Speaker 1: Back in the first episode of our series, I told
Speaker 1: you a story about my mom and her fight for
Speaker 1: pay equality. She was a surgeon who sued her employers,
Speaker 1: the State University of New York and the hospital where
Speaker 1: she worked, for pay discrimination. After almost ten years, she
Speaker 1: won a settlement, but her story didn't end there. After
Speaker 1: the lawsuit ended. As a condition of the settlement, my
Speaker 1: mom had to stop teaching at the university. She still
Speaker 1: kept up a busy career as a practicing doctor, but
Speaker 1: she also dedicated a lot of her time to telling
Speaker 1: other women about her experiences so that they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to go through what she did. My experience has taught
Speaker 1: me that legal solutions are not solutions at all. What
Speaker 1: I lost and what I won were not equal, not fungible,
Speaker 1: not interchangeable. I thought I was going to make and
Speaker 1: change their ways, and I'm sorry to say that didn't occur.
Speaker 1: She was talking to a seminar of other women physicians
Speaker 1: who came to learn about gender equity in medicine. Even
Speaker 1: though getting a settlement is a win, she was telling
Speaker 1: them not to do what she did. Legal action is
Speaker 1: the court of last resort. If you litigate, be prepared
Speaker 1: to leave You may recover money, it will never be
Speaker 1: enough to cover your legal fees. You may keep your
Speaker 1: job if you really want it. You may get some
Speaker 1: workplace change that's not likely, and you can sometimes recover
Speaker 1: emotional damages, but to do that you have to be
Speaker 1: seen by a psychiatrist who says that you've been so
Speaker 1: damaged by this that probably they're going to say you're
Speaker 1: too damaged to continue as a doctor. Inn she started
Speaker 1: a consulting firm to help other women in medicine. She
Speaker 1: explains her mission in this YouTube video, which warning has
Speaker 1: some cheesy clip art noises in the background. If you
Speaker 1: want to be a woman doctor, know that you're going
Speaker 1: to face unique challenges male colleagues will not face. You
Speaker 1: may not get recognized for your worth. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's fair. I've been where you are, and I've learned
Speaker 1: a few things I really didn't want to know. It's
Speaker 1: my mission to make sure that you don't have these
Speaker 1: same struggles and you don't have to go it alone.
Speaker 1: She wanted to advocate for other women, but more than that,
Speaker 1: she wanted to help other women advocate for themselves. She thought,
Speaker 1: if she could just teach people to be confident, and
Speaker 1: strong at work, they could avoid what she had to
Speaker 1: go through. Despite everything she experienced at work, my mom
Speaker 1: really believed there were things women could do to change
Speaker 1: their careers and their lives. There are solutions. You, a
Speaker 1: woman physician, can learn to use your gifts as a
Speaker 1: woman to have the confidence, the knowledge and the skills
Speaker 1: to love you work, to live your life fully and
Speaker 1: be the doctor you want to be and be the
Speaker 1: doctor your patients deserve. And you can do this by
Speaker 1: owning your medical career, being comfortable in the medical workplace,
Speaker 1: and being able to when you look at the world,
Speaker 1: you know what the population like, Where is our place like?
Speaker 1: Where is our value? Will and deserve people who people work?
Speaker 1: And Mason one meaning salary for Mandy is greater than
Speaker 1: women in the six percent of major occupations women. What
Speaker 1: do I want? We want to end gender inequality and
Speaker 1: to do this we need everyone involved. When women are
Speaker 1: financially stronger, it's good for their families, it's put money
Speaker 1: into the economy, in the markets, it's good for everybody.
Speaker 1: If I was a woman, I'm not sure I would
Speaker 1: want to write on my show anyway. Yeah, we do
Speaker 1: want to write out of them. We cannot do succeed
Speaker 1: when half of us a head bay. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the Paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield. For the last five weeks,
Speaker 1: we've deconstructed a big, expensive, global problem, the pay gap.
Speaker 1: We've interviewed people like Christina chen Austar, who has been
Speaker 1: fighting a pay discrimination case for thirteen years and counting.
