Nothing is Wrong With You. You're Being Taxed
The Stupid Tax, the Glam Tax, and the compounding cost of being a woman at work
Every year we define these costs as personal failure is another year we can’t see what’s actually being extracted - or decide to stop paying.
Natalie: I did the math. Men’s jokes, harassment, and power plays have cost me roughly €500,000 to €700,000 in my lifetime.
That’s a house. That’s a decade of financial security. That’s the compound interest on a life I didn’t get to live at full capacity.
I called it the Stupid Tax - the money we pay to the patriarchy simply for “showing up female” in spaces that weren’t designed for us.
Susan: When Natalie shared that number on Linkedin, I was shocked…and relieved.
Not because the number is acceptable - it isn’t - but because she’d done something few of us have ever done: she named it and calculated it.
We talk about the gender pay gap in percentages. We debate statistics. But we rarely sit down and calculate our personal cost in jobs left behind, in salaries we felt too small to demand, in the professional momentum we lost while fending off predators.
That’s a financial acumen problem as much as it is an equity problem.
Natalie: Here’s how the Stupid Tax breaks down for me:
€269,000 The jobs I quit because I was sexualized and no one stood by me. That’s the largest single line item - because leaving was the only option I had, and the loss follows me.
€ 15,000 The jobs I didn’t take because the man involved was predatory.
€ 27,500 The times I undercharged because my confidence had been systematically dismantled.
€ 20,000 The raises I didn’t ask for. Same reason.
€ 48,000 to €50,000 The time a man told me I was greedy for naming my salary, so I named a smaller one instead.
€ 13,000 to €17,000 Therapy, to understand why it kept happening to me.
€200,000 roughly in compound opportunity costs on all of the above.
€200,000 (potentially far more) from acting jobs I lost because directors and producers decided my body was part of the audition.
Susan: Take another look at Natalie’s list. Beyond the personal story, see it for the damning financial prices she has paid.
Every line item has a mechanism.
Confidence suppressed → salary suppressed.
Safety threatened → career interrupted.
Boundaries tested → opportunities refused.
These aren’t accidents. They’re a system operating exactly as designed, extracting value from women and redistributing it elsewhere.
The Stupid Tax doesn’t stand alone. The Care Tax. The Pink Tax. The Young Tax hat so(wme are starting to call the Fuckable Tax). Each one is structural. Each one is invisible on any balance sheet. Together they create a compounding financial drag on women’s lives that no individual achievement fully escapes - no matter how successful we become.
I’ve written about the Glam Tax - the money men generally don’t spend, but we must spend on appearance standards just to be taken seriously at the table. The Stupid Tax is its counterpart: money that never makes it into our accounts, slows our trajectories, and limits our futures - not because of what we spent, but because of what was stolen by the patriarchy.
Natalie: The hardest line for me is the therapy cost. For years I was trying to understand what was wrong with me. The Stupid Tax includes not just what it cost to get help - but the years I spent asking the wrong question.
Nothing was wrong with me. I was paying a tax. There’s a difference.
Susan: The very familiar question, “what’s wrong with me?” doesn’t arise in a vacuum. We’ve been subject to frameworks that push us to question ourselves. We’re repeatedly told we need to build confidence, fight imposter syndrome, speak up, be more this, be less that. But the patriarchal business environment inevitably signals that we don’t belong. Feeling out of place isn’t a psychological flaw. It’s an accurate read of the room.
Research on ‘belonging uncertainty’ makes this distinction precisely. Doubting your competence despite evidence of success is one thing. Doubting whether you fit in spaces that were never built for you is another - and these doubts persists even among the highest performers. The first is internal. The second is structural.
Labeling a structural problem as a personal one is itself part of the tax.
Naming it as a tax changes everything. A tax is structural, not personal. A tax has payers and collectors. A tax, once named, can be refused - or at minimum, accounted for and that naming opens the door to the most important understanding of all: there's nothing wrong with you.
Natalie and Susan: Here’s what we know: on a personal level we women will continue to feel the system levying these taxes even while we understand they’re structural. On a personal level, you can likely name what the Stupid Tax has cost you. On a personal level, naming them is the beginning of seeing clearly
We’re naming the Stupid Tax because naming it is powerful. We’re asking: what would change if you name your number? Would you:
Negotiate differently?
Leave sooner?
Charge more?
Stop explaining yourself to the man who called you greedy for knowing your worth?
What has the Stupid Tax cost you?
Natalie Lund smacked me between the eyes with her post (above) and I knew that we had to write together. Her insight is crucial for every woman working in a business not of her own making. Let us know how understanding the Stupid Tax has made a difference to you.
Lead ON!
Susan
PS: Curious what the Glam Tax has cost you personally? My Glam Tax Calculator lets you run your own numbers.
If you’re following all the advice and it still feels like something’s in the way, I want you to know:
You are not the problem. You are working inside a system that’s withholding something from you.
I’m here to offer what that system can’t or won’t: the business, financial and strategic acumen that opens doors. You’ll find it in every article, in the Be Business Savvy Course and in Your Business Savvy Coach.
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I’m Susan Colantuono, best known for my TED Talk, “The Career Advice You Probably Didn’t Get“ and founder of Be Business Savvy.
Susan
Gosh. Some here I haven’t factored in.
But I would also question that the compounding figure is high enough?
I always give the example of a 5k raise not negotiated, age 30. Imagine that 5k grows by inflation at ~ 3%. Put all of it (including inflationary growth) in a relatively conservative pension plan where it grows by ~ 5%.
By retirement age (Officially 68 for a 30yo in the 🇬🇧) - you have 869k extra in the pot
That one modest £5k negotiated.
A life changing impact at retirement
There could be many of those negotiations over a career.
And that’s not counting everything else we negotiate that impacts career trajectories and thus earning power (resources, visibility, influence, sponsorship, roles…)
My hunch is it runs into the millions
This resonates: the cost of therapy. Not only the cost, the time. Patriarchy has huge costs that often are actively not acknowledged. Because it is part of the trap.