Do You Know What You Are Worth?
Women tell me all the time that they don’t know what their work is worth
That’s a massive issue, as the consequence of operating from a place of ignorance is hurting you and your families big time. If you don’t know what you’re worth to your employer or to your customers (if you’re an entrepreneur), you are leaving money on the table. Because we never overestimate our own value, we always underestimate it.
And that way we are asking for and getting less than we’re worth. Which in turn means that over the course of our careers we lose millions of dollars due to not stepping up. Importantly, we also lose out on career opportunities, respect and resources.
So knowing your worth is essential. But as said, many women struggle with this. Today I want to address one insidious aspect of knowing your value. Which is this: we often undermine ourselves.
There’s one piece of research, where women and men were tasked with solving a puzzle, and then they were asked how much they should earn for this. Women reported expectations of 3 to 32% pay less for doing the same job as the guys did! This had nothing to do with how they assessed their performance in the task (which was the same on average), or even how they actually did. It is simply that we expect to earn less for the same job done.
Please let that sink in, my darlings.
Same job done. But we expect to be paid up to 32 percent less for it than boys do.
There are many societal, cultural and historical reasons why women don’t value their work to the same degree as men do. In short, and much simplified: women’s labour has long been unpaid. We worked at home, tended to kids and households – stuff we did for love, not money.
We’ve only hit the working place in the last 50 years or so, and we as a society (both men and women) are still getting used to the idea that we’re equal in every way. So let’s give ourselves and the boys some grace on this, whilst our brains are catching up, shall we?
But whilst we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over it, we should DO something about it. We should not accept earning millions less over the course of our careers just like that. Knowledge is key, and being aware of this tendency to undervalue ourselves and our work is the first step. I will soon discuss practical steps we can take to assess the value of what we do, which is the second step.
If you’re interested in working with me directly to get you to the best place to know you’re worth, know how to ask for + get it, whilst keeping the same or even improving the relationship with your boss, please schedule a call with my team here: