Welcome to the Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace and success.

I'm Ashley Milet.

This time, a lot of women get the occasional beauty treatment, anything from a facial to a manicure,

to an eyebrow wax, but how much do we know about what work is like for the women who work on us?

Salon owners will use intimidation because they can.

They understand that a lot of the women that they hire, we have a lot of single mothers.

We have a lot of people who are in households that depend on their income, even though it isn't very much.

And how one worker pushed back.

I basically had to stand up for myself and just tell him, this is not okay.

You're not doing this.

If you choose to do this, I'm walking.

In less than 24 hours, I had to be ready to walk away from my job.

That was really tough.

Coming up, inside the beauty business.

When I moved from London to New York, one big thing I noticed right away was how well-groomed the women were. They had manicures and pedicures on a

regular basis. I'd never had either in my life. They had their eyebrows done. And I later learned

a lot of other waxing too. All this stuff I'd never thought of as important, gradually became

important to me as well.

And I'd read about some abuses in the beauty industry, specifically at nail salons in New York

City, where a lot of immigrant women work. But I hadn't thought much about the wider industry

until I got an email from a listener recently. She said, I used to work in corporate, but I've been working in the

beauty industry for more than 10 years. I love my job, but working conditions are pretty bad.

...