A major Australian women’s mag will be including an article on the gender pay gap and is looking for women to share their stories… do you have an experience you could share?

In the past have had women come to me from accounting firms, law firms, corporates, financial services and just about every other industry to tell me their tales and to seek validation – when they raise concerns about pay inequality and other aspects of gender discrimination there are often attempts to play down their responses.  They become convinced that they must be over reacting (they’re not!), that perhaps it’s all about their capability (it isn’t) and that they have no choice but to put up (they do have a choice to do more than this, but it won’t be popular). 

Some women who have worked in professional services firms have found out they’re paid less than men – one woman found out that her husband who started in the same firm at the same time on the same graduate program was being paid 20% more than her (they were quick to fix it when she raised it – but why should she have to raise it and how would she have found out if she hadn’t developed a workplace romance – perhaps that’s why office romances are discouraged!!!).\

Another friend who’s now a partner in a law firm told me a couple of years back that at a promotions review meeting one man was promoted ahead of a woman because he had a family to support; whereas the woman didn’t need it as much.  

While one woman rang me recently to relay a story about a talent/succession planning meeting in which all of her male colleagues (she was the only woman in the meeting) used physical traits to describe the woman while performance traits were used to describe the men and whether they deserved promotions (women were described in terms of being good sorts; blokes were described as having produced good work).  

Has this happened to you, and if so, what did you do about it?  Would you be willing to go on the record? Please post your comments here or if you’d like to respond anonymously, please use the contact form at www.sphinxx.com.au