How to Close the Gender Wage Gap for Remote Workers with Remote Company, Tortuga Backpacks

Kristin:    00:00:42    Hi everybody. We are live on youtube.com/digitalnomad. Let me just pull up the chat so I can chat with you guys. And I am so excited for today's episode. This is gonna be really interesting guys, because today as you know, we always have a cool guest who is a digital nomad or has advice for aspiring world travelers and remote workers. And today is such an interesting combination of, in my opinion, unbelievable synchronicities and timing for this interview to come together because we have Jennifer Sutherland Miller, who is a long-term digital nomad like myself. We've both been working and traveling for more than 10 years. So she's gonna share a bit of her personal story and journey and how she became a digital nomad and what she's learned. And then she's also representing Tortuga backpacks, which many of you have probably heard of because they make really popular backpacks and travel gear for digital nomads.  

Kristin:    00:01:49    But what many people don't know is that Tortuga is also kind of started by digital nomads for digital nomads. They are a fully remote distributed company that hires digital nomads or that hires people who can work from home. Not only this, but they are at the forefront of what is really trending right now in the news. And that is the equal pay debate. So oddly enough, both Jennifer and I in the past few months have published articles about our hypotheses of how we thought remote work could help solve the gender pay gap. And in our research and in our writing, we both recognized that these hypotheses were a little bit flawed and weren't necessarily accurate because we uncovered a lot of longstanding kind of prejudices and discrimination regardless of whether people work from home or work for traditional brick and mortar companies. So I really would love for her to share some of her insights and what she found there, and also how this all relates to the equal pay debate since the US women's soccer team won the World Cup.  

Kristin:    00:03:02    And it's also a topic that a lot of the Democratic presidential candidates are talking about. And so we kind of have a really multifaceted episode coming at you from all angles. And it's just such a pleasure to have somebody from a remote company coming to talk about how this startup created more transparency around how they're paying their employees and how this can set an example, not just for other remote companies, but for other brick and mortar companies. So I think this is gonna be applicable to you guys, whether you are working in a regular nine to five and you want to remember, especially as women, that we can be charging what we're worth and negotiating equal pay and asking for what we deserve. And then also if you run your own business when you're thinking about setting your rates or your pricing to just keep this in mind. So this is gonna be, in my opinion, a huge topic moving forward over the next years and decades. And hopefully as a global community we can shorten the length of time that it takes to achieve pay parody in the world from 202 years, which is what the World Economic Forum estimates down to. Less than that, hopefully within our lifetime. So without further ado, welcome Jennifer Sutherland Miller.  

Podcast Interview: 

Jennifer:    00:04:27    Thank you so much. It's really fun to be here. I love that our brains seem to run in similar tracks on some of these things. As you were talking, I was just smiling like, yes, these are all things that I wanna work on. <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:04:37    Yes. So tell us a little bit about your background before we get into the nitty gritty of this controversial topic, which I've noticed since I published a follow-up article to my original one. And actually before you start that, since we're in a Google Hangout, I am going to screen share so that people can see your article and we will link to it. Here we go. Let's go back to this one. This is an article I wrote last year in 2018 called How Digital Nomadism Can Solve the Gender Pay Gap. And I thought that it would in itself, but I found out by the end of the article that maybe that's not the answer, or maybe there's more to it than just getting outside of the glass, like the physical glass ceiling. And then here's Jennifer's article on the Tortuga blog, the Digital Nomad Wage Gap. It's not a level playing field. So basically both Jennifer and I, before we met each other, before I even knew that she wrote this, we had the same idea, but we found out at the end that there's still a wage gap regardless of whether you work remotely or whether you work in person, whether  

Jennifer:    00:05:48    You work for a company or whether you are self-employed also. I found that so interesting and I've also found it so interesting that this is considered a controversial topic. Oh, it's been, yeah, it's been fascinating since publishing this. And you know, in this case, Tortuga did a study of sorts. We surveyed over 2000 digital nomads doing all sorts of different things. And it wasn't only about the wage gap, that was only one small piece of the data that we were collecting. But when we set out to do it, I was just sure that we were gonna find that women were farther along who were working in this space because that's been my experience. But in fact, that's not the case. And then after writing the article, it's been shocking to me the number of people who have written and said that they consider it controversial, that maybe the the gate pay gap doesn't exist. That it's a fallacy, that it's something that's been made up up and it's like, wait, that's, you understand that these statistics are collected by governments nationally. Like this isn't conspiracy theory, but there are people who believe that it's not a thing which is shocking and yeah, a point for growth I guess for all of us. <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:06:48    Yeah, I've gotten comments and messages on YouTube, on Medium, on Instagram, on Facebook, and a lot of men have commented that it's like a form of socialism to pay women the same for equal work. And it's just really disturbing.  

