5 Costs of Women's Silence in the Workplace
Sharon Rose Hayward
Most known for teaching women to claim their workplace value, confidence, and get paid what they deserve. As Seen in Essence, Yahoo! Finance, MSN, GMA
As young girls growing up, women were taught to use their manners. We said thank you when we were given something, whether we liked it or not. We were taught not to make a fuss. People were supposed to like us. Whatever we had, we should be grateful for and not expect more. That’s how I grew up. The last thing I wanted was the shame of embarrassing my mother.
I have no issue with manners. Polite society can be very agreeable.
What I do have an issue with is when manners replace our ability to voice our opinions and needs.
What accompanies this social conditioned use of thank you’s and no thank you’s is the fear of doing something wrong. Saying something wrong.
?Where did we shine? We were praised for being polite, nice, and helpful. I watched the way my mother always took less, took the burnt toast so that everyone else could have something more, and I learned that sacrifice is part of being a woman.
?Take that woman into the workplace. Her desire is to earn money, but not too much. She will never admit that she works for money. In fact, she will often say that money’s not the main thing. She will say she’d rather be happy than rich, as if this false choice makes any sense.
In my experience as an executive leader who hired and fired, interviewed and gave performance reviews, only 3% of women ever asked for more money at any time. That’s out of hundreds of women. 100% of men did.
Social conditioning lessons when we were growing up silenced our desires and ability to feel comfortable expressing our opinions.
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Here are five real costs of women’s silence in the workplace:
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1.??????? pay inequity
2.??????? lower amounts of vacation and paid time off
3.??????? feeling “on-call” 24/7/365
4.??????? sacrificing her health
5.??????? setting a toxic example for daughters and sons
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Pay Inequity
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The cost of women’s silence in the workplace is clearly the wage gap, still at around 20% in 2024. Check out Equal Pay Day, an annual calculation that began in 1996 by the National Committee on Pay Equity. Equal Pay Day in 2024 is March 12.
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When women work about 14.5 months to earn what a man earns in an equivalent job in 12 months, we see the real effects of wage disparity. Look at that 20% pay inequality over the length of a career and imagine how much the compounded effect of 20% difference makes in:
·????? retirement
·????? social security earnings
·????? wages when accepting jobs
·????? increases when a woman received a performance review
Look at a woman’s starting salary of $60,000. In twenty years of 4% increases, the $60,000 has become $131,467. Except that there’s very likely a salary cap that limits any additional growth, maybe around $80,000. Women accept this without question, maybe a grumble or two. In my experience, about 3 of 100 women will ask for more.
Let’s look at a man’s starting salary for the same position at 20% more, or approximately $72,000. Compounding at 4% for twenty years, this man would earn $157,761. There might be a wage cap on this as well, but 100% of men will likely ask how they can earn more.
On a compounded basis, the $12,000 difference between women at $60,000 and men at $72,000 develops into women at $131,467 and men at $157,761. All things being equal, the $12,000 wage gap has grown to $26,294, more than double. That makes a big difference in 401(k) balances and social security earnings.
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?Vacation and Paid Time Off
?I worked with a lot of women over the years who saved vacation days or PTO to use in case their kids were ill. When my kid was young, I would try over-the-counter solutions to mask the symptoms at daycare or school, dreading the phone call that would call my bluff. It broke my heart but I knew I needed to be at work. I was like most women, neglecting to negotiate more vacation or paid time off, not realizing that more time off was one of the easier perks to request.
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When a woman could use time off to really refresh and feel rejuvenated, she has either run out of time, used the time for her children, or worked during her vacation.
?Negotiating for job benefits like more PTO, mobile phone reimbursements, mileage reimbursement for company business, or a flexible schedule are rarely part of the standard conversation.?
When women are used to others speaking on their behalf, it can be a little frightening to start making their own requests.
24/7/365
?Being a team player has become one of the toxic drivers behind women’s exhaustion and burnout. We know how important it is to be viewed as a team player. But over time, team player has turned into someone who doesn’t say no. I was always scared to say no, even when I had no idea how I would manage to get everything done. No to more work, an extra project, helping out when someone is sick or on leave, or when there’s a staff shortage because someone quit.
Just like when we were young girls, we feel how important it is to be seen as helpful, to be the good girl, even to sacrifice like we saw our mothers do. Our social conditioning taught us early on, with subtle lessons of how to earn praise and recognition.
Sacrificing Health
?Ask any working woman and she will tell you physical health, mental, and emotional health all take a toll when women are in the workplace.
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I spoke with a woman in the past couple weeks who was trying to do too much once again, at the request of her company. The company had promised several times over the past couple years to get her assistance and something would always happen.
Not until the light went on in her head during a recent sleepless night, did she realize she was reenacting the same unhealthy pattern over and over. She had cancelled a doctor’s appointment because she couldn’t find time to get away. Her kids saw her for a quick dinner before she went back to her computer. She was still working when they went to bed.
Emotional health plummets when we feel that we just can’t get caught up, that we aren’t doing enough to get recognition, or that there’s something wrong with us because we should be able to do the job.
Setting an Example
?Our daughters and sons see what we do. We are teaching them what to expect when they are grown, when they are working. In the home there is likely a difference between how women and men handle their work roles. Women handle work the way we learned growing up. Work is something we can do, something we can do a lot of, and we expect to do well. Those are all lessons from preschool to high school or college graduation. Nobody told us the game changed and thus, we are still playing by old rules.
What’s Next?
The most important step we can take right now is to begin recognizing how social conditioning affected us as young girls. We learned our lessons well and we can also unlearn the lessons.
Money’s not the only thing, but it’s a good place to start. You can begin by taking a few simple steps to figure out how to earn more, what you could be earning, and how to get started. Believe it or not, you can start by printing your resume. Not to start a job search, but to start realizing what you’re all about in the workplace. Easy peasy.
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