0:00:02 - Briar
Hello, welcome everyone. I am Briar Harvey. This is the Neurodiversity Media Network. And today we are fixing work again Like this is going to be ongoing, right Joe, lots to fix, so lots to talk about.
0:00:20 - Joa
Lifetimes of fixes.
0:00:22 - Briar
Lifetimes. Today we are specifically addressing some of the disparities in the workplace for women. We want to get into the structural components, i think, and what women can do to advocate for themselves in the workplace. Next episode we will be hitting on Juneteenth, which feels significant. We'll be talking about both the racial components and the LGBT components together. And then because while those ones shouldn't be lumped together technically, the results are the same, the fixes are the same. And then our final episode in the series will be focused on neurodivergence, accessibility, physical disability, making fixes in the workplace for those folks. So let's start at the top, joe. What is, in your opinion, fundamentally most broken for women in the workplace?
0:01:36 - Joa
Well, i think that one of the top contenders for that answer is very obviously wage gap and earnings for women when compared to male counterparts, and having equitability and transparency for what we are earning for the work that we are putting in, when it is at least at par with, if not exceeding, what male counterparts are producing and where we are being paid sometimes as low as 60, 57 cents on the white man dollar.
0:02:13 - Briar
And it is lower for black and Latino women too, right I?
0:02:17 - Joa
think 57 is the lowest for Hispanic women when compared to white counterparts, and then it goes up, maybe 63, 64 cents for black women.
0:02:28 - Briar
I think that sounds about right to me Yeah.
0:02:30 - Joa
Yeah, and white non-Hispanic women were looking at like 79, 80 cents on the white man dollar. The white man dollar, is that a phrase? Did I just?
0:02:43 - Briar
I don't know I don't know if it was before, but it certainly needs to be one now. It's so catchy.
0:02:54 - Joa
But that disparity is something that impacts your dignity and integrity around the work that you're producing. It impacts your lifetime wealth building. It impacts your children's wealth inheritance It is I mean, we talked about lifetimes orthophixes, but this is literally impacting entire generations of people. This pay disparity for women.
0:03:23 - Briar
Now there is an obvious easy fix for this. It is pay transparency and clearly laid out pay for new hires Like this is an easy fix, so why don't we fix it?
0:03:43 - Joa
Yeah, that is such a great question And I think back to some of the early conversations that you and I had about all of the issues with work, when we were kind of brainstorming, developing this and we were talking about this idea of we sort of coined that phrase beneficial churn. Who is benefiting from this idea that people are expendable in their roles, that we can afford to just not successfully onboard people and lose them within six months and lose the revenue that goes with them, the investment, the monetary investment that goes to training someone who then leaves within six months, and the monetary loss you have for having an unfilled role, for whatever the lapse is, because you can't magic someone into the role the day that somebody leaves. And I think that the answer to why that is something that exists in the world and is perpetuated means that it must benefit somebody. Curious about your thoughts on who that is. But I think it must be a similar kind of answer to this question of if this must benefit somebody, who is it?
0:04:59 - Briar
And really that is an excellent question. My impulse reaction is to say that it benefits the business to create competition between workers. If Joe is making more than I am and we are both up for a promotion, then I am probably more likely to work harder in order to be able to earn that promotion. But we both know that if Joe gets the promotion he's going to make more than I am anyhow. He started at a higher wage than I did, so when he gets that promotion it will be a. It's the word I'm looking for, commissure at increase right.
0:05:58 - Joa
Right.
0:06:00 - Briar
I think that at every level, lack of patri transparency creates friction, which seems to me counterintuitive to workplace harmony but must be beneficial in some way. If I'm constantly afraid that I'm going to lose my job, or constantly afraid that I can be replaced, that I am expendable, then I'm less likely to complain that I'm making 40 cents less than Joe an hour.