Speaker 1: We looked at Iceland, which has done more than just
Speaker 1: about any country to fix its pay gap, but still
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to and we investigated how all of
Speaker 1: this is pretty much banked into the way we think
Speaker 1: about women and men and work. If you're a little
Speaker 1: depressed after all of this, well so are we. So far,
Speaker 1: the pay gap has proved pretty impossible to solve, but
Speaker 1: most of us aren't just going to sit here and
Speaker 1: accept that will be paid less than men for our
Speaker 1: entire careers. This desire to do something on a personal level.
Speaker 1: It's partly why books like lean In by Cheryl Sandberg
Speaker 1: are so popular. Back into uny thirteen when the book
Speaker 1: came out, her advice that women should just lean into
Speaker 1: their careers and advocate for themselves if they want to succeed,
Speaker 1: it made sense to a lot of women. She was
Speaker 1: speaking the truth, and she got people fired up. The
Speaker 1: very blunt truth is that men still round the world.
Speaker 1: But what about the women's revolution? I think we're stalled.
Speaker 1: I think we're stalled, and I think we need to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that we're stalled so that we can change it.
Speaker 1: Are you trying to reignite the revolution? I think so.
Speaker 1: But in the five years since Lenin came out, the
Speaker 1: gender pay gap hasn't really budged. Women are still less
Speaker 1: likely to get promoted than men and more likely to
Speaker 1: be seen as aggressive when they try to ask for raises.
Speaker 1: So does anything work? Is there any way for an
Speaker 1: individual to ensure she gets the money she deserves? For
Speaker 1: most of my life, I kept all of my financial
Speaker 1: foibles to myself. Not having money was my secret. Gabby
Speaker 1: Done started her podcast Bad with Money three years ago
Speaker 1: as a way to confront her personal finance struggles head on.
Speaker 1: She says the show is about finances and feelings and
Speaker 1: has interviewed dozens of people, including financial experts, her family,
Speaker 1: and even a financial therapist. Well, it's perfectly acceptable for
Speaker 1: people in their twenties to cry over relationship problems or
Speaker 1: friendships dissolving. There's an added shame to discussing finances. I
Speaker 1: spoke with her about what she's learned and how we
Speaker 1: can take action in our own lives even when we
Speaker 1: know the pay gap is bigger than us. Hi, Gabby,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. So why did you start bad with money?
Speaker 1: It started out being about like finances and feelings essentially,
Speaker 1: which is what Season one was basically talking to people
Speaker 1: about the taboo of talking about money. Why is it
Speaker 1: a thing we don't want to talk about? Why is
Speaker 1: it so isolating? What does everyone know that we don't know? Essentially,
Speaker 1: and just sort of like spilled my own guts about
Speaker 1: my family and um inability to figure out retirement or
Speaker 1: savings or or any medical bill or anything. So our
Speaker 1: show is also about money, but in a different sense.
Speaker 1: Was there a time in your life when you realize
Speaker 1: that the gender pay gap or other pay gaps were
Speaker 1: affecting you? Yeah, definitely. I Mean there was a media
Speaker 1: company that I worked for where a guy had the
Speaker 1: same job as me, but he was getting paid dollars
Speaker 1: more a year simply because he had asked Basically, like,
Speaker 1: there was a day where we all were drinking or something,
Speaker 1: and we shared our salaries and this one guy, and
Speaker 1: I do not think he was doing a better or
Speaker 1: more efficient job than me or or another woman that
Speaker 1: I worked with. And um, he was like, well, I
Speaker 1: had worked on a TV show prior to working here,
Speaker 1: and so I knew the type of salary that you
Speaker 1: should ask for in a mediate setting. So I asked
Speaker 1: for that. They made the match my prior salary, and
Speaker 1: I was like, you can do that, Like I had
Speaker 1: no idea. That was like really alarming, But I think
Speaker 1: that had to do more with the blind confidence of asking.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of marginalized people, so I'm also queer
Speaker 1: and a lot of marginalized people. It's like a similar
Speaker 1: thing where you you're sort of so happy to be
Speaker 1: there and so happy to be like even in the
Speaker 1: interview that like, in my mind, I would just think
Speaker 1: they're gonna pull this opportunity away as soon as they can,
Speaker 1: Whereas like I think a lot of guys go in
Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, of course I should be here obviously. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's also this other thing that I talked about
Speaker 1: a lot, which is the uncompensated emotional labor of being
Speaker 1: a minority at a job, Like hey are you doing
Speaker 1: your job, but are you also doing the job of
Speaker 1: like checking other people's work to make sure it isn't
Speaker 1: homophobic or racist, and also like doing like outreach or
Speaker 1: activities or pasting you know, nights for for other groups
Speaker 1: and like advocacy or whatever, and all that stuff is uncompensated.
