Why Are Women Paid Less?

By Gordana Frgačić

Are you capable, smart, educated, yet promotions constantly elude you and go to men, even those that are significantly less capable than you? Are you at the same position as your male colleagues, but they have higher salaries and better benefits, for the same work? Are you in a managerial position, but yet not at management board level, not high enough to make strategic decisions?

Research confirms that women are, on average, paid less than men for the same work. Gordana Frgačić calls this problem by its real name, unlike some that treat it “in kid gloves”, and gives concrete examples. The book „Why are women paid less?“ reveals, without censorship, prejudices and stereotypes women are subject to at the workplace and elsewhere. All examples are real and happened at real companies, although their identities remain hidden.

The author underlines that most women blame others for this problem (usually men), but the reality is that women make a lot of mistakes, sabotage themselves and generate a lot of their own obstacles, deny themselves success and repeat the same mistakes that turn them into bad statistics.

Gordana Frgačić offers lots of useful advice and recommendations to all employed women that will help them stand up for themselves in the workplace, avoid and correct mistakes in their attitudes and behavior and thereby positively affect their careers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Aug 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667404158

Book preview

Why I decided to write this book

For all my female colleagues, friends and co-sufferers

Are you capable, intelligent, educated and diligent, and yet promotions continuously evade you, while your male colleagues get them, even those who are a lot less capable than you? Do you hold the same positions as your male colleagues, but you still think they have greater benefits and are better paid for the same work? Are you positioned high on the totem pole, yet not high enough to be on the management board and to make strategic decisions? Do you achieve excellent results on a daily basis, but you feel used and not rewarded in line with your contribution?

I must state up-front that this is not the kind of book where we will criticize men and analyze everything they do wrong. Also, I do not want to say that all men are incorrigibly the same and bad. Particularly because I know a lot of men who most assuredly do not fit that description, and because I am deeply convinced of the truth of the old saying: If we want positive change, we must first start by changing ourselves.

This book is based on my own experiences, as well as those of my female colleagues, acquaintances and friends, that I want to share with you, in order to help you avoid the classic pitfalls you might fall into while diligently working to launch your career.

This book is about us taking responsibility for our own careers.

In this book, I would like to shed light on the fact that we women have had the chance to raise all the men when they were children, and that we are largely responsible ourselves if we raised them to think less of us.

In this book I would like to show you the legacy we as mothers are leaving for our daughters, and that they in turn will be leaving for their daughters, and so on in perpetuity.

This book is somewhat of a mirror for us, and I would like you to look into it and see what it is that we can do better and how we can avoid always making the same mistakes that turn us into a bad statistic.

But, do you have the courage to finally stop whining and do something for your own career? If so, perhaps this is then the naked truth that you need to read.

What gives me the right to write about this topic?

Indeed – what does give me the right to write about such a serious and important topic? And do I really have something to say on the topic? After some initial doubts, I summarized my work experience. In short, it goes like this:

I will soon be 40. I started working in my third year of college, and throughout college I had various jobs in order to pay for my books and clothes, and earn some pocket money. At the age of 23 I had my first child, my oldest daughter, who will start high school this year. I had my son at the age of 26, after which I got a job with a company where I started building a serious career, and relatively quickly climbed the ladder from secretary to manager. I had my second daughter in my early thirties, while my career was on an upward path. At the height of the world economic crisis, I left the company where I had worked for almost a decade and my comfort zone, a known, practically friendly environment, and went in a completely new and unknown direction...

Therefore, I have found myself in all possible types of situations in which a woman may find herself when building a career, while simultaneously trying to keep a handle on her private life. On this journey I have encountered hundreds of wonderful people of both sexes, and been in thousands of pleasant and unpleasant business situations, had the opportunity to listen to other peoples’ experiences and temptations, and my position of head of human resources, that I have held for many years, has provided me with excellent insights into the topic I want to write about – first-hand insights. 

I will not, therefore, deal with assumptions and guesses, I will, rather, convey facts.

What will you find in the following chapters? What is my message?

The idea to write this book formed itself and matured together with my career, my experiences and the changes I went through, but some things I have realized for myself only recently and started to change for the better.

