A report on pay equity in the reproductive justice, rights, and health movement organizations.

Whether in the initial application process or during a job negotiation, a 990 is one of our most powerful job searching tools. But you have to know how to find it and how to read it.

Here's how to approach someone respectfully and appropriately for an informational interview.

White people have a crucial role to play in the fight for reproductive health, rights, and justice, and that is often supporting other white people in talking about race, fighting racism out in the world and within progressive movements, and supporting Black, Indigenous, and people of color-led organizations financially and with action.

The pandemic plus economic downturn means getting a job is really hard right now. We hope you're able to extend yourself some grace, recover from that toxic work environment, and find a job that's worthy of your brilliance.

One of the most nerve-wracking parts of the hiring process is the salary negotiations. For a lot of us, it can be uncomfortable to name our labor in terms of a dollar value, and even more scary to wonder what someone else thinks our labor is worth. This is complicated more when organizations don’t say how much a position pays and it becomes a guessing game until the moment we’re offered a position or if they’re basing your potential new salary on your previous underpaid positions. It’s enough to turn anyone into a stress ball.

“As employers, we have a tremendous responsibility to create conditions in which our staff can be well. Gender-based violence is a systemic problem created and perpetuated by our society which means that all of our institutions have a part to play in interrupting and taking accountability for it. Just like our workplaces need to do more to address racism, they need to do more to create survivor-supportive workplaces.”

“The COVID MOU we bargained for included worker safety procedures, additional stipends to cover the continuing costs of working from home, and assurances that folks wouldn’t be required to come to the office during the pandemic.”

Through our work, we’ve come to understand the negative impacts of unpaid internships and be inspired by those who advocate changing institutions that allow them (and yes, sometimes we are our own inspirations). Advocating for fair pay in the workplace when you’re coming in at a disadvantage can be extremely daunting, and that’s why it’s so important for all sectors of the workforce to understand the importance of paid internships.

We're here to share some lessons we’ve learned to help you on your journey to movement and movement-adjacent work—even if you don’t land one of the reproductive health, rights, and justice movements’ competitive fellowships.

Slowly, our names were erased and national organizations were taking all of the credit. This is not empowering. This is the exact opposite of centering the people most impacted in the work. And instead of only working on the issues, we had to fight for our own dignity and respect along the way too.

As women of color research fellows for Pay Our Interns, we advocate for other women of color interns to be fairly and equitably compensated in Congressional internships. So we’re here to push other organizations to do the same. Enough is enough! It’s time to put an end to harmful practices that demand unpaid labor from BIWOC*.

Organizing across miles carries a lot of barriers, but it also holds some unique opportunities. Many locations means many opportunities to compare workplace locations, find discrepancies between job descriptions or wages, and identify who really makes the decisions about things like working conditions.

“We want queer folks to be able to build families without the higher price tag of paying out of pocket for assisted reproductive technology that straight people get after their infertility diagnosis. Surrogacy, IUI, IVF is all so expensive. Queer people should not have to bear the financial burden just because they have a dream of parenthood.”

No organization wants to be left behind in terms of the benefits it offers employees -- if you can show that organizations similar to yours are implementing this policy, that may help convince management/leadership that they should be on track to do this same.

The bias against fat folks as being “lazy” or lacking “self control” can translate to believing fat folks are less capable of doing the same job as a straight-sized person.

You and your co-workers have really been through a lot. Acknowledging the trauma you’ve been experiencing is an important step to surviving it.

Together, we can disrupt the capitalist heteropatriarchal system that makes this practice a necessity in the first place.