Five Reactions To Requesting Equal Pay For Speakers

When I first started doing paid professional development work in 2012, I was ecstatic to be asked at all. I had no idea how much to charge or how much others were earning for similar work. Fast forward more than ten years later and I’m very aware that educational consultants get drastically different payments for speaking at the same event.

At first, this might seem perfectly reasonable because presenters have different skill and experience levels, so perhaps what they get paid is correlated. However, if I asked you to rate five presenters according to your perception of their skill and experience levels, would you really be surprised if their pay did not match?

The reality is that for a number of reasons including systemic racism, sexism, and a lack of transparency about what others are getting paid, presenter pay is all over the place. For example, at one very popular conference, there are over a dozen featured speakers and their compensation ranges from only having their travel expenses paid to getting that plus thousands of dollars.

 

I wish I could say that I figured this out faster, but I slowly started to realize I had an opportunity to address some of the inequalities I saw. It started in April 2019, when I began to use an inclusion rider and added the requirement that for me to speak at an event, “at least 50% of the speakers must be people of color and at least 50% of the speakers must identify as women or non-binary.”

Then in February 2021, I began requesting that organizations hiring me for professional development pay all keynotes or featured speakers the same amount as me. Navigating the conversations that ensued has been a learning experience. I haven’t fully figured this process out and I’m sure I’ll continue to find ways to do it better, but I wanted to share five reactions I’ve received to this request so far.

My hope for sharing these reactions is that it will publicize and normalize paying presenters equally. I hope that my colleagues will advocate for equal compensation and that professional development organizers will proactively make their compensation fairer.

 

Here are actual responses when I requested that all speakers doing a similar role as me (for example all keynotes or all featured speakers) receive equal pay as me from organizations who wanted me to speak at their event. They are anonymized and not listed in any particular order. Below each quote is some additional context including what happened afterwards.

 

“Let me nail down a specific budget for speakers and send that your way and see if that’s reasonable to bring you and another person in!”

This event ultimately happened and they found a way to pay me and one other speaker equally. What I earned was about the same as what I normally earned.

 

“I would LOVE to chat more about your thoughts and work on equal pay. That is ‘new’ in terms of inclusion riders. We have time, though, so no rush. Thanks for your dedication to ALL. Be well!!”

This event is scheduled to take place and they are paying all keynote speakers equally as well as all featured speakers equally. The rate they’re paying them is very generous, especially for conferences. They are covering all of their travel expenses as well. Even more remarkable is that I’m earning 11% more than last time I spoke there. This feels like a huge win to me.

 

“So, sadly my speaker budget right now is only $#K. So there’s no way that I could pay the both of you $####. I will see if I can beg a little more money from my boss who has the pursestrings. However, I really do hope that we can work this out.”

This event ultimately happened and they found a way to pay me and one other speaker equally. To fit into their budget, I had to accept about 33% less than I normally earned.

 

“Thanks for the advice! I’ll lift that up to the board. Typically they negotiate the fees; its above my “unpaid” grade! LOL”

I responded by saying:
“I’d be happy to be the bad cop in that situation. You could say ‘This guy Robert is saying that all the featured speakers should be paid the same. Can you respond to him?’ and I’m totally fine with that.”

They responded by saying:
“Just shared your comment with the board!”

This event is scheduled to happen and they decided to pay all featured speakers equally based on the number of sessions they are doing. So as an example, if each featured speaker got $500 per session that they did, then someone who did one session would get $500 and someone who did three sessions would get $1500. This is definitely a step in the right direction, but unless all featured speakers are presenting the same number of sessions, then this could be pay inequality in another form. I will earn 37.5% less than I did the last time I spoke there.

 

“Thank you Robert for your push for equity! I will talk with the group. I should have sent a contract with a higher number to begin with… I apologize. If we only go with 2 keynote sessions it might work. I will let you know.”

This event ultimately happened and they found a way to pay me and one other speaker equally. To fit into their budget, I had to accept less money and what I earned was about 47% less than I normally earned.

 

 

Honestly, I’m not sure as I’ve yet to encounter a situation where an organization responded negatively to this request or would pay us all so little that I couldn’t afford to go. If it got low enough, I would have to decline.

I imagine when I decline, they’ll feel like I gave them an unreasonable request, wasted their time, and was probably not going to accept anyway. I’m not looking forward to this experience.

 

While I understand that it’s unfortunately commonplace for conferences to not pay their speakers, I don’t like it. I especially don’t like when conferences make their speakers still pay registration fees, but that’s a gripe for another blog post. That being said, the key aspect for me is the equality. When no one is getting paid, it equally (un)fair.

 

Yes. Of course I would like to be earning what I believe I should be earning. However, I can also imagine how upset I would be if I found out that others were getting paid more than me for the same work. That frustration weighs heavier in my mind. One day, I hope all educators will be paid well. Until then, something has to give for this to take place, so it is what it is.

 

Simply put, straight, white men don’t get as much pushback about the price they’re asking for as members of other groups do. This is completely unearned privilege.

Now before you go and point out an example of one white guy who didn’t get paid as much as someone else, I feel confident that if we had access to conference data, we would see uncomfortable historical patterns of pay discrimination that we’d wish didn’t exist.

 

The majority of the consulting work I do is me as the only person speaking. In that case, there are no other people to pay. Many of the major educator conferences I speak at don’t pay anyone anything (or at least they’re not paying me!). So that has left only five events during this period where I could try this out.

 

I think that perhaps the biggest issue is the lack of transparency with what people are getting paid to speak at an event. Imagine if the prices that conferences paid speakers were public knowledge. What might change?

First, I think that speakers would have a much better idea about what they should ask for. I’ve talked to countless presenters who could have gotten more but were hesitant to ask for it. Besides not knowing that others were asking for more, the inner voice of self doubt spoke to them. Maybe they’re just getting started as a consultant and don’t want to get rejected. Maybe they don’t see a lot of speakers from past conferences that look like them. Maybe they’ve asked for equal pay many times before and are exhausted from being dismissed.

Second, I think that conferences would want to avoid a public relations nightmare. It would not be long before people start noticing that certain categories of speakers (probably white people and men) tend to get paid more than others.

 

I’ve hesitated to write this blog post because I don’t want it to come across as virtue signaling. I don’t have this all figured out and I’m trying to share it with all it’s flaws. For example, note that I’m not yet saying that I require equal pay for all presenters. I’m just requesting it.

I still have lots of growth ahead but I want to leave you with a few thoughts. It’s worth noting that overall, this request has been received very positively. What I think is happening is that conferences probably hate haggling prices as much (or more) than speakers do. They probably would like nothing more than to be able to easily budget by multiplying the number of speakers by the same speaking fee. Maybe they’re just hesitant to implement such a policy because of fear of offending someone.

This could absolutely be a case of pluralistic ignorance where we all want the same things, but no one says anything because we fear that we’re the only one to feel that way.

Please let me know in the comments what you think. What do you agree with? What am I not considering? What could I be doing better?