Speaker 1: As women, we're often getting advice about how to be
Speaker 1: better at work. We should lean in or advocate for
Speaker 1: ourselves more. As someone with a show in this genre,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what you think about advice like that that
Speaker 1: prescribes all these ways for women to act at work. Well,
Speaker 1: it is. It's a double edged story because you're essentially
Speaker 1: then saying be like the boys so that you can
Speaker 1: treat other people poorly. Is what I've always kind of
Speaker 1: taken from that, Like instead of being like, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: all figure this out and maybe dismantle this, and like
Speaker 1: I struggle with that on the show a lot. It's
Speaker 1: like I get a lot of feedback from people that
Speaker 1: are like super happy that it's kind of a show
Speaker 1: about dismantling stuff, but then also people who are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but we gotta work within the system, and so I
Speaker 1: try to talk to both sides. I try to talk
Speaker 1: to people that I feel both ways about it, because
Speaker 1: I don't really still don't know exactly how I feel
Speaker 1: about it. There's part of me that's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: get in there, be just like the boys and do
Speaker 1: the thing and blah blah blah. But then it's like, well,
Speaker 1: why are we valuing this type of behavior and this
Speaker 1: type of cut throughout situation where you have to behave
Speaker 1: a certain way in order to succeed? Why are why
Speaker 1: are we mirroring this thing that isn't good and it
Speaker 1: and it is also only a certain type of woman
Speaker 1: who even can do that. If you're like, hey, ladies,
Speaker 1: go in and be brassy and take charge, and then
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, that's cool, but like can a black
Speaker 1: lady do that? Is like a disabled woman going to
Speaker 1: be taken seriously doing that. Um, it's it's advice that
Speaker 1: might work for some people, but it also leaves a
Speaker 1: lot of people in the dust. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: get into that more, like how do you tell women
Speaker 1: to help themselves when, like you said, you know that
Speaker 1: so much of this as kind of structural. Yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 1: A big part of the show is eliminating the shame
Speaker 1: in the isolation. So I took a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff to be personal. Right, I'm bad. This is a
Speaker 1: rejection of me. I'm bad with money because I'm worthless.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a stupid person and I have a deficiency
Speaker 1: and I'm maybe even like more only inferior. Right, So
Speaker 1: once you eliminate that aspect of it, then you can
Speaker 1: kind of start to go from there, because you just
Speaker 1: need to be aware you can do things to help
Speaker 1: yourself obviously, like I still have coupons, I still work
Speaker 1: with a budgeting app. Like I'm not like, you know,
Speaker 1: throwing bricks through Bank of America windows. Um, I'm still
Speaker 1: trying to like do these little things. But you have
Speaker 1: to be aware that it's stressful enough without the already
Speaker 1: without adding on the whole thing of like I'm this
Speaker 1: is this is in no part structural, and this is
Speaker 1: all an individual failing. I want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about your career outside of the podcast, because that's
Speaker 1: far from the only thing that you do. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: you're in the entertainment industry. And we did an episode
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago where we talked to Monique
Speaker 1: about her negotiation with Netflix, and that she said she
Speaker 1: got offered five thousand dollars and that was much lower
Speaker 1: than the rates other comedians were getting, and she didn't
Speaker 1: end up taking the deal. And she told us how
Speaker 1: the Negotia Asian went, and it was interesting because she
Speaker 1: was like, it's really hard to make the case for
Speaker 1: your value in these situations and to to say like
Speaker 1: this is what I'm worth. Has anything like that ever
Speaker 1: happened to you? Or like, how do you know that
Speaker 1: you're negotiating a fair rate in a situation like that.
