Pay equity is a large factor in achieving financial fitness. It is often determined for an entire career when a woman first enters the workforce.
Start Smart is a program from AAUW focusing on providing college students with the knowledge and negotiating skills necessary to receive fair and realistic compensation when entering the job market.
Together these two organizations issued the following statement:
Our organizations urge every campus in America to offer this workshop. We will provide the resources, savvy, and passion for making these workshops a powerful influence in young women’s lives.
Start Smart Campus Workshops
Start Smart campus workshops cover the following topics:
- The personal consequences of the gender wage gap and what a $1 million loss over one’s working lifetime means.
- Resources for benchmarking reasonable salaries and benefits are presented.
- Negotiation: how to aim high and be realistic. Participants practice negotiating through role-playing exercises.
- Know your bottom line: attendees develop a “bare-bones” budget to cover basic expenses.
AAUW members can participate by becoming either facilitators or trainers for future workshops. For either position, you will be trained by attending a workshop. The cost per AAUW participant is $50.
AAUW will provide the Start Smart curriculum, develop a Start Smart workbook and workshop script specific to the anticipated student participants of the particular institution. The workshop will be conducted by a certified Start Smart Facilitator.
Once an academic institution has agreed to sponsor a $tart $mart Campus Workshop, their staff will be trained to conduct future workshops. The department, office or program sponsoring the workshop will be charged a $650 license fee for the initial Start Smart workshop.
NOTE: For this fee, the workshop may be offered by a trained facilitator as many times as the school chooses during the first semester it is available on a particular campus. The fee is then reduced to $350 for subsequent academic semesters that the workshop is used on that campus.
The school provides appropriate students an opportunity to attend the workshop. AAUW may charge a nominal fee to students to ensure they take the workshop seriously and attend if they enroll.
For more information:
- Start Smart Program on AAUW.org