0:06:43 - Joa
Right. Right, and I think that you've probably hit on a huge portion of this. right, because what you said is without that friction, there's greater workplace harmony. That's possibly explicitly, but certainly implicitly, something that big business doesn't want. right, because if workers are harmonious, if workers are harmonious, if workers are communicating, if workers are unionizing, all of a sudden big business doesn't hold the power anymore, the workers do, and that is, i think, sort of like the biggest fear. right is oh gosh, the workers are going to seize the power, and with that comes the control. right, it's a question of control. It's a question of who's calling the shots, and if you keep people fighting with each other rather than banding together, you maintain the power position.
0:07:47 - Briar
I shared a meme that was floating around this morning about an eating disorder hotline that had fired all of its employees after they had unionized and went to AI And are now having to walk that back because the AI was dispensing actually harmful information, because what seems logical to a robot that doesn't eat about eating disorders is actually disordered eating behavior right. So it was giving categorically bad advice because it's a robot and it doesn't understand nutrition or nourishment, because it has no body Like it understands the dynamics of it, the principles of it, but it can't understand because it has no body.
But what was striking to me is the fact that they had fired employees who had just unionized in favor of the AI. And that's going to happen a lot.
0:09:06 - Joa
Yeah, and I think that that's what we see in a lot of context. Right, as soon as people start to show inclination to band together to create these systemic changes from the bottom up, like the hammer comes down harder, right There's greater repercussions for more people, because it's exactly what they don't want 90% of all employee creation comes from small businesses.
0:09:42 - Briar
That number is not new, but I think it's going to get more extreme.
0:09:49 - Joa
More extreme. In what way?
0:09:51 - Briar
I think that most new jobs within the next decade or so will come from small businesses, because no one wants to work for an employer that doesn't give a shit about them.
0:10:05 - Joa
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's absolutely right. The clients that I work with you know, when you look at the compilation of what their experiences are, that definitely tracks. You know, people want to work where they're valued and not just valued monetarily valued by another human being, Right? And the other thing too that I'm wondering, you know, related to AI and also sort of tangentially to automation, is I'm wondering about whether the size of a business maybe the larger you get, the more opportunity there is for automation in a way that puts jobs at greater risk for larger organizations, because when you're scaled to that level, you can scale automation at a great level, which perhaps means greater job security for small and midsize businesses, businesses that are not doing that in such a dramatic way.
0:11:04 - Briar
I think that's going to be interesting. I spoke to a guy last week who is currently building. They're called autonomous agents And the goal of an autonomous agent is for you to be able to give it instructions and for it to go out and act upon it. Obviously, this would be a huge boon for me because once we're done here, all of the steps that I take to get this uploaded and downloaded and into all of the places I have a complete workflow for I've laid it out in like real clear steps I could in fact get a human to do this for me. I can also pay an autonomous agent for it, because I think this is boring as hell and I don't want to do it and I don't want to give it to a human to do.
I think that kind of innovation does not happen at a larger company. When we were talking about the potential, he said so we haven't decided yet if we want to try and push this thing out first to entrepreneurs or to larger companies, maybe like sales teams, marketing teams, like the buy in. For a sales team to hop on board this. Even if it's beneficial, there's going to be a lot more friction because you're going to have to sell it in a way that a corporation is going to see its value, whereas for me, this is just another program that I pay money for, like all of the other SAS programs that I use to make my job happen every single day. I think the question here is if there's more job security and more innovation in the smaller style businesses. What do we do about things like FMLA? Because all of those legal requirements don't kick in until a business is more than 50 employees.
0:13:21 - Joa
I'm really curious about your take on that, because you came out as anti-regulation. One of our last conversations shocked the heck out of me.
0:13:31 - Briar
Truly, i am generally anti-regulation.
0:13:35 - Joa
My answer to that I think, probably has something to do with regulation, has something to do with changing the parameters of what is the expected norm, and maybe that's a perspective. It's not so much the regulation, it's the sort of encoded norm that we work under As businesses, as members of a society, as members of a culture. What is the norm that we are promoting And how is it that we are promoting it? One of the ways to do that is in the form of regulation, but there are a lot of other ways to establish norms, and maybe that is part of the answer for fixing it.