Speaker 1: I try to think long term about things. If I'm
Speaker 1: working on something that is for a lower pay, in
Speaker 1: my mind, I go okay, but then I can what
Speaker 1: can I turn that into? Can I turn that into
Speaker 1: a TV show? Can I expand it into a film?
Speaker 1: But then other projects, I'm like, okay, it needs to
Speaker 1: be this amount of money. I I you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's very interesting when a woman like Monique actually
Speaker 1: says like no, there's a power and no. Right, So
Speaker 1: now she says no, and hopefully that leads them to
Speaker 1: rethink the amount that they offered the next black woman.
Speaker 1: I hope that's what happens. That's very idealistic, but maybe.
Speaker 1: So your show started out as more of a personal journey,
Speaker 1: but it's changed since then. What would you say the
Speaker 1: mission of the show is now. I think the point
Speaker 1: of the show is two teach people something, to broaden
Speaker 1: this out from, because it's such an isolating topic and
Speaker 1: you think that every problem that you have is is
Speaker 1: your own. This is like a weird example, but my
Speaker 1: dad's an alcoholic, and I thought everything that I was
Speaker 1: in my personality and all the effects from it were
Speaker 1: just my problem, Like, oh man, this is what I'm like.
Speaker 1: I got messed up in this very particular way. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I went to alan On and everyone there
Speaker 1: had the same the words had been coming out of
Speaker 1: my mouth. They had the same exact problems, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, I'm not even special. Um.
Speaker 1: And so part of what I want is to teach
Speaker 1: people with the show, but I also want people to go, oh, like,
Speaker 1: I'm hiding this thing, and I'm hiding you know the
Speaker 1: ways that this and this and this are affecting me.
Speaker 1: And I didn't even realize that there was like this
Speaker 1: huge umbrella where all of us are are being affected
Speaker 1: by this. Yeah, and I think that's something that we're
Speaker 1: trying to get at with this show too, where it's
Speaker 1: like that it can feel very personal to you something
Speaker 1: that happened in your career or at work or to
Speaker 1: someone you know, and actually it's it's something that's happening
Speaker 1: to lots of women and we just don't talk about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so hopefully talking about it on this episode will solve
Speaker 1: the whole problem. God, I hope, so really down to
Speaker 1: solve things. So a lot of this is very depressing.
Speaker 1: Um in like a lot of our episodes feel depressing.
Speaker 1: How do you not get depressed doing this show and
Speaker 1: talking about this all the time. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: guess because I meet so many people on the podcast
Speaker 1: who are doing all these things I've never heard of.
Speaker 1: I'm constantly uplifted by, like the individual people that I
Speaker 1: talked to you on Bad with Money. Like, obviously the
Speaker 1: topics are depressing, and like the general outlook and like
Speaker 1: the world in the government and everything is depressing. But
Speaker 1: then like there will be people that come on that
Speaker 1: are just like even like journe List, that are doing
Speaker 1: amazing work and like deep dives into these things that
Speaker 1: then you know, you go, oh, well, nobody reads long
Speaker 1: reads anymore. But their their work is amazing, and it's
Speaker 1: stuff that you don't necessarily hear about um. But the
Speaker 1: individual people that I talked to have just been you know,
Speaker 1: there's a guy running for president that we had on
Speaker 1: the show that is committed to universal basic income and
Speaker 1: and I don't know that he'll even get on a ticket.
Speaker 1: But there's like UM, stuff that is small and and uplifting,
Speaker 1: and that comes from like the individuals that I talked to.
