Check out this article in the Sacramento Bee— Do women undercut their financial future? Claudia Beck interviewed me on my view on underearning. As always, this is a sensitive issue. Of course there is outside discrimination and reasons why women may earn less than men—reasons beyond their control.  But “underearning “is about the role that we play in this.

Here is a small excerpt:

Despite the strides women have made in the workplace in the last 30 years, Valterra believes they still carry around a lot of emotional baggage attached to money. “We don’t want to be pushy, we don’t want to rock the boat. … In 2009, that hasn’t changed in female DNA.”
In her view, women need to worry less, speak up more and become skilled at negotiating their salary.

Check out the comments on the article. I touched a nerve and had to add my own comment. Of course I don’t think money is more important than people! Good grief! As I said in my comment after the article, the point of talking about underearning is NOT to make people feel bad—we are all doing the best we can do. It is simply to raise awareness that we need to stick up for ourselves and make sure we earn the money that we deserve to earn.

Money is not the key to life. But if you make enough money (which is completely relative) you have one less thing to stress about.  I know that many women are very stressed about money right now (and men too!) But if we attend to our own earning issues, we will have less stress over our lifetimes. As uncomfortable as this issue is, let’s keep talking about it. (And by the way, men are still more likely than women to negotiation their salary, even in a recession.)