site, hardly a bastion of feminsim extremism I’m sure you’ll agree! They say:
Gender Pay Gap
The Office for National Statistics collects data on earnings through the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings which it uses to calculate gender pay differences. There are a number of different ways of calculating the gender pay gap, one of which compares the pay of all men and women in work (full- and part-time) and looks at the median. By this measure, the gender pay gap is 22.0 per cent.
GEO has undertaken research into the causes . This found the key factors explaining the pay gap were as follows:
- 10 per cent of the overall pay gap can be attributed to occupational sex segregation. Having 10 percentage point greater share of men in an occupation is associated with 2 per cent higher average hourly wages;
- 12 per cent of the gap is due to the industries in which women work;
- 21 per cent of the gap is due to differences in years of full-time work;
- 16 per cent of the gap is due to the negative effect on wages of having previously worked part-time or of having taken time out of the labour market to look after family; and
- 5 per cent of the gap is due to formal education levels
But a significant proportion (36 per cent) of the pay gap could not be explained by any of these factors, suggesting discrimination may be an important factor.
We’ve still a way to go!
Picture Credit: Valinza
How To Improve your Working Life with 3 Simple Ideas!
It’s hard enough at the best of times if you don’t like your job but when there’s an economic downturn it can feel like a prison sentence. Good jobs are thin on the ground, and let’s face it, we’ve all got to eat and pay the bills. And so you stay put and try not to rock the boat too much but it’s eating away at you. Your enthusiasm starts to wane, you lose motivation,your joie de vivre for other parts of your life is affected and before you know it you’re well and truly fed up!
How to Improve Your Working Life
Here’s three tips to help you cope with the bad times and get ready for the upturn (trust me, this will pass).
1Don’t Take it Personally, Think Global
We women have an uncanny ability to personalise things. Thoughts like ‘Why me?‘, ‘I’m no good’, ‘I’m so unlucky’ start to morph into ‘I’ll never get a good job again‘, ‘no one will employ me’. It’s a downward spiral and doing you no good at all. I’m all for being realistic about situations and the reality of this situation is that there is a global economic downturn and ‘times is ‘ard’ for almost everyone. It is not personal.
2 Upgrade Your Spam Filter
Now about those little messages dropping unwanted into your brain as you sigh over yet another unrewarding piece of work you have to do. Believe me, they are making you feel worse. So if we want to feel better we need to deal with them. If you’re a regular reader you’ll know I’m very into evidence based research and using techniques that work. Well, positive thinking is not something off the wall; it’s a technique that works and is used in treatment models for all kinds of conditions.
First you have to identify your negative messages to self (write them down as the thoughts go in; I bet you’re really unkind to yourself sometimes). Then you have to harness that negative impact for a good and positive one. So turn your spam into something helpful, like ‘ I am good at what I do’, ‘this will pass’, and so on. I can’t write them for you as they have to be something that sounds like you talking and doesn’t make you squirm with embarrassment!
3 Find Something Fulfilling Outside of Work
When you’re not getting what you want from work try and get it from somewhere else! Work out what you’re missing: challenge, stimulation, new learning, team work, responsibility, money maybe, and see if there is a way of finding that outside your current role. You could offer yourself and your skills to a charity, maybe do an additional part time job (that’s harder but not impossible), start an online course, read a self help book and try out what it advises, sign up for an evening class…. Give yourself ten minutes to jot down all the possibilities, don’t censor anything. Or better still do it with a friend and make it fun.
I’d love to hear how you cope or have coped if you’ve ever been stuck in a job rut. And don’t forget my book ‘When Work Isn’t Working’ covers all of this and more.
Photo Credit: Kostas Kitsos
Is Being a Feminist Bad for Business?
I ask this question because I have just started a new group for women on Linkedin. I had several names for it but eventually came up with Feminist and Feminine Professional Women as it summed up what it was and didn’t encroach on any other group names in LinkedIn. This is the purpose of the group:
This group is for professional women who want to get ahead in their careers, to network, share advice, share stories, etc, but who don’t want to have to behave like men to do so.
I invited lots of my connections to join me and most have but I have had one or two comments back saying the fact that the f word is in the title is putting them off. One woman said:
“I know it’s sad but I don’t want potential employers to see ‘so and so has joined a Feminist group’ on Linkedin.”
I suppose I shouldn’t be, but I am genuinely shocked. I quite understand women not wanting to join a group as they don’t feel it applies to them, but actually wanting to join but thinking having a ‘feminist’ label will disadvantage them! That’s a whole different matter.
Do you have experience of this? What do you think? Are you embarrassed to be called a feminist? Would it harm your career or business prospects? You may comment anonymously!
Photo Credit: Unknown, ad from 1970s
Inspirational Women – Sarah Pennells
I am so pleased to bring you this interview with Sarah Pennells, editor of Savvy Woman, a web site dedicated to bringing women good sound financial information.
Jane: Sarah, you are well known for your work with financial information for women, and I’m sure many of our readers will have seen you on BBC’s Saturday Breakfast or heard you on Radio 4.
So my first question is -Why a specialist site for women? Are our financial issues very different?
SARAH: Yes, I think they are – in two significant ways. Firstly, women often have to make different decisions about money because of different working patterns and priorities and secondly, women often approach issues around finance, such as risk and debt, differently.
For example, many women will want to know how much they could lose before they’ll invest whereas men tend to focus more on the maths of how an investment stacks up. Women also typically owe less than men but have debt that charges a higher interest rate (such as credit cards) and also worry about it more.
