Ladies! Personal power and money: how much do you want?

Dear Female Leaders:

As of March 1, 2024, if you work in the US (and probably other parts of the world too), you're still making, on average, 16% less than your male peers.

If you're Black or Latina, your non-Hispanic white male counterparts are making 36% and 45% more than you, respectively.

According to the National Women's Law Center, a 20-year-old woman starting her career today will make $407,760 less over her career compared to the 20-year-old man sitting next to her.

It's 100% true that this is a systemic issue and it's the institutions that need to do the heavy lifting here.

And, at the same time, there are things you can do to start effecting change in this part of your life.

Develop your personal power if you want more

Personal power is the internal feeling that you are the captain of your life, that you're in charge.

Sure, you may have a boss, or clients. You have authorities to respect, obligations, etcetera.

But that's irrelevant to your personal power. Because the fact that other people have positional power over you doesn't detract from your personal power.

And the same's true in the other direction: positional power (a management title, for example) won't give you personal power, if you feel powerless inside.

Because your personal power comes from within yourself. And that's what I'm here to talk to you about.

Unless you feel powerful inside, unless you know that you can make any decision that's best for you at any time in your life and your career, you won't be able to make all the money you desire–and deserve.

How you can hone your personal power

1. Learn to say no

Saying no is hard for many women because we've been socialized to agree and be nice. We've been taught that rejection is fatal, so the last thing we want is to rock the boat in case someone throws us overboard.

But keep in mind that if you want to choose what's right for you, you'll need to say no to whatever's not right.

And remember that choosing what's right for you doesn't need to be a rejection of others. When you say no to someone else, you're saying yes to yourself.

Your no is about you, not about them.

2. Learn to stand rejection

As mentioned in the section above, rejection gives us information about the person (or group) rejecting, not about the person or thing being rejected.

Going back to the rocking-the-boat analogy, if they throw you overboard, that means the boat wasn't the right boat for you.

Look at it this way: by rejecting you, they're doing you a favor.

3. Own your "ugly"

As complex human beings that we are, we all contain multiple "selves." For example, one of my selves, is "the running beast," a super-woman who can do anything she sets her mind to.

Another self I have is "poor little thing," a little child who just wants to show how smart she is but whom others see as "helpless." I spent years hiding that immature inner self, for fear that people would see me as "helpless."

I was trying to look powerful, but the effort of hiding the "poor little thing" was in fact taking my power away from me.

As a result, I was making decisions that weren't what I knew to be right for me.

How personal power links to money

When you feel powerless, you feel you have no agency.

Having no agency makes you doubt your self-efficacy.

If you believe you're not effective, you'll be content with whatever the company or clients offer because... what's your true worth, anyway?

And if you don't see your true worth, how can you ask for more money for your work?

Developing your personal power is not easy, and you may not even know you need to.

Some symptoms of underdeveloped personal power are:

• feeling indecisive, flip-flopping, asking for everyone's opinions before moving forward
• feeling you need to "comply" with what other people want for you
• not daring or giving yourself permission to want more for yourself
• going over the pros and cons of a decision for days (or over the restaurant menu for more than two minutes)
• feeling resentful over something you said yes to (a rate, an assignment, doing someone a favor...)

Do yourself the biggest favor you can and work on honing your personal power.

Thanks for reading!

I'm Carolina Perez Sanz, PhD, and I help leaders to get the people part of their business right, by using the 3Ds Philosophy.

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