The Value in Over-Valuating Myself

As I sit here writing this I am mere hours away from a meeting with my boss in which I will ask for my second ever raise.  

I am awash with anxiety which is why I am writing rather than working… probably not great considering I am about to explain how all my hard work merits me more money.

Last year, the very first time I asked for a raise, I was in a similar state of dread.  This was my first “real job” outside of babysitting, student work, and temp gigs. This was the first time I had devoted the majority of my hours to a place of business, rather than a school or my bedroom. This was also the first time I had ever felt vocationally fulfilled in a job outside the field in which I earned my degrees—a field that felt increasingly outside my grasp.  I wanted to prove to my boss, and myself, that what I was doing was worthwhile.

So as I prepared for that meeting, one year ago, I was faced with the task of qualifying and quantifying my work not only for the first time, but in a field I felt I lacked any real training or experience.

I knew I worked hard, I knew I was good at my job, and I knew I deserved a raise, but I was met with a surprising amount of internal resistance. 

I come from a musical background, one in which free meals and “exposure” are often appropriate compensation for hours and hours of hard work and sacrifice.  I spent years studying music but would always happily sing for free, and here I was in a field with relatively minimal training and experience, and I was about to ask for thousands of dollars.  How could I possibly deserve that?

It wasn’t until I had done some research on average salaries and statistics on raises that I realized that it wasn’t my background as a musician that was causing this disconnect in value—it was my background as a woman.  

Women almost never ask for raises.  Furthermore, women rarely express what they want or ask for what they deserve in any way that might ruffle feathers.  We are accommodating and empathetic.  I found it impossible to reconcile asking for more money when there are people in service and labor industries working harder than me and making less.  Much less.  How can I justify asking for more when there are people starving in the world?

I once watched a film on the Invisible Children in Africa, who didn’t have beds and had to sleep on dirt floors.  That night, feeling overwhelmingly resentful of my own bed, I resigned to sleeping on the floor in solidarity with the Invisible children.  My mom pointed out how silly this was the following morning.  Spurning my own gifts would not help anyone. Appreciating them, and using my privilege for good, though, just might.

Me not asking for a raise on account of poverty in America doesn’t help solve poverty in America—that money will just go to my boss, and he certainly doesn't need it—but it might help, in whatever small way, pave the way for other women to ask for raises; for male employers be more ready to hear those requests; and for me to be in a better position to help in more tangible ways. I have the opportunity to be an example, to help change those statistics.

Stacey Abrams, you may have heard of her, arguably the baddest bitch in Midterm history has had to address recent critiques on the salary she was paid while working at a non-profit it 2014 and 2015. She had this to say:

   “There is this underlying question of how dare I seek or accept a salary of that level...

        ...And it’s tied to that sense that women should just do because it must be done —

                                                           that it’s somehow ignoble to accept compensation.”

Well, I hadn't heard of Stacey a year ago, but I found the courage to decide I was valuable.  I prepared a little report.  Trying to be as objective as possible I qualified my job as best as I could, breaking it into three sub-jobs and outlining those responsibilities.  I looked up the average salaries for those positions, decided what I thought was fair, and picked a number higher than that to open negotiation

There was no negotiation.  My boss listened to my presentation, gave it one moment’s thought, and accepted my first and highest offer.  He said that, yes, my work warranted a raise, but that he wanted to be clear that this was also to reward the fact that I even asked.  That I stuck up for myself.  He made sure that I knew what a rare thing it was for me to do what I had done, and that it deserved recognition.  That was almost better than the raise itself.  Almost.

A year has passed and my roll at this company has doubled.  I can now break my job down to six jobs.  Jobs which would likely be covered by six separate  departments at a bigger firm, but that I am handling alone. I have once again collected all the numbers I could find and, being as objective as I can decided on the number I want, the number I will ask for, and the number I will settle for.

Going into today’s meeting I have the same fear of rejection, of my boss laughing in my face at what is a preposterously high number; and I  have the same misgivings about my general undeservedness. But I am also constantly reminding myself that I work hard in this capitalist society of ours, and the fact that it is an unfair system does not negate what I am worth.  Most, if not all, women deserve more than they receive.  I am in a special position in which I have the power to take what I deserve.