Jennifer:    00:07:08    Well, as a Canadian, let me just say yeah, great. That's one of the real benefits of socialism. Absolutely <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:07:14     So mandated  

Jennifer:    00:07:15    Ation of everyone. Anyway, we should go back up.  

Kristin:    00:07:17    We're gonna get really into this, I can tell already, but we'll just give everyone a little bit of background information on you because I read in your bio. So Jen is the head of content marketing for Tortuga and she has been working remotely full-time for more than 11 years in 50 countries. And same with me, about the same amount of time, about the same amount of countries. So tell us a little bit about how you started doing this so long ago. What kind of job did you transition out of and how did you stumble upon this lifestyle before it was like a thing?  

Jennifer:    00:07:51    Yeah, well it was kind of by accident of course, and I, most of the longer term digital nomads that I talked to, people who've been at it 10 years or more all have a similar story where it just sort of stumbled into a thing, desperation being the mother of invention. When the 2008 market crash happened, we all had to sort of reevaluate and figure out what we were gonna do. So that was one of the catalysts for us when that happened. We were in the process of riding our bicycles from London, England, to Africa and back with our four small children. So we had set out to do a one year family travel gap year and my husband had quit a job with Apple, we sold our house and all of our stuff and I was doing some very casual sort of freelance travel writing, but for entertainment more than anything else.  

Jennifer:    00:08:32    It turns out not everybody rides 10,000 kilometers with four kids under 11 and some people were interested in reading about that <laugh>. So, but you know, once the crash happened we were forced to really reevaluate what it was that we wanted to do and how we wanna live our lives. And it was at that point that we hunkered down in North Africa for a winter and really started to get creative and call in all of our cards and it really leveraged the contacts that we had and we just created different sorts of careers for ourselves out of that. And it's grown little by little, but you know, now my husband and I both work fully remotely. We have for a number of years and it's allowed us to take that one year family gap year with our kids and turn it into over a decade, which was a really fun way to spend their middle childhood. And they're all grown now. The youngest is 17, everyone else is out of the house. So.  

Kristin:    00:09:16    Wow, that is impressive because I don't have any kids. So I do get a lot of questions about traveling as a digital nomad family. I guess what, what does your husband do for work and how have you been able to sustain this for so many years? Because I also started with a one year gap year in Costa Rica and that was in 2005 and I am still doing it.

Jennifer:    00:09:38    Still going. Yeah. He does database development and design for big companies like Johnson and Johnson and Ocean Spray. He has in the past done some app development and I do a lot of things related to content and marketing, not just for Tortuga but for other companies as well. But I've been with Tortuga from pretty much the beginning for about five years now. And it is, it's a family of sorts and it's a really special place to work and it's a special team to get to engage with. And you know, every few months we will meet somewhere in the world to work intensively together. And that's always one of the highlights of the year because you're with people who really get it and who are committed to life on our own terms. And because the company was built from the ground up as a remote company, it's just got a very different culture than a lot of other places that tolerate remote work, but it's not the norm.  

Kristin:    00:10:26    Yeah, actually I just thought of something. Do you guys sponsor deviate with Rolf Potts?  

Jennifer:    00:10:33    We do, yeah. I've worked on and off with Rolf for a number of years. He and I crossed paths, but yeah, we sponsor deviate.  

Kristin:    00:10:39    So this is a really crazy coincidence too. A few minutes before we went live, I just published a podcast with Rolf Pots that I recorded last month in Paris and I just published the video on my personal channel, which is Traveling with Kristin. And then the audio recording of that will come out later today. And I just remembered when I was uh, writing his bio and looking at the website, I saw that Tortuga was sponsoring his podcast. So that is really another funny coincidence.  

Jennifer:    00:11:11    I worked with him years ago on his bag of bonding website. I helped with content for that for, well I don't know, a few years anyway, but were you  

Kristin:    00:11:19    World--

Jennifer:    00:11:19    Were you doing his writing course in Paris?  