0:14:20 - Briar
So I agree with that. I think a big part of what's coming is that we have to be more willing to say that norms are standards, versus looking to a government to set those standards because they're not caught up.
0:14:43 - Joa
Hold the phones for the life interruption Always Yeah. So I would agree The government isn't the only body that sets the norms right, but it certainly has the potential to be one of the more influential ones right, and it's tricky in a country the size of the United States that spans so much physical distance and has such a sizable population and has all of these pockets of regional sort of cultural similarities and norms in and of themselves. So it's interesting to think about what that looks like to try to have some cohesive benefit, or do you allow states to just really really do what they want and let the market decide in a certain sense? Oh well, virginia offers these sorts of protections for workers And if I care about those things, i'm going to do what I can to move to Virginia to be like part of that subset of culture as compared to maybe you know, wyoming that doesn't have the same protections right, like there's. There's, i suppose, two, two ways to think about that.
0:16:10 - Briar
The issue comes when I was thinking of Ronald Reagan when he talked about voting with our feet, because it's not fucking 1984 anymore And I can't just pick up and move. It doesn't matter if I am more personally aligned with the standards in Virginia. if there's no actual ability and this is especially true for low income folks right, they don't get to move because they don't have the money. A cross country move is thousands of dollars. I've done it multiple times. It costs so much money.
0:16:50 - Joa
For sure, for sure, and that, and that's just the cost of, like you know, hiring moving help, if you can afford it, renting a U-Haul, like you know, that's just the monetary cost for that like moment of time of moving, let alone the the cost of moving, the cost you can calculate for loss of family network that's going to help provide childcare for you right, or? or you know, all of the acclimation pieces of being in a new place. That costs money. I mean I, i too, have moved an immense number of times, including out, like in and out of different countries, and the the lifetime, the lifetime loss of, you know, of income on all of those moves because of transplanting yourself in and out of resources is, is probably incalculable. I mean you could probably try to estimate a cost on it, but it's a real high number And there's so many intangibles that go into it.
0:17:49 - Briar
So a comeback to if I am a woman who is potentially looking at having a family in the United States in particular, i have no good choices. I can potentially get what is it? up to 12 weeks paid paternal leave If I meet XYZ circumstances at a company that covers paternal leave, right. If I have then work with a smaller business who has clearly laid out that this is the terms on, i feel like the choices here, they're all bad. That that's the problem. The choices here are all bad. Parental leave is universal in almost every other civilized, civilized country, right, and some of the uncivilized ones.
Many of the uncivilized ones. Meanwhile, the United States is out here in the backwoods going you just gave birth. Well, pull up your bootstraps, get back to work.
0:19:14 - Joa
Right. Quick caveat that we don't pass judgment uncivilized or uncivilized. That is not what we're doing here. We do not adhere to those labels. It was facetious air quotes.
0:19:29 - Briar
I am increasingly frustrated by the lack of awareness or concern in this regard, because it damages not only the women who are forced to give birth and then immediately go back to work, but it damages their children too. This is a multi-generational trauma that we are inflicting on people here for what seems to me like no good reason.
0:19:57 - Joa
That's right, that's right. Well, it's. I mean, if we want to get cynical about it, it's. it's a systematic, deliberate enforcement of trauma generationally on certain classes of people. Right, because there there are classes of people where this is not Women. women don't work in the same way and don't have to go back to work after 12 weeks and Their lives are such that that's not what they do, in the same way that the pandemic You know showed that people can pick up and and vote with their feet in terms of where they want to be physically, if within a certain class, right, right, if you, if you had a job that went remote, if you had job security, if you had the wherewithal to move, if, if you could just buy a house somewhere else, you did it and people did in such large numbers that it has created this bubble in the housing market right where more people are renting and There are Fewer long-term rentals available, because that's all going to short term rentals now.
0:21:18 - Briar
That's right.