Speaker 1: Gabby is still not entirely sure what works and what doesn't,
Speaker 1: but hearing from other people and sharing information is helping
Speaker 1: her figure it out. And she's not alone. Women's empowerment
Speaker 1: seminars and workshops and conferences have become wildly popular. Women
Speaker 1: want to come together to talk and learn about how
Speaker 1: to solve their own individual pay gaps. We should be
Speaker 1: cynical about anything that promises a magic bullet solution to sexism,
Speaker 1: and most of these workshops probably aren't worth your money. Still,
Speaker 1: there can be real value in meeting other people who
Speaker 1: are having the same problems as you are. Jordan Holman
Speaker 1: flew out to Seattle in March to attend the Get Money,
Speaker 1: Get Paid conference hosted by the group Ladies Get Paid
Speaker 1: to see if she could get empowered? So what do
Speaker 1: you do when you're just one person trying to fight
Speaker 1: the gender pay gap? When you're Claire Washerman, you hold
Speaker 1: a conference. So a lot of us feel very overwhelmed
Speaker 1: because we think, well, what can I possibly do? So
Speaker 1: that's a big goal of the conference is getting people
Speaker 1: to walk out with you know, the bravery to do
Speaker 1: something and also what actually am I doing at work
Speaker 1: on Monday? Ladies Get Paid is dedicated to, as his
Speaker 1: website puts it, helping women embrace their ambition and take
Speaker 1: control of their careers. Conferences like Get Money, Get Paid
Speaker 1: are part of a lucrative industry claiming to teach women
Speaker 1: how to be strong, confident professionals. These conferences traffic and
Speaker 1: good feelings in women's empowerment, but usually come at a
Speaker 1: high cost. Get Money, Get Paid was no exception. Tickets
Speaker 1: cost two hundred and seventy nine dollars originally, but organizers
Speaker 1: quickly figured out that was more than women were willing
Speaker 1: to pay. They marked them down, but only if you
Speaker 1: brought a friend. I arrived at the conference around nine am.
Speaker 1: The morning started with the usual depressing statistics, so I
Speaker 1: think one of the more statistics that I read that
Speaker 1: relaying st kick my button. Starting this from the fact
Speaker 1: that black women in this country it makes forty four
Speaker 1: billion dollars a year in revenue, but less getting DC
Speaker 1: funding at an average, Ladies Get Paid puts a distinctly
Speaker 1: millennial spin on its events. The vibe in Seattle was
Speaker 1: part soul cycle, part Susie Orman, supposedly affirmative channing helps
Speaker 1: you get rich. It was kind of weird, but a
Speaker 1: lot of people seem to feel good just talking about
Speaker 1: money out loud. A lot of what we're doing is
Speaker 1: stripping away taboos of not only money, but even just
Speaker 1: women declaring to each other that, wow, I am having anxiety.
Speaker 1: Nowt work, I'm struggling, right, that's a taboo to say
Speaker 1: that maybe the ultimate thing women feel anxiety about is
Speaker 1: how to advocate for themselves in the workplace. A lot
Speaker 1: of women think if they can just figure out how
Speaker 1: to negotiate better, they'll finally get the money they deserve.
Speaker 1: Ladies Get Paid knows this audience and the speakers had
Speaker 1: a lot to say on the subject. If they don't
Speaker 1: get into a place where you feel good thinking about
Speaker 1: so when you think about your no text number. A
Speaker 1: lot of way you want to do here. So if
Speaker 1: you get a really good email from a client or
Speaker 1: someone internally in the company, say it. But it's somewhere
Speaker 1: where you have mayload all you If you know you've
Speaker 1: done your research for what you should be making, that's
Speaker 1: when you have a decision to make. But salary negotiation
Speaker 1: is a pretty fraught subject for women. We're told that
Speaker 1: we're bad at it, but we're also punished when we
Speaker 1: do it well. We don't speak up for ourselves or
Speaker 1: we're too aggressive. It's one of the reasons why the
Speaker 1: Advice and Lean In was ultimately disappointing for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Claire says, the conference focuses so much on
Speaker 1: salary negotiation because that's what women want, so we had
Speaker 1: I mean, at this point, eight women have written in
Speaker 1: to us. When they sign up, they say what they're
Speaker 1: most interested in, and the reason we've done so much
Speaker 1: salary negotiation curriculum is because they've told us overwhelmingly that
Speaker 1: they just need help. You also want to be careful
Speaker 1: of not giving women bad advice in terms of just
Speaker 1: go in there and ask for the biggest number and
Speaker 1: you know it's like, there's a lot of nuances to this.
