Why women should discuss salariesI have a group of friends that I’ve known since my first salaried job in London. We inter-mingle, but haven’t met up as a whole for the last couple of years. It’s not intentional – we live all over the world – but to tell the truth, I’m kinda glad the opportunity hasn’t come up. The last time we met I’d just gone freelance and was singing from the treetops about my lucrative career move.

When those first few invoices came in, I felt like a king. I didn’t syphon off tax money like I do now, I just counted the pound signs – and after sitting stagnant for the past year, I’d tell anyone who asked how much I was making. Now I feel embarrassed about it all, and here’s why: because while I was probed about my finances, nobody else offered up information about theirs. It was all grey lines and blur, nothing concrete or defined. Between us – five women who all started out on the same rung of the ladder, with similar experience – the discrepancies in pay would have been, and still are I’m sure, great. If you were to go out for dinner with friends, all order the same thing, and then when the bill comes all be charged different amounts, isn’t that something you would discuss?

Between my first and second job, I negotiated a seven £7,000 pay increase. When I handed in my notice to go freelance, I was offered a 25% pay rise. At the time it wooed me, giving me food for thought for the terrifying prospect of becoming self-employed. My manager massaged my ego by telling me it was unheard of to secure such a big hike. But what I didn’t know then that I do know now is that I was being severely underpaid in comparison to my fellow colleagues – the 25% barely even brought me in line with them. Back then when I accepted the job offer, I felt as if I was conning my way into a bank balance that was way beyond my grasp – what seemed like a favour to me, was in fact a bargain for them.

There’s no banded pay scale for the creative industries, so it would have been difficult for me to know what the going rate was. That’s why when a friend-of-a-friend got in touch to ask about applying for my vacated role, I was transparent about how much I got paid and how much I thought they should ask for. This wasn’t a passive aggressive segue to pissing off my former employer; it was because if you do the same job as someone else, you should both be paid the same. We’re giving employers an inch and they’re taking a mile.

Freelancing is another matter entirely. There’s the opportunity to make money, but working for yourself also means giving as much as you can, all the time. There’s no holiday or sick pay, and if work’s available to you, it feels uncouth to turn it down. Your day rate will fluctuate with different projects – there’s no one price fits all here – so ensuring you’re on the same playing field as your contemporaries is difficult. The total column on my first few invoices was decided on whatever I was offered, which wasn’t necessarily what I should have been charging, but I didn’t know any better.


After sitting stagnant for the past year, I’d tell anyone who asked how much I was making. Now I feel embarrassed about it all, and here’s why: because while I was probed about my finances, nobody else offered up information about theirs. It was all grey lines and blur, nothing concrete or defined.


The law dictates that individuals with ‘like’ jobs should be paid the same. It also states that even if you have a pay secrecy clause in your contract, this will be overridden if inequality is suspected. So with The Equal Pay Act on our side, why are we still so shady about how much we earn? It’s the norm to be in the dark, so revealing what you earn is akin to releasing your deepest secrets into the ether for all to consume. You don’t want to be the lowest earner, but you probably don’t want to be the highest either. Bottom of the scale invites envy and competition, while sitting pretty at the top means you have to field those feelings and justify your worth.

But if we don’t talk about it, we’ll never have a handle on what is and isn’t acceptable. If you can talk about sex, love and life with friends, then money shouldn’t be so funny. Ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s just plain old ignorance – and we’re the ones losing out. I’m not suggesting you walk into the office on Monday with your payslips stapled to your cashmere sweater, but I am saying it’s time to open up. As a woman, you essentially work for free for the last few weeks of the year thanks to sexual inequality. Isn’t that enough to keep us incensed without also having the looming fear that we’re being seriously under or overcut because we’re too polite to assert the fact? Change can only start with conversation, and it needs to come sooner rather than later.

Photographs by Paul Whitfield exclusively for The Lifestyle Edit with art direction by Naomi Mdudu.