0:21:20 - Joa
That's right and I mean it's, and it's happening in pockets all over the country. You know anywhere that that had a thriving tourist season prior is now tourism all year long. That's what it feels like. I grew up in New Mexico. My brother still lives there. I was speaking with him earlier. He said it's completely different from how it was three years ago. You know, you used to get like a little uptick at spring break, used to get an uptick during the summer. You know some in the fall around fiesta time. He said it's just traffic all the time. Now The you can't find a yearly rental, you can't buy a house. I mean the. The cost of living in Santa Fe is is creeping up towards the cost of living in Massachusetts, where I'm, where I am, and it used to be off by orders of magnitude. I.
0:22:10 - Briar
Live in Omaha, nebraska. My rent has gone up almost 20% in the last three years. If it's happening here in the middle of the country where no, now that's not true people come here, we have the college world series, we have one of the best zoos in the world and And shockingly, i'm not even kidding an incredible amount of tourism here in the middle of the country and it's damaged things significantly. I suspect when we're looking at small towns without a tourism industry, there's probably less of an increase.
0:22:50 - Joa
But Inflation is a thing everywhere right, right, no, and, and so to bring it back to to women and you know, pay disparity, for example, we're, you know, i've, i've, sort of I often fall into the trap, which I think is pretty typical of thinking of like a heteronormative couple. Like you know, if a woman has a child, like there may be a male partner Somewhere involved. If someone has to choose who's not going back to work, the woman, like should stay at home because Of earning potential, right, it's very easy to fall into that trap. But there are, there are couples that are two women, there are single moms, there are on, like chosen, un-unpartnered women who don't have kids and don't intend to and are just living their lives Right, like, no matter which scenario we're talking about, the pay disparity is unacceptable. It's just that the the more levels you add to it, the more unacceptable it becomes. But we're, you know, when you talked about one of the fixes being pay transparency and and especially pay transparency and equitability at the hiring right. When we're talking about Early career professionals, right, we're talking about how to make sure that they Have the skills and the tools that they need to negotiate those early career offers, because that is going to translate into what they can continue to build on from there on out.
And too many women, too many women that I work with, don't even Know where to begin with negotiation, right, let alone that you know that they they hear that it's a thing that you know you should do. They don't know how. They don't know Exactly why. I mean they know that more money is nice, but When you look at lifetime earnings, right, this pay gap that we're talking about Amounts to over a million dollars In lifetime earning loss for Hispanic women who are at the bottom of the pay disparity gap, right, like a million dollars over your lifetime, over a million dollars, and it's it's close. It's like 900 and change thousand dollars for for all the other, you know identities of women that that are stacked up on the ground And these are women that that are stacked up there. So this negotiation, this pay transparency, this pay parity And getting it locked in as early as possible within your career Is is what it takes in order to be able to not have that sort of loss that you're facing, looking at a lifetime of career.
0:25:33 - Briar
And Part of the issue here is, even in two income households, there is frequently a disparity in how the money gets spent. So if the woman is working and she has children, daycare is her responsibility fiscally. I see this one, and i'm not saying that's a universal truth. This is certainly how things work out in couples. But, man, if Reddit is any barometer for the way these negotiations are happening in marriages and in life, most women are Paying almost everything that they make for child care.
0:26:22 - Joa
That's right. That's right And it's it's no coincidence that universal, universal pre-k and universal early childhood education is one of the number one ways that we can get equitability within, within couples and for women's pay. Because of exactly what you're saying and what that translates to is, the metric ends up being well. I could Work and be gone all day and have all of the expenses that are incurred with working Right, because, like prior to remote work, like you had to buy work clothes, you had to commute, you had to like Have you know all of these extras that were, that were part of working, i could do all of that And then all of my money just goes to watching my children while i'm doing that. Or I could just stay home And I may be in a better position spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, to be able to move through the world without that, and that that's an unfair Choice and burden to put on women to to even have to think about that, that decision.
That's not, that's not right. And What gets lost and that is you know what it does to fulfill your, your entire being, to be able to do work that you care about doing, without having to say, well, financially, it would work better if I just didn't do that right. Like, what passion, what, what treasures are you Not putting into the world by keeping yourself out of the workforce that way?
