MONEY TALKS

SALARY IS THE LAST TABOO AND TO CLOSE THE PAY GAP WE NEED TO DISCUSS IT OPENLY, SAYS ALANA MASSEY WHO LEARNED HOW TO TALK CASH WHILE WORKING AS A STRIPPER IN NEW YORK. HERE SHE SHARES HER BEST MONEY HUSTLES AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT THAT YOU BRING THEM TO TH

Before I could make my own living as a

writer, one of the most consistent jobs I had to earn a wage was working as a dancer in New York City strip clubs. In the club environment, it would be more suspicious to be cagey about my earnings than it would be to disclose them. Though every shift is different, I would gauge how well I was doing by comparing notes with my workmates to see if a night was going badly or if I just needed to up my hustle. Though the vulgar fantasy of strippers as greedy dramaseekers persists, the reality is that we shared details about money casually and in a spirit of generosity that I have never encountered in any other industry.

I retired the sequins and sky-high heels to become a full-time writer in 2014, and from day one I’ve talked about my earnings with other women in the media. I can count on one hand how many reactions were positive; when I’ve thrown a figure out there and I’m the highest earner, I’ve been met with both astonishment and resentment. When I’ve been the lowest,

I can feel the burn of pity in their eyes. Whether discussing your salary or your rent, money is an uncomfortable subject because it reveals far more about us than we might want to share, from class to our nature – how stingy or generous we are. In other words, it breaks social codes.

I wish I could say that I made a point of talking about my rates as a gesture toward women’s empowerment in the workplace, but really, I was just curious about what others made. I believe in the basic principle that having more intel about my industry is better than having less.

And I believe that if I want information, I have to give information. So when I sold my first and second books for more than six figures each, I didn’t hesitate to disclose the amount. I wasn’t strutting around my Twitter and Facebook feeds posting the exact figure alongside photos of new Chanel gear, but I openly told writers who were somewhere in the book writing and selling process themselves.

So it came as some surprise – and still continues to surprise me – when my female peers flat-out refuse to disclose to me what they earn. These are women in their twenties who sell multimillion-dollar flats in Manhattan at 20% above the asking price. Women who write about their sex lives in magazines with reckless abandon. Women who would sooner die than surrender their surnames or share their bank accounts just because they got married. But when it comes to discussing money in a frank way, they remain tight lipped. They’re not alone: a study by University College London found that Britons are seven times more likely to disclose things such as their number of sexual partners and whether or not they’ve ever had an STD than their incomes*. What makes the situation even murkier are work environments that discourage salary transparency even when research shows that this has a negative effect on business. A study by Cornell University and Tel Aviv University found a direct link between pay secrecy and a decrease in work performance**, while a researcher at Middlebury College, Vermont found that sharing salary actively improves work performance***. Hell, there should be weekly AA-style meetings scheduled to discuss pay.

Picture this scenario: your male colleague, who does exactly the same job as you, reveals how much he earns. It’s £20,000 more than your monthly paycheck. You’re outraged, but you can’t utter any words and you internalise the sheer injustice. If this scene is familiar and you still clam up every time you know you have to bring up money at work, it can be as simple as talking about money with your friends. You’ll begin to feel more comfortable around the subject, which will lead to more confidence when broaching it with your boss. What we earn is so closely tied to our sense of self-worth that if we’re not discussing it, how can we start to feel valuable or empowered?

Legislators are taking note. Few people would know the laws were even in place, but in 2010 the UK government outlawed ‘gagging clauses’ – contract stipulations forbidding employees from discussing their salaries.

Social expectations about pay, however, remain firmly intact. At 24, London-based Anamarija Slatinec has held more jobs in her nine years in the workforce than many people twice her age. Despite openly sharing details of her salary with her friends (she earns £23,500 as a corporate receptionist), she’s encountered reticence and hostility from employers when broaching the subject of income. Working as a doctor’s receptionist in the evenings, she earned a lot less than as a receptionist working day shifts: ‘When I would bring up salary, he would make me feel guilty for asking. When I quit because I found a job in tourism that paid much better, he refused to give me a reference.’

Talking about money isn’t just a nod to a brand of ‘have it all’ feminism: it’s about preparing the full one-third of UK households with women as main breadwinners for a new financial landscape . The results of income secrecy go way beyond equality as its own social good. The income they’re missing out on could lead to lower wages for households headed by women. The dearth of women in executive management becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: since men appear to be doing the heavy lifting at managerial level, it appears that women’s work is tangential to the overall success of the company. ‘I now work for a big multinational insurance provider,’ says Anamarija. ‘Of the 20 or so executives in the company, only three are women. It affects the perception that women don’t need to be discussing money or worrying about earning equal amounts to men.’ If your CEO doesn’t care about women’s individual incomes, they might want to consider the affect on the end-of-year profits: a report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that companies with more women in the senior executive roles outperformed those without†.

Right now, the so-called ‘career ladder’ that women are on is more like the ‘career vertical-face-of-a-mountain-covered-with-shards-of-glass-and-spiders’. To level the playing field, women should lead the charge towards more income transparency. And though I’m always game for being an embarrassing loudmouth, it can’t be entirely left up to brazen ex-strippers to do all the talking about what women are earning. Everyone needs to up their hustle.