International Women’s Day: The five-day challenge every woman should do

A series of achievable tasks done over a single week could see women land themselves a wage rise. For one participant, it paid off big time.

Last year was a tough one for most Australians, but data shows job losses and financial distress hit women particularly hard during the coronavirus crisis.

But female workers were already up against a stubbornly wide pay gap and the lower likelihood of being promoted or reaching senior positions in corporate Australia.

So, to coincide with International Women’s Day, social initiative PepTalkHer is challenging women to negotiate their true worth with a series of simple tasks.

It has launched the Know Your Worth challenge to help women reboot their careers and reach their salary goals.

It aims to help women understand what they’ve already achieved, while getting them comfortable with asking for more.

“The challenge is for anyone — we target women, but anyone can take part,” Meggie Palmer, founder and CEO of PepTalkHer, told news.com.au.

“If I had to summarise it — the idea of asking for a pay rise — it doesn’t have to be this behemoth that’s anxiety inducing,” Ms Palmer added.

“You can do it in five minutes. We want people to walk away with a reframe of how to ask for a raise.

“It’s the nudge theory. It’s about little changes over time — make the changes bite sized.

“The events in Canberra have highlighted that women need to be represented in all facets of leadership.”

Ms Palmer said PepTalkHer has already had huge results from its efforts to help women know their worth.

“One woman got a $5 an hour pay rise. It seems small, but that’s a crazy amount over the course of a year.

“Another woman is on track to get a $200,000 raise this year. She just didn’t know what she didn't know — it’s about baby steps and making it easy and achievable.”

Meggie's five day challenge tackles impostor syndrome and helping women find career purpose. Picture: Michelle Rose Sulcov / Michellerosephoto.com

Ms Palmer explained the challenge teaches women simple steps, like having an accountability buddy to push them to their goals, and asking for specific incentives at work.

The challenge was created by global gender diversity experts and can teach women how to deal with impostor syndrome, focus on their career purpose and help negotiate a raise.

Signing up for the free challenge includes free live calls with PepTalkHer founder Ms Palmer, a daily challenge and video, as well as 24/7 community support.

PepTalkHer boasts a global network of 60,000 professional women, and the PepTalkHer app and five day challenge has helped women collectively negotiate millions in pay rises.

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The COVID-19 pandemic magnified inequalities in the workplace for women, Ms Palmer believes.

“It’s so important we keep choosing to challenge bias and discrimination which is why we’ve developed a free toolkit to help women break through some of these barriers,” Ms Palmer said.

“The data shows women globally were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.

“Ninety-five per cent of carers of children are women and the industries most impacted by COVID-19 job losses were hospitality and travel which employ more women than men.

“In Australia, younger women lost the highest percentage of jobs.

“Traditionally female-dominated industries haven’t had the same government economic stimulus focus like male-dominated industries, including construction.”

Estimates show women are almost 100 years away from reaching gender pay parity. Picture: Michelle Rose Sulcov / Michellerosephoto.com

All of those factors combined to make Aussie women much more vulnerable during the COVID-19 crisis, she said.

“Adding to this — the gender pay gap stubbornly sits at 13.4 per cent nationally, with women earning around $242 less per week than men. That’s around $13,000 per year we’re losing out on, just because of our gender. That’s wildly unacceptable.

“The UN estimates we are still 99.5 years away from gender parity — we’re on a mission to turn that around more quickly.”

Unless swift action is taken, Ms Palmer worries women will fall even further behind.

“We know increasing the number of women in leadership and reducing the gender pay gap will not only lead to better economic outcomes, but greater steps towards equality in general.”

“We’ve worked with behavioural and organisational psychologists to establish a program that is easy to follow and has significant impact,” Ms Palmer said.

“Just five minutes a day for five days is all it takes for you to evaluate and reframe your thinking around what you want and how you can achieve it.

“Most of our beta users achieved a minimum of a $5000 raise from the course — so we reckon it’s well worth the five minutes for five days’ time investment.”

KEY STATISTICS FOR WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

• The full-time average weekly ordinary earnings for women are 13.4 per cent less than for men

• The adult full-time average hourly ordinary time cash earnings for non-managerial women are 11.4 per cent less than for non-managerial men

• Women hold just 14.6 per cent of chair positions and represent just 18.3 per cent of CEOs across Australia, even though data shows us that companies with diverse leadership teams outperform others

• 30.2 per cent of boards and governing bodies have no female directors

• Women are still under-represented in Parliament — 30.46 per cent of MPs are women

• The median undergraduate starting salaries for women are 2.5 per cent less than for men. This gap widens 13.0 per cent for postgraduate (coursework) graduates

Statistics from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency and United Nations