0:27:57 - Briar
I see a lot of women who view Being a stay-at-home mom as a privilege, which is certainly the case in some instances. But the other side of that coin is for low income women, and sometimes it costs more than what they would make if they actually went out and got a job to pay for child care, especially these days. So Not working is Actually the more sound fiscal option, which then means you are out of the workforce for potentially six years. What happens to a woman who is out of the workforce for six years in terms of her education, her training, her on-the-job knowledge?
0:28:48 - Joa
right, it's not good. It's not good. And I will also say that I I have a tendency to work with More women than men, i would say just in terms of you know who who comes to me and who sort of sees, sees the value of what I have to offer in a certain sense and It's probably 60 40 and I do work with women who have been out of the workforce for quite some time And I will say that one thing I've noticed is that often, culturally, we view women who have been out of the workforce in a much harsher light than employers do. To be honest, i've seen a lot of great successes with women getting back into the workforce, even having been out of the workforce 10, 12, as many as 18 years.
0:29:36 - Briar
That is reassuring.
0:29:39 - Joa
And it's not all jobs. Not all jobs are going to be open to you, but there is work to be had, and I think that it takes a certain level of undoing the messaging that we get to be able to see ourselves that way when we've been out of work for some time, because it means that we have to repurpose our entire experience in a different way. Right, and a lot of people view it as very binary, like I'm either in work or I'm out of work, and they don't think about the skill sets that they amass while being out of work. That would actually translate incredibly well and be incredibly valuable to employers.
0:30:23 - Briar
I also suspect there is a problem here for women who are out of the workforce for an extended amount of time that they are not making the financial adjustment of cost of living when they go back in. So if I was making $40,000 six years ago, then I need to be asking for what $60,000 now? I mean, the value of our dollar is much decreased now, but I can see how that would be incredibly problematic. I left work making $40,000, now I'm asking for $60,000 with not on-the-job training or experience for the past decade. That's got to be terrifying.
0:31:09 - Joa
Yeah, and that's one of the things I think that comes in a lot in our conversations about negotiation. When I talk with clients about negotiation, i can't tell you how many people come to the negotiation table thinking, well, i need to make X amount to cover my bills, so that's what I'll ask for, rather than saying what is the industry standard for this role? What skills am I bringing to the table that fit the criteria for what they're looking for? What are they valuing these skills at? It's from a perspective of, well, i need this amount, so that's what I'll ask for, rather than what are they willing to give.
You see these feel-good things that go around social media right about well, i asked for this amount and they thanked me for my honesty, but they told me that the offer was actually $25,000 more. Those are feel-good moments and we love to see it and we want that to happen more, but that's not always the case. It's not always the case at all. Knowing that you can go into a negotiation by asking them what they have budgeted for a role, for example, and having that be a real question that you can ask with a straight face and expect to get an answer on, is something that too many people don't know.
0:32:22 - Briar
No, in fact, I would identify that as a huge red flag for any company. Not that I'm working for a corporation right now, but I would absolutely not work for one that refused to provide that kind of information in the interview process. I don't know who much can go wrong there, because if they're not, again pay transparency Yes, You need to know how much you are making commiserate to your peers. You need to know how much you are making commiserate to your coworkers, and your company needs to be upfront with the amount of money that they are able to pay.
0:33:03 - Joa
That's right. That's right, right. So you know, shielding this information from certain parties and keeping these secrets really only benefits the person who already holds the power or the entity that already holds the power In this case, it's usually the business And so having these moves towards transparency is certainly the way to go. So I don't even know if we got to this answer last week, though Briar. So if we're not regulating this, we're not like creating a regulation around pay transparency. How are we promoting this as a norm? How are we getting traction with it becoming the norm of workplaces to offer this information freely and openly, to allow for these changes to take hold?