Speaker 1: You have to be very strategic and aware of your
Speaker 1: the context of your relationship if you're a woman of color,
Speaker 1: even more so. Uh So, it's certainly not a one
Speaker 1: size fits all even among women. What qualifies is actionable
Speaker 1: for one person might not work for someone else. Can
Speaker 1: money get paid? Actually seemed to get this. The speakers
Speaker 1: were black, Indian, divorced gay. Still, the realist lessons happened
Speaker 1: out in the audience, with people swapping tips based on
Speaker 1: their own life experiences. For instance, I talked to Maria Popolio,
Speaker 1: are freelance user experience designer in Seattle, when she learned
Speaker 1: that the agencies she worked for was billing clients almost
Speaker 1: seven times more than what they were paying her. She
Speaker 1: came back with one of the most effective negotiating tactics
Speaker 1: in the book. I took census data, like the U.
Speaker 1: S Census, and I printed it out, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm going for, And through all of that,
Speaker 1: that's where I developed my tactic of the weirdly specific number.
Speaker 1: When Maria goes into a job interview, instead of saying
Speaker 1: she wants, say sixty an hour, she'll go in with
Speaker 1: something like fifty seven. It plays into a concept called anchoring,
Speaker 1: which basically says that whoever throws out the first number
Speaker 1: in a negotiation automatically gets the upper hand. In general,
Speaker 1: people like round numbers, so if you throw out a
Speaker 1: weirdly specific number to start with, whoever you're negotiating with
Speaker 1: is likely to counter with another weird number, say fifty
Speaker 1: dollars an hour instead of fifty. Because it's also helpful
Speaker 1: to go into a negotiation with research to back you up,
Speaker 1: Maria looked at the senses to figure out what other
Speaker 1: people in the same industry we're making, because census data
Speaker 1: is just a aggregate of all of the numbers rolled
Speaker 1: up into one and they rounded up to the nearest dollar.
Speaker 1: But you get non traditional numbers, you get numbers and
Speaker 1: ends and three or seventh, and so I've kind of
Speaker 1: taken that going forward. I'm like, every time I present
Speaker 1: a salary, it's going to end in the three or
Speaker 1: seven anchoring. The conversation may not help you seem less
Speaker 1: aggressive when you try to negotiate your salary, but it
Speaker 1: might just help you get closer to the number you
Speaker 1: want to hit. And when you've been shut down over
Speaker 1: and over again in your career, that little bit of
Speaker 1: success can be huge. Even though the conference spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time focusing on actionable advice. When I asked
Speaker 1: Comisha Turner, an artist in Seattle who has a day
Speaker 1: job as an account manager in the tech industry, what
Speaker 1: she most got out of it, she said that you're
Speaker 1: not alone. I think it's sometimes, especially when you're in
Speaker 1: a corporate environment, you do feel alone. Even though it
Speaker 1: can be expensive, and even if the advice isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: fool proof, that little bit of community can make a
Speaker 1: big difference. I feel like, um, sometimes there's a lot
Speaker 1: of competition between women when you don't have an event
Speaker 1: like this where you can come together and then be
Speaker 1: epathetic towards each other and learn from each other and
Speaker 1: share each other's stories. Because it can be cut throat
Speaker 1: in the environment and it is a man, you know,
Speaker 1: in the environment, Um, you kind of feel alone. You
Speaker 1: feel like the women that kind of get it there,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of leaving you and alert. Whereas if
Speaker 1: you really kind of put yourself and start start thinking like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, these women also have gone through the
Speaker 1: same thing, same thoughts, the same insecurities all of that,
Speaker 1: then maybe I should talk to them instead of being,
Speaker 1: you know, feeling like I have to compete with them,
Speaker 1: you know, and just understanding that we're all kind of
Speaker 1: going through the same thing, maybe at different levels. Not
Speaker 1: everyone finds Ladies get Paid as inspiring as Comische does.