How did you first get into the world of finance? Was it something you had planned to do from school days? Were you always good at managing your pocket money? (I wasn’t…!)
I can safely say that my burning ambition when I was at school wasn’t to work in personal finance. I wasn’t very good at managing my pocket money (unlike my sister) and would often run out of money halfway through the week.
I gradually moved towards personal finance journalism via a theatre company, an arts centre, catering for rock bands and reporting and producing for local radio. When I moved to London I was offered some freelance work on BBC Radio 4’s Moneybox, filling in for someone who was on holiday. She didn’t come back and I stayed for six years! I loved working on the programme because I felt that – by giving people information – you could make a real difference to the amount of money they had and ultimately to their lives.
It was also a great programme to work on because you had to get all the facts right otherwise you’d be inundated with letters and phone calls (this was before email was popular!).
What was your very first paid job? Do you remember how much you got paid?
My first job, during the school holidays, was working at a fruit machine company filing invoices. I had no idea there was so much money in fruit machines (literally!). I think I was paid £37 a week, which seemed like a fortune at the time.
You now run your own business. What’s the best thing about being your own boss?
The best thing was being able to set up SavvyWoman in the way I wanted to. I had strong ideas about the content, tone and look of the website – I didn’t want it to be fluffy but was keen to make sure that women felt it was written with them in mind.
It’s really rewarding when you get positive feedback to one of your ideas. I also have a huge amount of freedom about the topics I can cover on SavvyWoman. Sometimes I’ll write about a topic that’s in the news, but look at it from a female perspective, at other times I’ll pick a completely different subject that I know will be of interest to website users.
What advice would you give to any woman thinking of launching their own business?
‘Go for it’ is the obvious piece of advice. The other one is to say that there are bound to be times when it’s scary so don’t think it’s only you who’s experiencing that. You have to be prepared to work hard and you have to do your research before you start, but it’s a great feeling when you see that your idea has translated into something tangible.
When do you think we’ll have our first female Chancellor of the Exchequer? Do you think the public is less ready for that than they were a female prime minister?
I’d like to think we wouldn’t have to wait too long for our first female Chancellor of the Exchequer but I have a feeling I’d be wrong. The absence of women in politics – especially at cabinet level – is such a problem and it’s one that parties of various political shades don’t seem that keen to tackle.
Why it should seem acceptable that decisions about the future of this country are led by a cabinet largely representing 50% of the population by gender is a mystery to me.
What was the best piece of advice that you were given when setting up Savvy SavvyWoman?
I don’t think I can pinpoint one piece of advice that stands out. Overall, I was just pleased to get encouragement from so many of my friends. There were times, especially in the early stages when I couldn’t talk about what I was doing because I was waiting to get the trademark on the domain name and when I was trying to choose a web designer when it felt like it was a long way from a business, but in the end it all came together very quickly.
In terms of things I’m glad I did, I was very lucky with the web design team – thebrightplace.com – as they were fantastic communicators as well as having the ability to interpret my non-technical speak into a great website. That took a huge amount of pressure off me.
I was also really pleased to get such a brilliant panel of experts lined up for the website, all of whom give their time free of charge. It felt like a great endorsement of the idea.
In your experience, what is the most common dilemma or issue for women and finance?
I think the biggest issue is retirement. I get more questions about pensions from SavvyWoman users on pensions than any other subject. I know that retirement and, in particular, how to pay for it are big issues for both men and women but all the statistics show that women retire on less than men and in around one in three cases, retire on very little at all.
Not all women have career breaks to look after children but those who do invariably put the pension on hold for quite a few years and never make up that lost time. Even those who work throughout their lives generally earn less than men (sometimes a lot less) and may be less keen to lock money away.
Of women reaching state pension age last year, fewer than 50% received a full state pension compared to well over 90% of men. Changes were introduced in April that will benefit women, but they’ll take quite some time to filter through the system. A pension may not be the answer, but you cannot rely on the state.
Who most inspires and motivates you currently?
I absolutely love working on the website and I’m genuinely really pleased if I’ve come up with something that women can relate to and that will help them get more from their money. One woman said it was the first finance website that didn’t scare her, which I was really touched by.
I hate unfairness and injustice and it frustrates me that some financial companies will treat customers as badly as they think they can get away with and will only behave decently once they’re threatened with the prospect of publicity.
I’m not motivated by money and I don’t advocate thinking about it day and night but neither should you dismiss it as boring or complicated because it’s hard to function without it. Sometimes a relatively straightforward piece of information can make all the difference between a good or bad financial decision.
What’s the best piece of advice you have been given?
From a financial point of view, the best advice I was given was never to combine borrowing and investing. This was when endowment mortgages were all the rage and I was working on Moneybox at the time. It was a favourite saying of one of the producers – but she was right.
In terms of general advice I think the one that’s rung true for me over the years is to trust your instincts. I think I generally have quite a strong gut feeling and the times when I’ve not listened to it I’ve normally regretted it.
And what advice would you give to women re their own financial affairs?
I’d say, don’t be scared of money and don’t think you have to be money obsessed to take an interest in it. Women often make very good financial decisions but can miss out because they’re put off by the jargon that often litters financial articles or brochures (more so than men, it seems).
The last piece of advice would be to think about what you’re going to live on in retirement. It doesn’t have to be a pension, it can be some other form of retirement saving, but make sure you won’t have to rely on the state.
Sarah, thanks you so much for sharing your thoughts with us.
If you’d like some more information about Savvy Woman, or to sign up for a regular newsletter from Sarah, visit her web site by clicking here