0:33:58 - Briar
So truly social mechanics are not my strong suit. But as an autistic woman, don't ask me to tell you why people do what they do. But I will say, i feel like a lot of the problem here is in recruitment, because especially with larger corporations it's not in-house recruiting. Almost never do we use in-house recruiters.
We outsource that to recruitment companies who have, if my experience on LinkedIn is any indication, a great deal of misplaced authority who tend to gatekeep positions, gatekeep who can do what job, what that looks like, and I could be wrong, but I feel like there's a subreddit called Recruiting Hell And there are a lot of people in there daily talking about how recruiters wouldn't give them pay information, even when that was publicly available on the company's website. It seems to me like part of the problem is that we have automated the wrong parts of the job-seeking process. So if my resume isn't perfectly tuned with the right keywords, it's not even seen by a human being. If it's got a picture on it, forget it.
It's going to get thrown out. So we then have created this gatekeeper to employment, which doesn't seem to be beneficial when there are people who cannot get jobs and 1.4 jobs for every job seeker. Clearly there is some friction somewhere here in the middle, and the only people occupying that role that I can see are recruiters.
0:36:19 - Joa
So what's a systemic way to make some adjustments there? We throw out recruiting and start from scratch. We hire different people to be recruiters. We have regulations.
0:36:32 - Briar
Right, So it goes back to that. No, I don't think again. My examples here in the housing market are just tip of the iceberg for me, But every time you regulate something, you make it more expensive to do properly. So it's not that the recruiters are the problem. It's that there is not a baseline standard of what the recruitment process should actually look like.
0:37:06 - Joa
Right.
0:37:09 - Briar
There are no standards for how recruiters can Solicit Resumes. There are no standards for how you approach a. I saw a recruiter last week on LinkedIn Bitch about the fact that nobody sent thank you notes anymore. Are you kidding me? when Most recruiters don't even get back to you if you haven't been accepted for the job, why the hell would I send a thank you note?
0:37:41 - Joa
Sure sure.
0:37:44 - Briar
Again, maybe not that recruiters are the problem, although there does seem to be some misplaced power there But there is no clear process for how recruiting is done universally.
0:38:02 - Joa
Yeah, it's, it's a conundrum. It's a conundrum how you create some sort of template or system without some sort of regulation attached to it, that That creates a systemized way of doing things. That makes things easier. But you know, i think that we can easily identify that the issue with the system such as it is is that leaves too many people Open to be preyed upon. Right, because if there is no Systematic way that things are being done I see this in my industry all the time. Right, i do career consulting.
I deliberately avoid words like career coaching, just because it is an unregulated space and because when There's, you know, six thousand different ways to do something that can be considered standardized, there's 6000 holes for people to be Praying on, people who just need a job. You know like, yeah, i can do your resume. That resumes not gonna get you hired, but you just paid me 200 bucks for it. Right, the resume is not gonna get you hired, but you just paid me two thousand bucks for it. You know There's a lot of fly-by-night stuff going on, and I think that it's not just in the career consulting coaching space, it's also on the recruitment side as well, because there are so many openings for well, that's how it works, in my estimation, right, there's no standard.
0:39:38 - Briar
And Of course, the problem here is that standardization Often comes Years, decades, even after we've decided that there is a need for it. So if we look at Here's a good one for you OSHA standards, which one would generally agree. It is important to be able to Provide for an employee's health when they are using chemicals in the workplace. Did you know you can't use vinegar as a cleaner in the workplace? there is no OSHA standard for vinegar. It's Non-toxic. It is incredibly effective in Fungal removal. Like my husband works in a grocery store, the fact that he can't just get vinegar to spray down some shelves Especially in places like dairy where there's it's moist and it's cold and shit grows Can't use an effective cleaner because there are no OSHA standards for vinegar, right? I Feel like this happens a lot when we try to regulate things for the common good, that what we actually do is incidental harm.
0:41:18 - Joa
That's probably true, and it makes me wonder two things. One is is there a more, more Robust way to create regulations that minimize the incidental harm? and two Can you ever avoid incidental harm?
