![]() ![]() It’s not your job to dismantle the systems that give you less than you deserve, but you can resist them by affirming your own worth. As Tolbert advises, “Keep in mind, when you are advocating for yourself, you are also advocating for your family and for the people who come behind you.” Embrace the discomfort as a signal that you’re on the right track and your courage makes you a catalyst for change. ![]() ![]() Remind yourself that adopting a growth mindset means experiencing growing pains, and that you’re doing so in service of something bigger than yourself. Reframe your interpretation of this discomfort. “Since Black women are so underrepresented in leadership roles, we may even be encouraged by our own family members, friends, and even ourselves that we should be ‘grateful’ for what we are offered, rather than that we deserve every penny that we ask for.” Niani Tolbert, founder and CEO of HIREBLACKNOW, expounded on the ways Black women are impacted by a cultural more of toxic gratitude. Grounded in the systemic racism that has made upward mobility hostile to Black communities for generations, being gaslit into gratitude is a tough cycle to break, especially when negative attitudes toward our ambition come directly from the people we deeply trust and who want to see us succeed the most. By learning to recognize and name gaslighting when it happens, we become better equipped to stop internalizing its effect - what Mallick describes as being “filled with self-doubt, wondering if we should have said anything in the first place.” Embrace the Discomfort The very definition of gaslighting at its most insidious, these responses are designed to deflect and distract, reducing the person making an obviously reasonable request for a wage commensurate to the value of their work to a state of questioning their own reality. ‘Why are you asking for more money? Don’t we pay you enough? Do you know you are one of the higher-paid team members?’” Mita Mallick, head of inclusion, equity and impact at Carta and cohost of Brown Table Talk, told me that in her time coaching women of color and Black women in particular, she has “heard the responses they face when they ask to be paid fairly and equitably. Like I learned that day on the playground, expressions of goodwill aren’t always what they seem. Alongside advocating for systemic change and placing responsibility on leaders and people in power, these simple strategies, alongside practical advice from my conversations with Black women leaders and women leaders of color, can help Black women, people who are not men, and pay equity allies combat the gaslighting that keeps us from earning what we’re worth. While the systems governing our economy must be held accountable first and foremost, the cost of this inequity continues to compound exponentially in real time, costing the average Black woman employee upwards of $900,000 over the span of a 40-year career, something we simply cannot continue to afford. Census data, this year’s Black Women’s Equal Pay Day is September 21st - almost a full two months later than it was just last year thanks to an ever-widening wage gap. As the average Black woman makes 58 cents for every dollar earned by the average white male per the latest U.S. I was five.īlack Women’s Equal Pay Day symbolizes “how far into the year women must work to be paid what white men were paid the previous year,” per The American Association of University Women ( AAUW). While enjoying an idyllic afternoon on the playground at recess, my best friend looked at me lovingly and said, “Lola, I don’t like Black people, but I like you.” I said “Thank you,” and a pattern of accepting what was offered began. Here’s the uncomfortable truth Black women reading this already know: Being offered less than we deserve started way before any of us first earned a paycheck.
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