Even people who are willing to divulge the most intimate details about their lives are hesitant to talk about how much money they earn. This episode looks at the origins of that pressure to keep your pay a secret, including who benefits and who gets harmed. Karen Brown talks to experts and activists about the role of pay secrecy in gender and race wage gaps — and recounts one recent case study in the publishing industry. And she considers why even the loudest advocates for pay transparency find the topic of money so awkward.
We meet:
Carl Lavigne, a library worker in Michigan who puts his salary in his email signature as a social experiment.
Hannah Williams, a 20-something woman who, after discovering she was underpaid as a data analyst, started a TikTok channel interviewing people on the street about their salaries. Her company, Salary Transparent Street, now pays her more than she got as an analyst.
Andrea Johnson, a policy advocate at the National Women’s Law Center, about campaigns to increase pay transparency as a way to reduce the gender wage gap.
Tochi Onyebuchi, a Black science fiction author who started a Twitter campaign in which white and Black writers publicly announced how much they got for book advances in order to call out the publishing industry for its race-based pay discrepancies.
Then, Karen wraps up the series with what she learned about secrets, ending with a defiant anti-secret song by Amherst musician Mary Lambert.
The Secrets We Keep is written/produced/hosted by Karen Brown, edited by Sam Hudzik, with music by Katie Semro.