0:41:39 - Briar
The answer to that question is probably no. We probably cannot ever Actually eliminate incidental harm, so it's a harm reduction question How much can we minimize in order to benefit the greater whole? Right don't think that happens in a country of 330 million people on a federal level. I think it happens locally. I think it happens in the state government. I think that unfortunately, even if Overwhelmingly there is a need for these kinds of federal regulations, have you met our Congress like Do? do we see them? I mean, they can't even pass a budget.
0:42:29 - Joa
But this this ties back to what we touched on last time too, right which is You can't really vote for your feet like not, that's not an, that's not a run-of-the-mill solution. You can't just go to where things are better and Ultimately, i'm not sure that really benefits the whole. I think what benefits the whole is not divesting from where you're at in favor of something better, but to dig in and make the improvements where you're at at the community level right, collectively, with people who you know, who you can talk to, and is it easy? No, i believe you've got a podcast about hard conversations too.
0:43:17 - Briar
I do for this very reason.
0:43:20 - Joa
But like we'll do some cross promotion here, like it's not easy And if we want to make changes that are better for ourselves and better collectively, that's what the choice has to be. The choice has to be to dig in and try to make those improvements, knowing that it's hard, knowing that you don't always make them as fast or as effectively as you want them, but knowing that trying to do them is the thing, And the only problem I have there is that we are adding yet another thing to women's plates when it comes to emotional labor.
Sure, Let's be clear that I don't think just women need to do that.
0:44:09 - Briar
No, that's correct.
0:44:11 - Joa
It has to be done by anybody who cares about this right. Women and people of color and neurodiverse folks, like all of these groups of marginalized identity people, have even more stake in getting these changes made. But if you are a human who cares about any of this, you should be involved too.
0:44:34 - Briar
So that's a great point And I think where I want to leave it. How do we get folks more involved in the local level at starting to see or implement some of these changes? Take top.
0:44:52 - Joa
Yeah, i'm just coughing a little bit on my throat, i think. I mean, there's probably a million people have better answers than I do on that, but I think that that's where we're at right. Like find your local small business organizations right. That's a great place to start in terms of networking with other people. If you're a small business owner, even if you work in a small business, there are resources through those avenues of finding support and resources for what you want to do.
I think that local ordinances for how businesses are run and what protections there are are a really great place to look. There are various. I mean, it depends on your location but there are various avenues to get involved that are like very, very micro level. Like within your town, right, Chamber of Converse style, and then it can go all the way out to your county, your region, your state, all of these things. But honestly, this sounds like a very low bar, but like it's kind of the first important thing. It's just to start looking for an opportunity to do something right. Like start with Google, start with asking your business buddy, like start literally anywhere and see where it takes you, be curious about how the rules of how we operate are constructed and be interested in having those rules benefit you and all of us, and figure out where you can get involved, because I guarantee that if you don't get involved, someone else is going to and that someone else may not have your best interest at heart.
So if you care about it like take up that space, claim that airtime, bring your voice and your ideas to the table to try to start making some change. You never know where you're going to get traction on it, and I think that oftentimes there are already people doing the work. Find people who've already started. right, it's like Don't reinvent the wheel, especially not in social communities.
0:47:18 - Briar
There, i can almost guarantee you, there is someone who has started something that is related to an area of activism that you would like to explore. You have to go out and find those people first before you start a new thing, not people first because it is so much easier to join a thing that already exists than it is to recreate it Like, just if we're talking about hours in the day, like, join the thing that already exists, it's there.
0:47:48 - Joa
There's nothing new under the sun.
0:47:51 - Briar
And I would argue that when we try to start a new thing when an existing thing exists, it is because we are trying to take some power back. We wanna be in charge of something, We wanna be able to have that level of impact in our communities, but it dilutes the effort.
0:48:18 - Joa
That's right, that's right. And I mean, yes, i've got a few things to say about that, but I'm gonna leave it there. Yes, you're right.
0:48:28 - Briar
Don't dilute your effort.
0:48:30 - Joa
We want you to.