Speaker 1: Last year, the group was sued for gender discrimination by
Speaker 1: several men for opening their events only to women, trans
Speaker 1: and gender nonconforming individuals. The terms of their settlement haven't
Speaker 1: been disclosed, but in May Claire admit it in the
Speaker 1: weekly Ladies Get Paid newsletter that the group was close
Speaker 1: to bankruptcy. She started a crowdfunding campaign to try to
Speaker 1: raise a hundred thousand dollars, and three weeks later they
Speaker 1: met their goal. Claire says that as part of the settlement,
Speaker 1: she changed the Ladies Get Paid by laws to allow
Speaker 1: men to attend the events. But when I talked to
Speaker 1: her again on the phone after the conference, she was worried,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be the same when we have
Speaker 1: our events. It is to provide a space for women
Speaker 1: to se feel comfortable to share really vulnerable things they've
Speaker 1: been really like disturbing things. Sometimes the people that they've
Speaker 1: gone through, especially around a sexual harassment, um or toxic
Speaker 1: work environments discrimination. And I'm very concerned that if there
Speaker 1: are men in the room, these women are not going
Speaker 1: to feel, you know, that level of comfort that they
Speaker 1: did before, and then they're not going to share, and
Speaker 1: then it's not going to be this environment of catharsis
Speaker 1: and you know support that I wanted it to be.
Speaker 1: Since the policy change, a small number of men have
Speaker 1: attended events, and it's been okay so far as long
Speaker 1: as women are still into it, she says, she'll be
Speaker 1: happy by the work that we were doing. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just about making more money for the sake
Speaker 1: of making more money, but it was about power and
Speaker 1: value and self worth and that the conference gave it
Speaker 1: to them. So we're doing it again and we'll keep
Speaker 1: going as long as people buy tickets. The amount we
Speaker 1: have in our bank accounts or what we get paid
Speaker 1: for our work can feel like a reflection of our
Speaker 1: value as a person, and when it comes to the
Speaker 1: pay gap, our individual experiences like not getting a raise,
Speaker 1: or being interrupted during a meeting, or just not making
Speaker 1: very much money can feel like a result of our
Speaker 1: own shortcomings and entirely too big to solve on our own.
Speaker 1: But Gabby said something that I think we can all
Speaker 1: learn from by talking to other people. She realized that
Speaker 1: she wasn't alone, that other people had similar problems because
Speaker 1: they had similar life experiences, and knowing that helped her
Speaker 1: begin to overcome her issues with money because she could
Speaker 1: stop blaming herself and start seeing the problems for what
Speaker 1: they really are. If you get one thing out of
Speaker 1: the show, I hope it's that we're all experiencing the
Speaker 1: pay gap collectively. We can't solve it by ourselves, but
Speaker 1: individuals coming together and sharing knowledge is powerful. Like just
Speaker 1: think about me too. Our individual experiences of sexual harassment
Speaker 1: are intimate and isolating, but once every woman spoke out
Speaker 1: at the exact same time, a bigger picture emerged, and
Speaker 1: only then did we start seeing potential change. Not only
Speaker 1: does sharing information make us feel less alone, but it
Speaker 1: helps us find solutions. Thank you so much for listening
Speaker 1: to The Paycheck. This is the last episode in our series.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please head on over to
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to rate, review, and subscribe.
Speaker 1: It really helps if you listen to all six episod
Speaker 1: so thank you so much. If you haven't, go back
Speaker 1: and listen, and please tell us what you think. We'll
Speaker 1: continue covering the gender pay gap and are working on
Speaker 1: more amazing stuff. Visit bloomberg dot com Slash the Paycheck
Speaker 1: to sign up to be the first to hear about
Speaker 1: our new projects and stories. This episode was reported by
Speaker 1: Jordan Holman and hosted and reported by me Rebecca Greenfield.
Speaker 1: It was edited by Jillian Goodman and produced by Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 1: We also had help from Francesca Levi, Janet Paskin, and
Speaker 1: Liz Smith. Our original music is by Leo Sidra. Carrie
Speaker 1: vander Yott did the illustrations on our show page, which
Speaker 1: you can find at Bloomberg dot com Slash the Paycheck
Speaker 1: Special Thanks to tofor foreheads Laura Zelenko, Jackie Simmons and
Speaker 1: all of our guests. Francesca Levy is head of Bloomberg Podcasts.