Empowering Women Podcast S3: Michelle Gymiah, Progress Toward Pay Equity The Empowering Women Podcast

Michelle Gymiah, is the Director of Equality Pays, a gender and ethnicity equality consultancy
dedicated to closing workplace pay gaps.  With gender pay gap reporting regulation, possible ethnicity pay gap reporting and a workplace talent shortage looming, redressing gender and racial inequalities in the workplace is more important than ever.
Michelle is a passionate advocate for enabling women (and men) to progress in their careers in a way that suits their outside of work responsibilities and lifestyle choices. She does this by empowering workplaces to radically rethink how they can support their employees to thrive at work.
Michelle has over 8 years’ experience of working at the Equality and Human Rights Commission and holds a Masters in Human Rights from The University of Manchester.
Michelle is a regular contributor to numerous podcasts, business magazines, and international conferences.
CONNECT WITH MICHELLE AND EQUALITY PAYS
LinkedIn
Equality Pays Website


EPISODE AND EMPOWERING WOMEN IN INDUSTRY LINKS
Corporate Pay Gaps Resource Hub
Burning Glass Technologies STEM Study 
U.N. Pay Equity Site
Wikipedia Equal Pay Day
Empowering Women Website
Empowering Women Slack Channel
Empowering Women 2021 Event Info (Including Registration)
Empowering Women Events (Including Meet Ups)
QUOTES
“No is just information.  No means next opportunity.”
“I was terrified of saying, ‘I’ve just found out that my predecessor was paid more than me; why is that?’ What I started to do was to internalize why that might be the case.”
“Systematically when you look at the workplace, how it was put together and who it was put together for, it was never put together for the likes of you and me in mind. It was designed in such a way that one person would be the breadwinner and by default that would be a man.  Then you would have someone who would take care of everything else and by default that would be women.”
“It’s a real systematic challenge in trying to ‘flip the script’ in terms of focusing on productivity and output as opposed to presenteeism and the idea of you can only be productive; you’re only really working if you’re in the office, if you’re being micro-managed, if we can see you at your desk.”
“We internalize the idea that it’s not safe for us to ask for more. It’s not safe for us to challenge the status quo.”
“We generally as women, especially women of color, we are socialized to not put ourselves at the center of what we’re asking for. We’re socialized to think about other people – think about your team, think about your family, the workplace, your colleagues, think about the system as it were.”
On negotiation:  “It’s really important to get connected to that purpose.  To help you feel that you have a steady foundation as the emotions go up and down (through the negotiation process).”
On negotiation: “You are going to get ‘nos’.  If it was easy and you always got ‘yeses’, then everybody would be doing it and this would not be a conversation”