Kristin:    00:11:22    I did. I've never been able to do the full. I think there's like one month or two month course, but he did a one week travel writing course this summer and I thought that was a great opportunity to go and brush up on my writing skills.  

Jennifer:    00:11:35    That's fun. He's been doing more of those short courses. My friend Powell used to help facilitate the logistics for the month long one for years and years in July. In fact last time I saw Rolf in person was in Paris about four years ago at his course. We just crossed paths for an evening  

Kristin:    00:11:48    <laugh>, we should all like go out to dinner one night That was <laugh>. Right?  

Jennifer:    00:11:51    So much fun.  

Kristin:    00:11:53    So what would you guys say at Tortuga, what would your advice be to other companies that are still like on the fence about remote work or don't think that it's for them or don't think that it's productive for their employees? I mean, having been a remote company for so many years, do you guys just kind of shake your heads and be like, when are these people gonna come around?  

Jennifer:    00:12:16    You know, yes and no. Remote work is not for everybody. It takes a very certain kind of person to thrive in remote work and not every company is perfectly suited to it. And we're very transparent about the fact that there are pros and cons. You know, we lack the kind of serendipity inspiration that happens around a water cooler. And while we are on Slack and we're all in there talking all the time and we have those those moments, it's in a remote company. You have to work harder at forming the connections and at honing communication skills, things that happen a lot more naturally when you work in a space together. That being said, I think most companies could stand to be a lot more remote than they are. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, there are a percentage of people who work far better and are much more productive. We know that from the studies that have been done around digital nomadism.  

Jennifer:    00:13:02    So creating scaffolding, creating processes that allow people to choose how they work, I think would amp the productivity of most companies. Some people would still choose to be in one place and to come in, but for those of us who can and do work well from other places, there's a lot of richness to be had from being able to look for your team and choose the best people from all over the world instead of choosing the best people who are within a 15 mile radius. Exactly. And that's one of the things with Tortuga that's been amazing is that we've got Julia who's in China, we've got several folks on the west coast. I'm in Canada, Lauren is in Texas, Taylor who's my partner in crime and all things marketing. She's in North Carolina and we're not limited to Bay Area, which is so classic startup. Right. And that's been a lot of fun.  

Kristin:    00:13:48    Yeah, I actually just saw a tweet the other day, I can't remember who it was from, but they were talking about how a lot of Bay area companies and LA based companies or really any companies that are in urban areas with a lot of traffic are essentially operating as remote companies because the gridlock is so bad that they don't even wanna commute to an office or the rent is so high so everyone's working from home in the same city <laugh> instead of in different countries.  

Jennifer:    00:14:17    The other thing that our CEO Fred Perrotta pointed out in a piece that he did on Medium a couple years ago was that the other thing that remote work stands to do is revitalize communities that are really struggling. You know, you look at the coal belt, there are so many small towns and you drive through and there are beautiful homes and big gorgeous communities, but nobody lives there. Nobody can live there economically. They've become really depressed because there just is an industry and those of us who are free to work remotely, I mean that would be one way to revitalize so much of the middle section of the country where there have been hard economic hits in the last 20 years. Remote work could be the savior savior of those things 'cause people can be anywhere and so they can choose these beautiful communities instead of being stuck with big cities.  

Kristin:    00:14:57    I completely agree and I think that's one of the unique perspectives that we have gotten after 10 years of working remotely is that it's not just about the freedom to travel, but it's about the freedom to choose where you're physically based in the world and what your lifestyle is like and what your cost of living is life and what your immediate environment is like. So for people in the Midwest and places that have been hit in Virginia, the coal industry manufacturing, I think this is a really great opportunity for them. And with the internet, they aren't precluded from learning the skills that they need to be successful in the new economy. We could teach any human from even from thousands of years ago, could learn to code. We all are equipped with the same set of tools, the same kind of brain and there's a lot of opportunities. I actually have um, another article coming out about that soon as well. I'm trying to finish my book right now. But yeah, there's just so many things to talk about when it comes to the opportunities that can be had for both companies and individuals.  

