In a new video encouraging women to demand equal pay, Sarah Silverman shares some insights from her therapist, who told the comedienne, “We don’t get what we want. We get what we think we deserve.”
The video is part of the new Ask4More campaign, which sees Silverman partnering up with Levo, a community oriented towards helping women achieve their career goals and encouraging women to ask for proper compensation for their work.
Silverman shares an anecdote about how playing basketball with guys drew her attention to how women seem to harbor much more self-doubt than men do. When the guys miss a shot, they don’t skip a beat — the game just goes on, but when Silverman would shoot and miss, she would dwell on her mistake and worry about how she was holding everyone back. The comedienne began to see that “you can’t take a shot, miss, and think you’ve missed 100 shots.” She realized that this pressure and fear was coming from inside herself, and with this lesson learned, she began to recognize that what you think about yourself influences what you get — and how much you get.
In other words, women need to be paid as much as their male counterparts, but the reality of the situation is that women need to be confident enough in their abilities and the value of their work to speak up and get what they deserve.
Of course, in an ideal — or remotely fair world — women wouldn’t need to make a case for themselves. But, as Silverman suggests, we are still enmeshed in a very sexist society. Watch below.
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