Don't be too delicate, girls. Payment is not a dirty word!

Based on Don't be Too Polite, Girls, a classic song by Australian women unionists which you can hear if you have Facebook 

I thought people joined Linkedin because they meant business. So I'm amazed that businesses, educational institutions, NGOS are constantly inviting me to present at their events without mentioning payment, as if mentioning payment was so indelicate as to be taboo.How did we become so coy?

How did we become persuaded that it was indelicate to mention money in job interviews? Who benefits from such delicacy? Not work-seekers, that's for sure. If the would-be recruiter doesn't make the offer transparent, the seeker is immediately wrong-footed as"grasping" if they raise this fundamental question. "Why do you want this job", employers like to ask. You'd be mad to tell the truth most of the time. 

This is especially so if we happen to be in a "caring" or "social justice" profession. Mostly women, no? It is then assumed that we are happy to give away our intellectual property for the sake of saving everyone else in the world (except ourselves).

Workers in the social justice sector are already struggling and have the same bills to pay as our employers. That is why I aim to raise the issue in all future requests for my services as I hope everyone who reads this will agree that it is a social justice issue to be similarly upfront.

What I do is actually Work. Hard work, based not just on “lived experience”, but on my years of academic study, my early career as a neurominority woman in IT, my foundational and/or key role in many voluntary community groups both local and autistic, including co-founding and establishing Sydneys first independent social club for Autistic teenagers, still thriving after 20 years .

So do not ask me or any other ND activist for a “coffee” so you can “pick our brains”.

Nor invite me to speak for free on distinguished panels of highly paid professionals. 

I do not need any further exposure. I am exposed enough as it is. 

And BTW I am one of the 35% of Australian women who retired with nothing but the paltry age pension to sustain us after a lifetime of work and caring. My autistic adult child and I live in tumble down public housing run by a negligent neoliberal govt who uses every opportunity to vilify us, while leaving our homes to rot. (That was at initial time of writing. We now have a Labor government at both federal and state level. Housing is a state issue, and our current Housing Minister has generous ambitions, but the backlog is so huge, that I can't see any progress.)

See also "Payment secrecy fuels the Gender Gap" 

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