Jennifer:    00:16:03    One of the things we talk about a lot at Tortuga with relation to both work and travel is life on your terms. And one of the big benefits that we see to being a fully distributed company is it allows us each to live life on our own terms. And so sometimes we're traveling and other times we are very stationary. It gives us the freedom to take care of children and adults and people in our lives. This is particularly important for women. That's one of the things when you delve into the roots of the wage gap and why things are the way they are, it's not just as simple as companies need to pay women equally. There are some very real reasons that women have chosen particular professions where there is a gap because we're looking for that work life balance. We want life on our terms and so often the trade off that we're willing to make is a dollar sign so that we can have this other thing that quality of lifewise means more. But with remote work for the first time maybe in the history of the world, we have the opportunity as women to have both of those things. We can have a job that values us economically appropriately and still the flexibility in our lives to meet the other roles that that matter to us.  

Kristin:    00:17:06    Yeah, you're completely right about that. Well let's talk a bit about for people who aren't familiar, what are the types of products that Tortuga's manufacturing that make life easier for remote workers and travelers into the next few years?  

Jennifer:    00:17:22    So we make backpacks for urban travel. That's our focus. And we have a series of them depending on what kind of travel that you might be wanting to take and your budget. They range from the set out divide, which is a very small minimalist pack that I love. It's one of my favorites. And I can go for a couple of weeks in that up to a 42 different styles of 45 liter full size carry-on packs. All of our bags are carry-on friendly. We make 35 liter packs, 45 liter packs and some in the the 27 liter range. We make 'em for travel, we make 'em for our laptop. Backpack is awesome for digital nomads and for people who are traveling with their office setup. Yeah. And they come in a range of colors. And the big news, Kristin, I'm so excited about this as we finally have a women's fit specifically in our 35 liter set out bag. And I just got mine this week actually. I had it shipped to my cousin in Vegas to pick it up and I put it on and oh my gosh the straps are so great for the first time in my life my boobs are not squashed.  

Kristin:    00:18:23    Wow. This is crazy. I'm pulling it up on the site right now and I actually did not know this and this is not sponsored by Tortuga you guys, this is just so I don't even have one  

Jennifer:    00:18:34    <laugh>. And here's the thing that I'm really proud of and that has been noticed, there was a little social media note about it recently is that there's no pink tax ladies. Like we're not gonna pay more for this backpack because it happens to be designed for us. It costs exactly the same as our regular, what people would I guess consider now men's fit 35 liter set out bag. Wow. So we get something specific for women without having to pay the pink tax. Yay. Tortuga one of the many things I'm proud of in this country company <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:19:00    That's great. I love that there are just ethical and rational and logical about how they do business and that's why I think that this is a great example and that's why I wanted to invite you guys on the podcast. So how did the idea to start doing this study and serving digital nomads come about? Was it just like a internal market research thing that turned into this realization about the policies of paying employees?  

Jennifer:    00:19:29    So I don't think that our policy around paying employees and our commitment to serving the digital nomad community are things that are necessarily related. The way the company pays our employees is just part of our core values and our ethos. And of course everyone would be paid equally. If you read the article that Fred had, I guess it was on Bustle, they did a correction 'cause they kind of messed us up. But he talks about they wanted a formula was really simple and very fair. It's very transparent and open and it's based on the salary averages that are available online that you can see through, what is it Glassdoor, the name of the  

Kristin:    00:20:07    Yeah,  

Jennifer:    00:20:08    Yeah, there's Glassdoor <crosstalk>. So.  

Kristin:    00:20:09    Here's the other article,  

Jennifer:    00:20:11    I can't remember what it was called. At any rate, the salaries are based on averages and then adjusted for people's experience and for the level of work that they're gonna be doing with Tortuga. And we also filter so that when the people who are doing candidate selection are looking at resumes, they don't see someone's gender, they don't see someone's color, they just see their qualifications, which what are revolutionary thought, we're just gonna choose the people that work for us based on who's the best human being for the job without looking at their social media profiles or other things. And what's been really fun to watch emerge is that that little by little as this team grows, like you know, I was one of their first hires, Lauren and I were sort of the first two to come on board with Fred and Jeremy. So right from the beginning there was a good 50 50 split in gender and we were paid fairly right from the beginning even though it took a little while to codify that at first, you know, Fred and Jeremy were learning, they were just hiring the people that they hired.  