With time, it became clear to me what it was that I wanted to impart.

And I will be completely honest with you – at first, I thought I wasn’t good enough, so at first, I myself fell into one of the traps I want to write about in this book and which I want to warn you about in the coming chapters.

But then I decided to let you decide whether I have something to say or not, and whether I am good enough at it. And so, I finally embarked on this adventure.

Well, what is the message I want to send? Can I offer you some answers?

Why are we paid less?

And we know we are, it is just a matter of which statistic we will accept as correct – the one that says we are paid between 10 and 15 percent less than men in the same positions, or the one that says that the percentage is between 20 and 30. It is irrelevant, because the only appropriate percentage is 0.

And that has to be non-negotiable.

That’s exactly right – at first, I started to take an interest in statistics and diligently pursued everything said on the topic. I mostly found statistics and discussions on the position of women in society in relation to historical eras.

Then I found some commendable initiatives that help women of a certain age to find jobs, at a time when they are deemed less likely to find employment (which is, mind you, 5 years less than the age at which men are deemed less likely to find employment – why is that so?). And that is mostly it. 

And somehow it seemed to me that, whether they are just starting their careers, or somewhere in the middle of the road and don’t exactly know what is happening to them, or are already at the very top, but never seem to be equal to their male colleagues, women have very little use from the statistics, the history, or of the crumbs they are offered that resemble charity because they are at an age when they are less likely to find employment. Actually, employers find them too old, while their male colleagues of the same age are viewed as experienced and wise.

And we are also still unwilling to talk about all this, even though we are not some chauvinist country somewhere out there, we are practically in Europe, didn’t you know? By the way, I don’t have a much better opinion about Europe, quite the contrary, so I will say a few words at the end about that as well.

We only deal with women’s issues seriously in the context of physical violence towards women, but even then, only when women strolling along with a child in their arms are murdered in front of our eyes by their ex-husbands, towards whose violent tendencies the law seems to be more lenient than towards women who drive over the speed limit.

That is why I have decided to write about true, authentic experiences, about what happens to us every day, and how we can influence it, if we only try, and perhaps change the course of the river for some future generations of women, for our children.

When I started to consider possible topics more seriously, rewinding old films in my head, I realized that some of my personal experiences, as well as those I had heard of from others, were so unbelievable and bizarre, that at first I considered giving up. It seemed to me that my readers might think that this is a book of poor fiction and cheap attention seeking and that my book might at times sound like a cheap, low budget soap opera.

Then I thought about the fact that most women keep quiet about their experiences in the workplace, about the sacrifices they have had to make in order to be paid 10 to 30 percent less than their male colleagues, for precisely that reason. I thought that we are perhaps sending the wrong message to the other young women who are capable and willing to go to the top, but ill-equipped for what they will encounter.

And so, I repeat – I will not lie to you, I will not flatter either you or men, I will not merely convey statistics, and everything you will read in this book will be neither cosmetically altered nor exaggerated.

I do not want to send you the message that all men in the business world are bad and chauvinists, because that simply isn’t true.

I know many wonderful men and have often been in situations when they have stood up for women’s rights more than we do ourselves.

What I want to do is warn you about who and what you may encounter, what mistakes we make ourselves, and what obstacles we create for ourselves.

And that is the key.

I want to show you with specific, real examples:

• what we ourselves do wrong

• how we sabotage ourselves

• what obstacles we put before ourselves

• how we hold ourselves back

• in what ways we deny ourselves success

• what messages we are sending to future generations of women

• how we confirm stereotypes

All the examples given are real, but in order to protect the people that have confided in me, I will use various techniques to conceal the real data. Some of the experiences depicted are my own, and only in some of those instances will I shed anonymity, as for instance in the first case I will tell you about.

It is the example that speaks to attitude.

Do you have an attitude?

Or who is the person you see in the mirror in the morning?

Already as a student I took on various jobs, usually part-time, some for cash, some full time, but it was important for me to work because I largely supported myself.

When I graduated from university, I already had several years of work experience under my belt. I say this in order to accentuate the fact that this incident happened when I was very young,