0:48:32 - Briar
We want you to find a thing, a cause that matters to you. We want you to devote an hour a week to it. It's not. It doesn't have to be complicated, it doesn't have to be a lot. It just has to help move the needle forward. That's right.
0:48:47 - Joa
Because decisions get made by people who show up.
0:48:51 - Briar
Every time.
0:48:52 - Joa
Showing up is like that's the bar you have to clear And if you show up you get to be part of the decisions. If you don't, you don't. But like I said, i'll use some scare tactic. If you don't show up, someone else is gonna and you don't know that they've got the ideas that you wanna promote.
0:49:12 - Briar
Okay, so this is depressing. We always end on such a high note.
0:49:18 - Joa
It's always depressing Gaya. No, okay, we're gonna find the hope. The hope is that we are doing better than we ever have, in a certain sense, right Like we're not as far along as we need to be, but we are chipping away at it, and the more people who we get excited about continuing to chip away at it, the smaller the obstacles are gonna become. That's just how it works And it feels. It feels dire and it feels hopeless, and there's a lot of dramatic things going on in the world that make us feel like we don't have capacity to impact things positively. And it's not true. Those things are deliberately in the spotlight to make us feel that way, because who benefits if we just curl up into a ball and don't try to, you know, make the changes? The people who already hold the power.
0:50:13 - Briar
That's correct, and in my lifetime, women have gone from requiring a partner or a parent to sign a loan or be able to get a credit card, like these are really essential things that I now take for granted, but that change has happened within my lifetime. So, while we have a long way to go, we've come a long way. And it's important to celebrate those moments in order to feel a little more hopeful, I think.
0:51:02 - Joa
Right. The other piece of hope that I will offer is that anybody who feels alone facing any of this can take heart in the fact that you are not alone. There are literally millions of other people who are feeling the same way. So find other people who are also feeling alone with it and talk with them. Get the support where you can get it. Nobody benefits from you feeling shut down by what's happening, even when it's totally merited to shut down.
0:51:37 - Briar
And I feel like that's a great segue, joa, for your group, right, because you have one. Which, wait? which group are we referring to? Don't you have like a group with someone else where you do some, i think, career programming?
0:51:56 - Joa
Yes, yes, i do have the career coaching collective which I'm working on launching with Tom McCormack, who's a great follow on LinkedIn. Anybody who isn't following him absolutely should. He posts amazing things, resources, think pieces, some UFO content which I always give him a hard time about, but I also secretly love And, yeah, he and I are working together. We're gathering people who are interested, like-minded folks who are really interested in making sure that people who are in the career consulting and career coaching space have support amongst each other to really be promoting people's sense of agency and knowledge about the landscape of work And also promote within our clients that sense of community and collective belonging to an effort to have this world be a better place for all of us. Automation shouldn't be something scary where we feel like we're going to lose our livelihood. Automation should be something that we rejoice in, because now we all have to work less, but we have a few steps in between here and there. But we need to do it together.
0:53:10 - Briar
And I think that's what it comes down to Find your people, figure out where they're at. Don't do this alone. That's right.
0:53:19 - Joa
Don't do any of it alone.
0:53:21 - Briar
You shouldn't have to. No, and that is why we are building this here at the Neurodiversity Media Network, so you don't have to do this stuff alone, even if you can't work with Joa personally, we have this whole series Next time. I do want to talk a little bit about, specifically, the advocacy piece. How does one go in and negotiate for better pay And what do I need to know when I'm going into that conversation? Yes, and but that part is true regardless of your identity, and the more you know about how to advocate for yourself and what you need in terms of a salary, the more likely you'll be successful. Yes, yes absolutely.
We will be back in two weeks with that piece, on Juneteenth, and we will be here every day at the Neurodiversity Media Network giving you some vital piece of information that you never knew you needed. It's the deep dives on all of the fun stuff, because learning shouldn't be done in a vacuum either. Don't learn alone. All right, y'all, we will see you back here next time. Thank you so much for being here. Have an amazing day.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
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