Jennifer:    00:21:05    But one of the things that impressed me was that they were willing to pay a fair wage and there was no drama or suggestion of anything otherwise. But as they have built out scaffolding around how we hire, it's been fun to watch that with this sort of double-blind procedure that they have. Our split is 50/50. We have a company that's half women and the women are in roles of responsibility and power equal to the guys. And when we're all together and we spend a week working, we were in Prague a month before last. It's so interesting to just watch how this culture has developed remotely and then together in person. I continually in the private reviews that we send that you know, they can't see who fills out what on our reviews necessarily. I'm constantly saying, hey one of the things that impresses me is the continued commitment to gender parity to women's voices. Not only being heard but making a little extra space for them sometimes because of the recognition that over generations there has been a disparity in that. So the guys, they go one step further than just making sure that it's fair for everyone. They really seek to actively amplify the voices of women and of minorities. So that's been an amazing culture growth to be a part of.  

Kristin:    00:22:19    That's amazing. You know I think that a lot of the defensiveness from the male side of this debate is that it's not intentional usually. Like the gender wage gap is not an intentional thing. It's something that has been born out of a societal and cultural trends going back hundreds and thousands of years. And there needs to be a correction in the market and in the economy um, to compensate for that because otherwise it's just creating huge inefficiencies in the business world. I  

Jennifer:    00:22:54    Thought about this a lot after doing the study that we did and when we got the results of that back and Taylor and I started parsing out the data and drawing graphs and realizing what we were realizing that the digital nomad community had a wage gap that was pretty much equal to the wage gap that you saw elsewhere. And man was at a tough place to work for a couple weeks 'cause Taylor and I were pissed <laugh>, like we were just, yeah, so upset by this as we dug into the data and the guys did a great job of just holding space for that and leveling up their commitment to reducing that both at the micro level and macro. But it's so complex and it's so nuanced. It's not just we need to pay people more. It's a culture shift that needs to take place so that domestic work is split more evenly so that women have the capacity to take on jobs they might really be personally fulfilled by, but don't feel that they can commit to because of their status of their partnership or their children or the older people that they're caring for whatever else they've got going on in their community volunteer wise.  

Jennifer:    00:23:54    Like there's a lot of reasons that women have self-selected into situations where they're in jobs that pay less and those things are cultural and until those shifts happen and a lot of that falls to the men to step up in some of those roles that traditionally have been considered women's work, I don't think that it's gonna be possible to just fix from the corporate level the pay gap because women aren't going to apply for the jobs, they're not gonna ask for the money. And then of course we've gotta go beyond that and with young girls, we've gotta start teaching negotiation. We have to start teaching how to value yourself appropriately and have those kinds of conversations that traditionally culturally as women were uncomfortable with. We know that talking to women we need to begin to empower ourselves but also the next generation to be willing to have those dialogues in ways that men have for years and about a dozen other things. Yeah. 

Kristin:    00:24:40    There are so many different ways. As you say, it's really nuanced and I had to do a lot of personal soul searching when I wrote the follow up to my article, which is called Time's Up, Time’s Up for the Gender Pay Gap because I realized I had to admit to myself that I was basically complicit in earning less than men. Like yes, part of it's not my fault because of the way that women are raised comparatively to men and that's a whole nother topic. But I had to go back to my very first job and trying to become a professional surfer and how I wasn't able to make a living doing that because the wage gap was so huge. Yeah. So it's everywhere. It's in sports. And then by leaving surfing I thought okay well I'll go into the business world where I can earn what I'm worth.  

Kristin:    00:25:31    And then immediately in the first semester of business school, I had a free internship so I was not getting paid. And the men in my class who had worse grades who graduated in the bottom tier of the class, the next year they got paid $30 an hour. They got a hundred thousand dollars salary offer. And I was like, wait, I am in business school and have like a 4.0 GPA, I'm totally qualified to make a fair wage but I'm not getting those offers. Why is that? And then I had to change my life. I ended up going to Costa Rica and all sorts of things happened since then. But there is like this precedent that started to change with women like Ruth Bader Ginsburg Of course. Yeah. Like we have to remember that certain jobs, first of all, women weren't even allowed to work <laugh> in the earlier years of this country. And then we were only allowed to work in certain jobs that were nursing or administrative roles.  

Jennifer:    00:26:32    And people like to act like that's ancient history, but it's not ancient history. That's like my mother's generation.  

