It’s April and our focus this month is on financial health. The “gender wage gap” is a majorly buzzy phrase right now and rightfully so. U.S. women, on average, earn 80 cents for every dollar a white man makes, and the wage gap’s even wider for women of color! Ladies Get Paid is an organization providing tools and resources to help women negotiate for equal pay and power in the workplace. We sat down with Ladies Get Paid co-founder Ashley Louise to talk about closing the wage gap, advocating for yourself at work, and building community around financial health.

Shrill Society: Money, learning how to get it, spend it, and manage it long term is treated as a personal issue and one that we don’t have the opportunity to talk about enough as women. What was your personal journey to Ladies Get Paid?

Ashley Louise: I was working at a job and I found out the man that I replaced was making a lot more money than I was. A few weeks prior, a friend sent me a link to this organization―Ladies Get Paid―so when I found out I wasn’t getting paid as much as my male counterpart, I decided to show up for an event. This was around September or October of 2016. Being with so many women in the room and hearing them talk about their professional challenges, realizing it wasn’t just me―that this is something that was systemically affecting so many other women―was a really powerful experience. It empowered me to go back to my workplace and have conversations about pay equity, diversity, and inclusion. I liked it so much that about a year later I quit my job to run Ladies Get Paid with Claire.

One major tenet of Ladies Get Paid is that closing the gender wage gap starts with each of us at work. Can you talk about the importance of negotiating your salary and being your own advocate as a personal change in one’s life but also as part of a systemic change?

I think it’s interesting to think about someone’s journey with Ladies Get Paid. When someone joins it is often because, like me, they had an incident that happened to them on an individual level. Negotiating your salary is an important first step―you are your own best advocate. Capitalism exists. Nobody is going to give you more money simply because you deserve it. It’s also a really good opportunity to have a conversation with your manager and with your organization about the value that you bring. I know most people think it’s terrifying and it’s really hard, and it absolutely is, but thinking about it as an opportunity I find helps a lot. But the burden shouldn’t always be just on women to help close the wage gap. There’s a lot of research now that says that women do negotiate as much as men, it’s just that people don’t take it so well. Some people have poor reactions to women speaking up and asking for money because they are essentially asking for more power. So it is something that we try to instill in our members that it is important to be having these broader conversations about the wage gap and about diversity at your company. It’s not just, “How much money are you making?” It’s, “Where are the women in the company?” The wage gap gets worse as we get older because women aren’t getting called up into these important leadership positions. It could be 50/50 when you’re talking about entry-level positions, but, as you get up, who are the executives? Who are the directors? Who is interacting with these folks on a day-to-day basis to make sure that we are creating workplaces where women aren’t just surviving but they’re thriving and are active parts of their organizations and are being fairly compensated?  

Photo by Willow Noavi Photography for Ladies Get Paid.

In our Nasty Woman planner, we introduce the Ladies Get Paid Slack group. How many women are involved in the group and what type of resources are they sharing?

We have about 30,000 members in the community right now. They are sharing everything. We have a salary negotiation channel where folks are getting super granular like, “Hey, I’m so-and-so. This is the kind of role I’m in. I’m in this city and this is my years of experience. I’m having a conversation at my current company or I’m having a job interview and this is either where I think I should be or what they’ve offered me. What do you guys think of that?” Then there’s this outpouring of folks sharing their own salaries, where they work, and all the relevant data for that. So there’s a ton of data sharing, which we tell our members is super important. When you are negotiating your salary, absolutely know the numbers. Do the research. Talk to women, talk to your friends about how much money they make, but also make sure you talk to folks that are not women. Make sure you talk to white men because they make the most money out of anyone. I think it’s also really helpful to normalize the experience of negotiating your salary. Even if you never say anything in that channel, just by looking at it, you can tell that people are having these conversations about money and they are negotiating. Then you know it’s a regular thing that you should be doing. Beyond that we have a jobs channel where folks are looking to hire more women into their companies and bring folks from Ladies Get Paid into the fold. We have a shine theory channel. Shine theory is something that Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow talk about on Call Your Girlfriend [podcast] and that’s about being in your workplace and being with your friends and making sure you’re highlighting the good things that you’re doing and that other women in your lives are doing. So it’s just great to see people say, “You know what? I did something really cool and important that I’m proud of today,” and having a bunch of other women say they did a great job. It’s important that we validate each other with all the work we’re doing.

In addition to the Slack group, Ladies Get Paid offers meet-ups, town halls, and a one-day conference coming up in the fall. Why is building community around financial health so important, especially for women?

I think so much of it is these things are tough to talk about and we’ve been socialized to not talk about them, so by having community and seeing people who are living similar experiences to you it makes it so you don’t internalize these things. I know personally whenever I’ve gone through challenges at work, you think it must be something that you’re doing, but within a community you’re getting information from people who are like-minded and have the same goals as you. You’re also validating everyone else’s experiences and I think it gives you a lot of courage when we’re talking about a community that is based around social progress. These are not easy conversations to have. It’s not the easiest thing to be the first person to stand up at your company and say, “Hey, there are not a lot of women who work here and that has to change.” I think seeing many other people doing that, it gives you the courage.

What is the best piece of money advice that you received that you want to share with others?

Talk about it. We see it a lot in our salary workshops when we do a role play at the end. We say find a friend, or your parent, or a family member and literally role play through the negotiation situation. A lot of times we see the point where people get really nervous and stuck. They get through the whole process of making their case, “Here’s what I’ve done. Here’s why I’m more valuable. Here’s why I think I should be paid more.” You can write the number down ahead of time and have it on your paper, but, even if you’re just in a scenario talking to a friend, getting to the point in the conversation where you say what the number is, that’s the hard part of the conversation. We see people in real time realize, “I’m sitting in a room talking to a friend right now, but saying that number out loud is really hard.” That’s the point where you start sweating and you get really nervous. So I think talking about it in actual real numbers is the most important thing. I think it also helps when you are focused on a target and you can talk about how much money you want to make or how much you want to grow your wealth. Put a goal on it like, “By the time I turn 30, I want to have this many dollars in the bank or when I go into my salary negotiation this is the target.” Not going in there like, “Ah, I should get a raise.” Really focus on a number, and, the more you talk about numbers specifically, the easier that they are and the more confidence you will have in advocating for them.

Want to read more from badass ladies making an impact? Read our previous interviews with Tiffany Aliche aka “The Budgetnista,” Rebecca Lehrer and Amy S. Choi of The Mash-Up Americans, and Polly Rodriguez of Unbound.