Our Value, Our Selves

One of the best things about my life is that I get to spend time being interviewed by remarkable podcasters and writers all over the world. Their insights spark ideas, but also fill me with optimism about the future. With people like this around, progress is assured.

Exhibit A: my Zoom talk last month with author and social media star Yinuo Li, who lives in China but connected with me from Tokyo. Our conversation was sponsored by the Shanghai-based Women’s Alliance-Group (WAG), tireless supporters of the Chinese editions of How Women Rise and Rising Together.

Our conversation was wide-ranging as well as enormously fun. But I want to focus here on Yinuo’s insights about why women still often struggle to negotiate effectively for themselves.?

Bridging Workplace Divides

Many of us are familiar with situations where women:

• Don’t ask for a raise or promotion because they fear being seen as too pushy or asking too soon
• Don’t ask, but then feel bad because a promotion or increase was not offered
• Do ask, but quickly back down when they get pushback
• Do ask, but apologize before they can get the request out of their mouth

Of course, some women are master negotiators, particularly those in sales, where negotiation is a do-or-die skill. But many women are uncomfortable with the prospect of negotiating the terms of a new job, or simply asking for a raise. And even master saleswomen may find it hard to negotiate on their own behalf. The truth is, while women often advocate fiercely for others, they hesitate to do so for themselves (see Chapter 8 in How Women Rise).

I’ve usually attributed this to the reluctance of many women to appear self-interested, or to risk accusations of being “out for themselves.” Sometimes, it’s due to a lack of mentoring and support of the kind that could clue them in as to what constitutes fair compensation in their organization.

But during my conversation with Yinuo, she suggested another reason that women often shy away from advocating for themselves, one I found intriguing and compelling.

Yinuo believes women often have trouble fighting for what they deserve because they do so much work for free.?

After all, women perform most of the unpaid labor that keeps families and entire communities functioning. While the disparity between the amount of unpaid work men and women do has been changing in some cultures, in others it has barely shifted at all. And throughout the world, women do significantly more.

Inclusive Leadership

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the gap between men and women’s unpaid work is smallest in the Scandinavian nations, with countries like France and the Netherlands following close behind. All have strong social safety nets, which provide support for child and elder care, replacing a significant part of women’s labor. On the other end of the spectrum, India has the largest gap between the amount of unpaid work performed by men on a daily basis (53 minutes) and women (6 hours)! Turkey, Japan and Portugal also have dismal ratings.

The US, with its weak safety net, falls slightly above the middle. But the stunning stat here is that if American women’s unpaid labor were valued at minimum wage, it would have earned them $1.5 trillion just last year.

Given these figures, it should come as little surprise that women might have developed an ingrained habit of undervaluing their work, and so be reluctant to push hard for higher pay. After all, the reward of doing free work lies in the intangibles: improving the lives of others, satisfaction in a job well done, contributing to something larger than ourselves. So negotiating for tangible rewards such as money and position can feel uncomfortable, as if we’re suggesting that our paid work lacks intangible rewards. As if we’re doing it “only for the money.”

For decades, I’ve interviewed women who have told me some variation of the following: “I love my job and the people I work with. So I wouldn’t ask for more money except that right now we need it for the kids’ college fund/ because our house has gotten too small for our family/ because my daughter has special needs/ because I’m getting a divorce.” Whatever the reason, it seems, women often feel that asking for more money needs to be justified and explained. It may also strike men- including male bosses- as odd that a woman would justify asking for more compensation at work by referring to exigencies outside the job itself. For most men, compensation is all about performance.

For anyone who identifies with the dynamic described above, a good first step is dropping the justifications. And then being clear about what you believe you deserve and how your labor should be valued. After all, if you’re working for pay, you’ve signed up for a system that assesses and rewards value based on the very tangible measure of money.?

Of course work is not only about money. But we’ll never close the pay gap- nor the unpaid work gap- unless our true worth is acknowledged. First and foremost by ourselves.

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