Kristin:    00:26:37    I know we're really like one generation removed from that and maybe two generations removed from being able to vote. And a lot of minorities, it gets worse when you cut it into not just men and women. It gets so  

Jennifer:    00:26:50    Right because okay, there's a wage gap statistically between you and I and men who are doing similar jobs. But we have the best possible situation as women because we happen to be born white. Yeah. You know when we started getting into the dollars and cents difference for people on the color spectrum from white to black and who are women? Well Taylor and I just spent two weeks really angry as we did this data. It's just been something that I have continued to think about and became more committed to solving in small ways that hopefully will snowball into bigger ways. But it's pervasive, it's systemic, it's not ancient history and the changes require all kinds of action on the micro level just in our families and our cultures and how we raise the next generation. But all the way up to the boardrooms and to legislation. It's gonna take changes in all of those areas before we begin to get traction on this thing.  

Kristin:    00:27:44     Completely. I mean I think it's an all hands on deck issue that is for every country in the world. And you're right, Latin women, Asian women I think are the lowest paid. Yeah. Minority women are the lowest paid basically African American way.  

Jennifer:    00:28:00    I found it's so interesting there was, I found it was interesting that there was differences between different segments even like that you could look at the data and draw a difference between Asian women versus black women. Yeah. Versus white women versus that blew my mind. So. 

Kristin:    00:28:14    I would love to talk about some of the solutions. So as we just talked about, there are a lot of problems, there's a lot of reasons for these problems, there's a lot of solutions, there's some things that are gonna take time, like the cultural things, the societal changes that may be for Generation Z and future generations, it's going to be different for them. But I would love to to talk about why it's important for companies to take initiative now before they are required to do so by law. What are some of the benefits that you guys uncovered in creating pay transparency as far as the culture of the company, how motivated the employees are? What are some of the other things that, the benefits that are coming from companies like Buffer and like Tortuga that are doing these things on their own accord without waiting to be told to do so? Well  

Jennifer:    00:29:07    You know right now a lot of the, the answer to that is anecdotal because it's relatively recent that companies like ours have been getting any press or any traction for this. And usually it's just kind of a cursory like yay toga. But I think as companies, progressive companies do lead the way we're going, like we know for instance that if you have women on your board, your company makes more money. We've known that for a while. They still refuse to put women on board. So there are some very, like from the perspective of CEO or an entrepreneur, there are some dollars and cents reasons to achieve gender parity in your organization. We know that you're going to make more money, your company's gonna be more solid, things are gonna go better Working within a company like that, we have a culture where women's voices are heard and where we can lead in the various jurisdictions that we have within the company.  

Jennifer:    00:29:54    And that's great. And you know, achieving the trust across the board to be in a situation where women aren't afraid to speak up, they're not afraid to put their ideas into the arena. They're not afraid to disagree with men who are of similar rank or even higher. One of the things that Fred and Jeremy do super well is that they invite from all members of the Tortuga community, men and women constructive criticism and feedback on the experience of being within the company, working with one another, being managed by these individuals. That openness to all perspectives and all experiences and evaluation of the kinds of experiences that individual employees are having, whether they're men or women, is one of the things that really sets Tortuga apart. And it's the culture that makes us all want to be there. Fred and Jeremy have talked regularly about how they're not building a company to flip in three years.  

Jennifer:    00:30:44    That's not their exit strategy. They wanna build something that lasts. And so in doing that, we wanna build a team that lasts too, which is also not normal when the current gig economy, most people take a gig for a minute and then they're onto the next thing. And that's how we all leverage up and through the pay scale and the transparency that they've built around that they're building for longevity with each of us. And when you have that kind of an investment in a company and in a team specifically, we're willing to knuckle down and work hard together towards a goal. We're committed to one another as Tortu knots as we call ourselves <laugh>. But we're also committed to our overall goals as a company because there you can see that there's a personal investment in that instead of just being valued for what you bring to the table for this three month gig. So it goes beyond gender, it's the entire culture of how the Tortuga family is being built.  

Kristin:    00:31:36    That's an important point. And I think that unfortunately you're right that there's not a lot of buzz about this and it's more of like this patronizing pat on the back or pat on the head like, good job, you paid women equally. But there are companies now that are consultants for example, that are helping organizations identify pay gaps or discrimination in their policies. And I think that in the next five or 10 years, things are gonna happen really quickly when it comes to a mass adoption of remote work and the equal pay debate is gonna be swept up along with it. Because once we reach this critical mass of people who realize that they can work from home or work remotely and they're gonna all want to do it. And then once women realize that there are a lot of companies that offer that as like flexible work benefit and companies that are very transparent about paying equal wages for equal work, everyone's gonna be like, well why not me?  

