Information black-hole

One of the major challenges in pay negotiation is a lack of information. Many young women I spoke to said they did not know the going-rate for particular jobs. In an age of information, the lack of transparency around wage information is shocking. We need to make pay information public and that information readily accessible to women. The lack of information was especially prevalent in freelance jobs such as babysitting. While some websites like Glassdoor publish self-reported wages, there are not many of these types of websites and they do not always cover freelance workers. These sites are also relying on self-reported data which cannot provide a comprehensive picture of an industry. Going into a job interview, pay information or information about the going rate for that role is the most important aspect. It does not matter how much you negotiate if you go into the discussion with a starting salary that is substantially lower than the going rate you are already on the back foot.

Learning to talk about money

It’s not just a dearth of information that’s a barrier, girls are also socialised into not talking about money. Many young women I spoke to said they didn’t compare notes with their friends about their various babysitting rates. We could create an open, transparent culture and teach our children to talk about money. Even though there were very few male babysitters, what was surprising about the group that I spoke to was they all knew the going rate for the work and had shared pay information with each other, but not with their female babysitter friends. Does this mean that networks are useful for men, but not for women? These young women’s networks were less likely to provide this type of pay information. In fact, young women’s networks often stopped them from asking for more money. One young babysitter told me she was babysitting for “(her) godmother’s daughter’s child” so she could not ask for more money.