April 14--Take a moment Tuesday -- National Equal Pay Day -- to check out the #Ask4More campaign, a movement meant to inspire women to seek more equitable salaries.
"It's not that you're demanding," journalist Diane Brady says in a video that kicks off the campaign. "It's that you're reminding them what you're worth."
Spearheaded by Levo, a multimedia mentoring group designed to help women through the first decade of their careers, #Ask4More brings together a diverse group of notable women -- from activist and former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton to comedian Sarah Silverman -- to encourage women to go after what is rightly theirs.
"We need to do more to ensure women are equally valuing ourselves," Clinton says in the video. "And we need to change the social norms and cultures within employers so that women are equally valued -- we need to do both of those together."
In honor of National Equal Pay Day, Levo has collected some compelling data about wages.
For example, Washington, D.C., has the smallest gender wage gap in the nation, with full-time working women earning 91 cents, on average, to a man's dollar, according to the American Association of University Women. That compares to 78 cents to a man's dollar nationwide, on average. And a new Institute for Women's Policy Research study finds that Washington women with a bachelor's degree or higher earn a median $74,000 annually, compared to the national median of $50,000.
Wall Street is a different story. Three out of the five occupations with the biggest wage gaps are in finance, with female financial managers earning 67.4 percent of what their male counterparts earn, and female financial advisers bringing in 61.3 percent of what the guys make, according to a 24/7 Wall Street report.
(What would Suze Orman say?)
On social media, punching in #Ask4More will get you a slew of inspirational quotes ("You get in life what you have the courage to ask for," Oprah Winfrey) and disheartening statistics (60 percent of millennial women don't negotiate for higher salaries, according to one study).
The message is designed with a singular goal: to get women marching into their bosses' offices with their minds on money and money on their minds. (Apologies to Snoop Dogg.)
"Go ahead, ask for more," Silverman urges viewers in the kick-off video. "More please. Please, sir, may I have some more?"
That last bit, of course, is a nod to the Charles Dickens novel "Oliver Twist," not an assumption that all bosses are male.
hstevens@tribpub.com