Kristin:    00:32:38    And so I think that it could catch a lot of organizations by surprise because especially global companies and companies that have been around for a really long time, notoriously very resistant to change. So it's gonna take their HR departments by surprise and all of a sudden not only are they not going to be able to compete based on not being able to hire talent from outside their 15 mile radius, but also women are gonna choose to work for companies where they're just getting treated better, better quality of life equal pay, or they're gonna be starting their own companies because they can <laugh> because we have the internet. And so that's my prediction.  

Jennifer:    00:33:18    So interesting that you bring that up in terms of the international aspect of it. Because the other conversation that is happening in the digital nomad world is around equitable pay based on geography. I have a friend who's got quite a large travel company and he hires people out of Eastern Europe 'cause they're amazing at what they do. He pays them very well. But there's a lot of talk in the digital nomad community about outsourcing various segments of what you need to have done because it's cheaper elsewhere. And you know, well should it be really, and you know, how are we gonna level up globally as an economy as well through remote work and the ways in which people who live in places of less privilege or places that are just developing in terms of their economic and global presence or places that are, have been closed for years. You know, I, I think of friends in in various places where they, you know, they just have very few options in their countries and their passports are terrible, but they're, they're now able to work and they're discovering that this is a way to achieve parody and that conversation needs to happen too. Is it okay that you hire a virtual assistant in India for 6 cents a day? Like I would argue not <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:34:22    Yeah,  

Jennifer:    00:34:23    You  

Kristin:    00:34:23    Are global issues and it's quite cathartic because it's almost like the world is remembering that it's one planet because climate change affects everybody and this equal pay discussion affects everybody and the internet connects everybody. And so now we have to start approaching issues, not just from like a national border geopolitical approach, but as like a one planet, one human race. And yesterday actually, I read a very disturbing article about ghost music producers in Russia who are getting paid like a couple hundred dollars to produce a song. And then world class DJs who make like millions and millions of dollars a year are getting all of the credit for producing that song. 'cause they're not sharing, they're just basically not giving them credit for writing the song. They're purchasing it outright for a few hundred dollars and then they're playing it in clubs in Vegas at music festivals. And literally the only difference is that the ghost writers in Russia have a bad passport. They aren't allowed to travel. They aren't allowed to play their music for international audiences. And that is just, I'd never thought of that.  

Jennifer:    00:35:37    It's so interesting because we're here talking about the wage gap that exists between men and women, which is a big issue for us in the western world. And it's an issue everywhere in the world. But it's getting talked about. It's getting worked on in the west right now in the States in Europe and Canada. But it's so much bigger than that, right? Like really what would happen if my friend in Guatemala could do what I do and all of a sudden make, let's just go absolutely modest and say $20 an hour working online when right now her family lives on $1 a day for person. Mm-Hmm Like the wage gap is a big deal. We need to be working on that within our companies, within our governments, within our individual societies. Yes. But let's see it a little bit bigger. Let's work on this for women everywhere. Like, okay great, so we are getting closer where we are. We're not where we wanna be but we're getting closer. So while we continue to level up over here, I'm not suggesting we stop working on it 'cause we've gotta keep working on it, but let's also bring these other people with us. Let's create a bigger pie rather than making sure we get our piece. Let's just create a bigger pie.  

Kristin:    00:36:41    Totally. Because it's not a zero sum game. And that is something controversial that Naval Ravikant has said, the CEO of AngelList with the popular Twitter feed and podcast. And it's something that I've thought about for a long time, but I haven't really articulated it. But it's true. Like he says, everyone can be rich. And it's like the ability for someone in Nicaragua or Guatemala to go from raising eight kids on $2 a day to being able to have the skills that are worth $20 an hour on a global marketplace is like life changing on so many levels. And it impacts not only their little universe in their hometown, but it changes immigration patterns, it changes the GDP of that country. It changes like their local economy. And somebody in Guatemala making more money is not hindering anyone else's ability to succeed in the global economy.  

Jennifer:    00:37:39    In fact, it sows back into their local economy in a way that those dollars are magnified two and three times as they move through the various businesses there. And also it doesn't require 'em to leave. Immigration has been such a big deal in the States, but I think, yeah, I mean we can talk about this kind of thing better. Yeah. But I do remote work is poised to create a lot of opportunities for many people around the world to live life on their terms. And as women, as we begin to close the wage gap for ourselves, 'cause I don't think anyone else is gonna do it for us, then that opportunity that we create for ourselves is something that we can give a hand up to other women and share internationally as well as locally.  

