If hard work actually had a payoff
What if I told you, “You’ll work twice as hard and be paid half as much as a man?”
Women before me have warned me of this. They wanted the best for me so they gave me what they had: an impeccable work ethic and a painfully disempowered belief system from their lived experience.
My Black friends tell me they inherited a similar, albeit more excruciating lesson: Work 10 times as hard and hope for the best. Yet Black women are the most highly educated, multi-hyphenates in the workforce, and earn the least.
Calling it a Pay Gap is marginalizing and misleading. In reality, it’s a Pay Deficit.
If hard work actually had a “Pay Off,”
by now the Pay Gap would be replaced by a Pay Surplus.
Deficit = The amount by which expenditures or liabilities exceed income.
Transacting your most valuable personal assets — time, energy, talent and mindshare — are the expenditures you make at your job every day. And allowing your work expenditures to exceed your income is a liability.
Based on today’s gender wage gap for full-time, year-round workers, women lose nearly $400,000 over a 40-year career. For Black women, it’s a $1M shortfall over the same career span.
Working harder, while neglecting the economics of what hard work costs us, stems from the lie that our work defines our worth. It’s the most pernicious lie limiting women’s leadership, the source of our exhaustion and economic disparity.
We've been deceived by the idea that devotion to our jobs while debasing ourselves makes us more desirable and equates to job security.
If you’ve ever been part of a layoff then you know that the formula doesn't pay off, nor does admonishing yourself just to be grateful when you're retained to absorb the jobs of those who've departed.
This thinking triggers subconscious self-sabotage and reinforces a dynamic that does us a disservice.
Source: National Women’s Law Center, 2024
Women are so stressed from superfluous striving that we allow our minds the cognitive convenience of adopting a marketplace pattern fueled by scarcity. We choose the familiarity of a grueling routine that feels exhausting, even if it's undermining, which is why hard work doesn't work for us.
Smart work — strategic, intentional, with boundaries, and focused — is the most impactful and self-honoring work.
Let me hear your view and answer your questions.
Do you feel like your work expenditure exceeds your income?
Do you have a question about how you can grow your equity at work?
Ask a question or share an experience, I want to hear from you.