No matter how hard you try to contest it, data will always confirm there is a huge wage gap between male and female workers. For some reason, business owners think it’s OK to compensate women less than men for their work.
Most data will say women make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes.
That’s wrong.
White women make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes, while Black women make 63 cents for every dollar a white man makes.
There are also anecdotal stories that support the wage gap, which has been lessening but not at the rate it needs to. Women who are fed up with being paid less than their male counterparts have been coming together through online communities to share their experiences.
Revealing your pay is no longer an unwritten rule, it’s how women are leveling the pay gap on their own. By sharing compensation practices, they’re helping other women navigate their own wage gap experiences.
We’ve rounded up 19 stories from the internet to show how the pay gap is still a serious global issue.
1. “Insulted and betrayed”
I’ve been working at a small retail company for about two years. The owners were extremely generous at first and absolutely loved me, so they gave me a raise quite quickly and soon after that promoted me to keyholder. They opened a second location and I started working there alone full time. They drop supplies off, and I handle absolutely everything else about the daily operations. I am also in charge of all online shipping orders, manage all their social media (including creating custom graphics, original content, etc) and help edit promotional and marketing material. I am, for all intents and purposes, the store manager, and my duties go far beyond the other keyholders at the main location. The owners have been nothing but thrilled with me.
So after trying to be patient for a long time, I finally got up the courage to approach them to ask that I be made store manager and be paid accordingly. I was civil and gave plenty of reasons why I deserved it, and explained that having a title is extremely important to me as I want to pursue a career in business. They told me they’d think on it, then set up a meeting where they refused to give me either, and gave me a litany of bogus excuses as to why. They were obviously in the wrong here (one of the owners let it slip at one point “oh well we consider you the manager, we just don’t call you that.”) so they dug up every pathetic excuse they could throw at me. Every time I would (politely) counter something they said they wouldn’t quite meet my eyes before sidetracking with some other transparently weak reason. They essentially insulted and trivialized all the work I do for them just so they could avoid giving me any sort of raise or title. I was floored.
So I gave up and nodded and smiled for the rest of the meeting while resolving to immediately look for new work. I feel incredibly insulted and betrayed. I’ve gone above and beyond to help make their business a success. I’m pretty sure they’ll regret it once I’m gone and they realise how difficult it will be to find someone to fill my shoes. It’s not much comfort to me though, as I sit here feeling like I wasted my time and am left with a resume that doesn’t reflect my skill level and qualifications. The worst part is, this has happened at other jobs before, but I was lulled into a false sense of a security by how kind, generous and full of praise they were at the beginning. Turns out they’re just another company willing to use employees to their advantage. I’m very disappointed to say the least.
2. “We just can’t”
I don’t now but I did make a lot less than my male peers. I was a lead forensic accountant but was on £20k less than one of the guys I worked with. I requested a pay raise (I was well prepared—I took in evidence to justify it, I had testimonials from colleagues attesting to my work and my expertise, I had the evidence from my annual reviews) but they turned me down. I wasn’t given any reason other than, “we just can’t do that right now”.
3. 15% gap
I would love tips on how to approach my boss about this! He pulled me in to interview someone who is the same position as me, we both hold the same position. His salary was available for me to look at in our HR portal (because of the interview), but I haven’t told my boss that I’m aware that I’m paid 15% less than my male counterpart.
4. “He’s got kids”
I’m not currently in that position now, but when I was the excuse I was given was “He’s got kids. He’s supporting a family.” Clearly that was a crap excuse, so I left there for more equitable employment situations. For many of my jobs, I have been fortunate to work in institutions where salary information is considered public and not secret. It most definitely helps in making sure that you are receiving a proper salary for your position.
5. Experience doesn’t pay the rent
Years ago I worked the marketing department for a small photography studio. I had been in the photography industry for years at that point doing marketing/photography/photo editing. It came time where we needed an office assistant and they hired this younger guy who just moved home from college. He was responsible for answering the phones and scheduling appointments. We grew to be friends and I found out he was making a dollar more than me an hour. When I confronted my boss he said it was because he had gone to college and I hadn’t. Umm…he went to school for music and I had years of experience in that industry! Also, my boss never went to college either and was running a successful photography business. He then went on to justify that he was basically paying me in “experience”. Needless to say, I didn’t stay there for too long after that!
6. Undervalued
I was chatting salaries with a male coworker of mine who had just been hired, and I was training him. Behind the scenes I had been fighting tooth and nail for a raise. I was making $46K annually and was asking to be raised to $50K after working for the company for five years and was repeatedly told there was no room for anyone to receive any raises. Our of curiosity, I asked my male coworker (who was the same age and had the same experience) and found out that he was being paid $65K for the exact same role that I was training him for. I left that job shortly after realizing how undervalued I was.
Annonymous
7. London calling
I have been through and lost an equal pay claim with my company. So based on my experiences there and as a union rep accompanying other women pay grievances here’s what I found.
Even when the work appears to be exactly the same, HR will claim you’re not doing work of equal value.
Keep pushing. Keep on going. It will be a slog, and it will wear you down.
Don’t give up and don’t get intimidated. It is your legal right to be paid equally.
Record all meetings – I don’t know what your policies say but if you want to record A/V it is probably best to get their permission in advance. However, if you are recording for your own note-taking purposes you may not need to. If you can’t record, take a colleague into every meeting you have and get them to take noted. Get HR to take minutes also, and get them to send it to you after the meeting so you can approve them. After your meetings, send an email summary of what was discussed to create a paper trail.
On a personal note my claim was refused because my male comparators were in London and I’m not, therfore the reputational damage is greater for them. I think it stinks because it degrades my work and that of my colleagues but my claim took more than 3 years and in the mean time I had 2 children and I couldn’t spare the head space for tribunal.
On the other hand several women I’ve accompanied have had huge pay awards with fully pensionable back pay (so make sure to go after that too).
Also if they start talking about outliers (people who are paid at the top of the range for whatever reason) the law says everyone has to be levelled up iver 5 years or so.
8. Pay slip slip-up
I was asked to hand out the pay slips at work, and realized my boss had given every woman one job title and every man a slightly different job title — even though we all did the same thing (fast-food burger joint). The women were all earning $2 less than the men. He justified it by saying ‘it’s a different job,’ which it definitely was not.
Anonymous
9. Blow-off job
State employee here. The Texas Tribune annually lists the salary of each employee, and that’s how I learned newly hired male employees with the same job title as mine (but far less experience) earned about $10,000 more than me and my female co-workers in the same job. When I inquired my male boss about it, he blew me off, saying they brought additional skills we female workers lacked.
10. Ignorance is bli$$
I was an assistant supervisor for a call center years ago, and the other assistant was an utter moron.
For example, he didn’t realize that Japan was in Asia, didn’t know that the Mississippi River was a real river (he thought it was made up when he read Huck Finn in school), and he would talk about himself in third person but use a cutesy name.
One day, the company was implementing a new 401(k) system, and we had to fill out our personal info. He was confused, so I decided to help him. It showed our yearly pay. HE MADE $15K MORE THAN ME! He was such a twit that he had to call his mom (he was 35 at the time) for his Social Security number, because he didn’t know it.
11. “Don’t make waves”
When our little company was small, she was the only purchasing agent there. It was a very hard job and she worked a lot of unpaid hours at home to get all the work done.
The business has grown significantly and the owners hired one of the owners friends as a 2nd purchasing agent. He’s a man (of course) with a family, so (of course) they are paying him a significant amount more, even though he works less hours, has been there less time and has less responsibility and messes up the orders about 5x more than my friend.
It all basically boils down to he has a family to support and this is just extra money for her since her husband already makes enough to provide for their family.
I keep trying to tell her that what the owners are doing to her is illegal and that she could do something about it and make them raise her pay to be equal with his. But she won’t do anything. She’s doesn’t want to “make waves”. Which just makes me so crazy mad!! Why should the owners get away with this??