Kristin:    00:38:15    Awesome. I love that. Let me see if there's anyone with any questions. It looks like people are just hanging out watching <laugh>. Okay. Michelle said there's no such thing as equal pay. I don't really know what he means. I'm not really sure how to address that, but there is such a thing as equal pay I think. So I don't know if that's a question, but yeah, everyone's just watching. But if you guys have any questions in the live chat, let us know. I think people are just wowed by our intelligence <laugh>. Okay. So I'll just sum up this survey for anyone listening to the podcast version and also YouTubers over here. So the survey, how I found out about this through Tortuga backpacks was that I saw a Google alert, I get Google alerts on digital nomads. And I saw this article in Bustle that got picked up that was talking about how Tortuga made decision.  

Kristin:    00:39:12    And of course it stuck out to me because it's a topic that clearly I'm really passionate about. So basically Tortuga surveyed over 2,500 self-declared digital nomads. And they found out that despite the digital nomad movement being seen as progressive, that there was an obvious pay gap even when isolating for different variables like age hours, worked level of education and job roles between men and women. And so Jen and Taylor Coyle, who's the director of marketing at Tortuga, they deduced from this research that 52% of female digital nomads make less than $3,000 a month while 31% of male digital nomads fall into the same bracket. And then at the top of the scale, 23% of female nomads earn more than 5,000 a month, while 43% of male digital nomads make more than five KA month. So nearly twice as many men in the top tier as women.  

Kristin:    00:40:11    And seeing that 20% gap, it's like just really reminiscent of the 70 to 80 cents on the dollar that women are making compared to men. So if you are a woman watching or listening to this episode, feel free to check out the articles and the resources that I'm gonna link to in the show notes and in this video so that you can kind of see the study in the graphs and the articles that Jen and I wrote and kind of our position where we were right, where we were wrong, what we think the solutions are, and just get educated about what the reality is. The sooner everybody comes to terms with this fact, the sooner we can resolve it and the more money you can make <laugh> so, and if you're a man, then speak up as well because as Jen and I talked about, this is an issue that affects everybody and it's also to the benefit of everyone and to the benefit of the global economy on a macro scale.  

Kristin:    00:41:12    So whether you are a remote worker or working in a nine to five or running your own company or startup or you're in a position to make decisions as an executive or in management at your company, then look at the data, look at the solutions and see what you can do personally to make a change either in your career or in your business. So thank you so much Jen, for coming on. And do you have any other tips generally for people who are aspiring digital nomads or new to the concept or even who've been on the road for a couple years of, what are some of your top takeaways and tips for sustaining this lifestyle long term  

Jennifer:    00:41:58    Travel more slowly, <laugh>, however you're traveling, travel more slowly. There are so many different ways to do life and the beauty of this kind of life is that it can be whatever it is that you want it to be. So spending a whole lot less time comparing yourself to every other digital nomad who's marketing themselves in a very sexy way on social media and more time just really thinking through what it is that you want out of this lifestyle and defining your terms is great because it doesn't have to look like what anybody else is doing. And you've got one life, live it the way you want to. It is totally possible to make career style adult money doing this and be where you wanna be.  

Kristin:    00:42:33    I completely agree. Slow travel and do you, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me where's the best place to go as a digital nomad, I myself would be rich. But I would just like to recommend I second Jen's tips because I'm a huge proponent of slow travel and also before jumping into things to think about what you really want. Because the opportunity to work remotely is the opportunity to create life on your own terms, as Jen said. So any questions, let us know in the comments. And hello to all of the people watching on the live stream. If you're new to this podcast, Badass Digital Nomads, we publish a new episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Play every Tuesday around 12:00 PM And we also go live on youtube.com/digitalnomad around the same time every week. So every Tuesday you can get a new audio episode and video episode of Badass Digital Nomads. So it's always a new interview with somebody in the remote work field. So we're staying on the cutting edge of work and travel and helping everyone make more money in the process. <laugh>  

Jennifer:    00:43:49    Thanks so much for having me, Kristin. I appreciate it.  

Kristin:    00:43:51    All right. Bye guys.