Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Kristalina Georgieva’s fate at the IMF is debated, the WNBA introduces new fertility benefits for players, and Indra Nooyi responds to the online flap over her raise comment. Have a restful weekend.
Today’s essay come to us from Fortune’s Beth Kowitt:
– Nooyi raises her hand. In yesterday’s Broadsheet, Claire wrote about how Indra Nooyi set certain corners of the internet abuzz with comments the former PepsiCo CEO made about asking for a raise—or rather not asking for one—in a Q&A with the New York Times Magazine.
Nooyi said that she had never asked for a raise and had in fact even turned one down during the financial crisis. When asked why, Nooyi, who regularly ranked as one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in business, said, “I find it cringeworthy. I cannot imagine working for somebody and saying my pay is not enough.”
As you might imagine, the online reaction was swift, with some users contrasting Nooyi’s high pay as a CEO with the earnings of the average worker or wondering how Nooyi responded when her former workforce asked for raises of their own.
The former CEO felt like some of the social media promotion of the piece had taken her out of context and wanted to clarify. “I was speaking the truth about my cultural upbringing and why it stopped me from asking for certain things,” she told me. “I talk about the immigrant’s fear. I’ve been honest about talking about myself. This is part of that whole package.”
Nooyi, who was born and raised in Chennai, India, and moved to the U.S. for graduate school, says that she and her husband were both brought up to never ask for anything—that they were taught if they did a good job, everything would come with it. “I wish we were not that way. I wish we had the courage to go ask for it.” She added that since they didn’t come from much, “whatever we had we thought was a lot.”
Nooyi says that she never implied others should not ask. “You can’t take the cultural upbringing out of me,” she says. “This was unique to me. This is not what I’m preaching at all, not what I’m suggesting, not what I’m recommending.”
She stressed that she supports equal pay and that if you’re paid less than someone else in the same job, you should ask for pay parity—advice that she says she also gives her two daughters.
Click here to read the full details of our conversation.
Beth Kowitt
beth.kowitt@fortune.com
@bethkowitt
The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
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- Slam dunk. The WNBA will provide fertility and hormone tests to players as part of a new partnership with Modern Fertility. The initiative was spearheaded by players' association president Nneka Ogwumike, who wants to break the stereotype that female athletes can't have kids until they retire. Fortune
- Sleep tight. Suzanne Scott has been leading Fox News since 2018, and she recently upped her contract. In a long interview, the CEO emphasizes that her network includes hundreds of contributors—not just the high-profile primetime hosts. "If I wasted any time reading stories about myself or social media posts or what have you, I wouldn’t be able to get my job done," she adds. "And you know what I always say? I sleep well at night." The Hollywood Reporter
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- 'Young, pregnant, and unvaccinated.' Hospitals across the country are filled with unvaccinated COVID patients—including in labor and delivery wards. This piece tells the stories of the "young, pregnant, and unvaccinated." "I have to say that I haven’t had a single pregnant woman tell me that she didn’t get the vaccine because she’s opposed to vaccination," says one doctor. "I really can’t blame these women for being confused and not feeling comfortable taking the vaccine." Washington Post
- Fashion forward. British retailer ASOS introduced a host of new benefits for employees, including the option to take last-minute time off for women experiencing menopause; paid leave for pregnancy loss, including miscarriage and abortion; and leave for people undergoing fertility treatments. The company says its new policies aim to increase "awareness of the impact of such common life events." Guardian
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