12. Good ally
My director tells me he found out I made several thousand less than the least-paid of my 4 (male) coworkers, wasn’t going to stand for it, and got HR to approve an 11% (and $4,000) increase starting this pay period
13. Awful offer
My guy friend and I had the same internship and got the same degree from the same school. Upon graduation, we both applied to the same company and same role.
We both got job offers but I turned it down. Later he asked me why I had turned it down, and I said because the pay was too low; he was surprised, as he told me he actually thought the pay was fairly good. We compared the salary on our offer letters and he was offered about 30% more than me
14. “I hit the roof”
I found out I was paid less than my coworker by seeing his pay stub after he had been fired and banned from campus.
I have a master’s degree, was teaching three classes, and was constantly pulling dorm duty. He had no master’s degree, taught one class, and refused to do more than one night of dorm duty a week. To say I hit the roof is an understatement. Just as a funny aside, the reason he was banned from campus is because he broke in and squatted in another teacher’s apartment while they were out of town at a hockey tournament
15. Head start
I work as a teacher at an inner city charter school in the US in Pennsylvania. I was hired three years ago. Another person, a man, was hired at the same time for the same exact job (we are both the same kinds of teachers). I previously taught the subject for about two years before I got this job, whereas my colleague had zero real teaching experience.
He had some background as a teacher’s assistant in elementary ed, but I had previously been a classroom teacher. I also have two different teaching certifications and majored in my content area. I also graduated with two related majors (from a more prestigious school, but that’s beside the point), whereas he graduated with one related major from a local (but respected) university.
As you might be aware, most schools offer teachers a salary based on years of experience and education, so when I was given my offer, I was more or less told it was the standard amount given to first year teachers with a bachelor’s degree.
My male colleague does not have any teaching certifications. However, he was offered $4,000 more than I was when we began our positions. He was recently fired and replaced by a new male teacher, who was offered 2,500 more than I was when I first started. He actually makes more than I do now, and I started three years ago, whereas he started this year. I talked to some other colleagues and this seems to be a pattern.
I will likely try to find a new job and quit this one, even if it is in the middle of the year, because this is one example of MANY in which men have been favored over women at this school. I spoke to other male teachers who were hired before AND after me and were offered a higher starting salary.
16. “It was so very frustrating”
I used to work with a guy who loved to talk money. He told me how much he made, and it was $3,000 more than I did in the exact same position
We started within two months of each other. Raises were given company-wide and as a percentage increase, so each raise would put him higher and higher over the rest of us. And he LOVED to talk about it! It was so very frustrating. But when the time for promotions came, I became a manager and he didn’t, so I proved my worth in the end.
17. Secrets
I was a senior manager for a franchise. I had managed every single location, personally opened half the locations in our district, and trained every single member of management in the district as well.
When one of my assistant managers was getting promoted to a general manager position, he was told, verbatim, ‘Don’t tell [senior manager] about how much we’re starting you at; she makes way less than this,’ by our regional manager. This guy came to me right afterwards and told me exactly what was said and how much he was offered. I used that information to ask corporate for a raise and was let go instead.
Anonymous
18. Sole female
I was working for a for-profit educational establishment. I grew in this company and eventually became a senior lecturer in the higher education department.
I was one of the most experienced and the most highly educated in the office of 11 men and 1 female, me. A male coworker told me he’d just found out that he’d been underpaid for the past three months. As a good friend, he told me how much he’d accidentally been paid, and it was more than what I was getting. This triggered me investigating and turns out I was being paid £10K a year less than everyone else in the department. I did eventually get a raise after, but left soon after that to pursue a freelance career.
Anonymous
19. $2 swindle
I found out just by talking with one of my male work friends! I mentioned how difficult it was to manage living expenses on such a low wage, and he seemed surprised by the number I named.
He said he was getting $2 more per hour than I was, which isn’t a huge difference, but it all adds up. I started this job a month before he did and took on extra responsibilities where he hadn’t. I work in social services, which tends to be a more traditionally female job, so I really didn’t see this coming. When I asked my manager about it, she tried to tell me it was based on experience, despite me having started before my coworker and coming into the job with more knowledge.
Anonymous