On average, women earn less than men for the same job and performance level. Popular thought has been that that's because women simply don't ask for more money. Makes sense, right? You have to ask for something in order to receive it.
But there's something about that line of thinking that has never sat well with me.
I asked and did not receive
During college, I worked for almost four years part-time for a hair product distributor. My first job there was answering the phones, but due to my Mac knowledge and Adobe Illustrator skills, I quickly moved from the front desk to working side-by-side with the CEO on marketing projects and event planning.
Upon graduation, my boss scheduled a meeting so we could to talk about my switch to being a full-time, salaried employee. Being no dummy, I figured this would include salary negotiation. So I did some serious homework to prepare. I read countless articles on how to negotiate your salary. I researched the salaries for similar positions in my city. I prepared a one-page document with this information to use during the meeting, just in case I got nervous and forgot the numbers.
The day of the meeting, my boss didn't come into the office. She'd decided to work from home that day. The other boss, her husband, fit me in right before he left for the day (which was right after lunch). So we met in his office. I think I'd read somewhere that you shouldn't throw out a number first, but he insisted. So I said that based on the average salary for the position, my previous experience, etc., I'm asking for $35,000 per year. It was $5,000 more than they offer most new hires. However, I had four years of experience already, and that meant zero training time and zero risk — they already knew I was a good fit and a great employee. Looking back on it, I should have asked for more.
But it wouldn't have changed the outcome. My supporting evidence fell on deaf ears. I got what any new hire would get.
I'm not saying I did everything right during my “negotiation.” I'm sure there was a lot I could've done better. But I also believe 100 percent that in this particular situation, he had a set figure and that was going to be that.
Do women really negotiate less?
Despite popular thought, it turns out that women are asking. A study that came out late last year found no significant difference between men and women when it comes to negotiating for a higher level position or greater compensation during the hiring process.
The Catalyst's report, The Myth of the Ideal Worker: Does Doing All the Right Things Really Get Women Ahead? shows some interesting findings:
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47 percent of women and 52 percent of men said that they countered by asking for a higher salary.
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14 percent of women and 15 percent of men reported that they countered by asking for a higher-level position.
The study did find that there was a big gender difference depending on how many post-MBA jobs someone has: A full 50 percent of men countered their first post-MBA offer by asking for a higher salary, compared to only 31 percent of women.
But after that first post-MBA job, women start negotiating just as frequently as men. Among men and women who had moved on from their first job, 63 percent of women negotiated for increased compensation, compared to 54 percent of men.
So, women are asking. But according to other research, that could hurt them too.
It can hurt to ask
If a woman negotiates her starting salary, the employer might hold it against her. According to a 2006 study, when a woman negotiates her salary, both men and women are less likely to want to work with or hire her. The negative effect was more than 5.5 times greater for women who negotiated than for men.
If all of this research is correct, it's a Catch-22. If you don't negotiate, you're penalized with a smaller salary. If you do negotiate, you're less likely to be hired or your boss won't want to work with you as much (which can affect future raises).
Women have to seek recognition more than men do
I can't end on a damned-if-you-do note, so let's talk about the best course of action. First, I'd never tell someone not to negotiate their salary, male or female. I think we all can agree about that.
Second, for women, the Catalyst study found that career advancement strategies that work for men don't necessarily work for women. The most powerful strategies for women are making achievements known and gaining access to powerful others.
Making achievements known means:
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Ensuring your manager is aware of your accomplishments.
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Seeking credit for work done.
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Requesting additional performance feedback.
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Asking to be considered for a promotion when you feel it's deserved.
Gaining access to powerful others means:
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Identifying the most influential people in the company.
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Seeking introductions to people in the company who can influence your career.
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Building a network of contacts with important people in the company.
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Learning how things “really work” inside the company.
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Pushing to be involved with high-profile projects.
It's worth noting that only “making achievements known” was shown to affect compensation growth. In addition, the study found that changing jobs can negatively impact women's compensation growth, whereas with men, it positively affects compensation growth.
A final word from the researchers
While it's helpful to talk about how women can use this research to help advance their careers, researchers Nancy M. Carter and Christine Silva bring up some very important questions. “Why don't men have to do the same?” they ask. “Are men being rewarded without even having to ask? Do women have to raise their hands and seek recognition to an even greater extent than men do to receive the same outcomes?”
I'll leave those questions to you guys. Tell me what you think in the comments…
Author: April Dykman
As a freelance writer, editor, and blogger, April Dykman specialized in personal finance, real estate, and entrepreneurship topics. Her work has been featured on MSNBC, Fox Business, Forbes, MoneyBuilder, Yahoo! Finance, Lifehacker, and The Consumerist. Now she does direct response copywriting but, in her free time, April is a wannabe chef, a diehard Italophile, and a recovering yogi.
I’m not sure if women have to push harder to be recognized or if “tooting one’s own horn” just comes more naturally to men? (Or rather, it comes more naturally to certain personality types?) Early on in my career, a supervisor once warned me that I need to speak up more about my achievements if I want to get ahead. (I think that has more to do with my personality type than my gender though.)
Maybe it’s because I’m still single, but I have sometimes noticed that when you put people in a social or networking setting, it seems men are more likely to talk about their careers while women more often talk about their partners and kids. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong – just that it might have different effects on our careers, perhaps?
For example, I know more about the skill sets and expertise of my male friends and single female friends than my married-with-kids female friends. If my company is looking to hire, I’m going to think of the person’s whose career background I’m familiar with.
Just trying to tease out some ideas here. I’m curious to see where this conversation goes.
I negotiated a couple months ago for my salary. It was a promotion and move into a different position within my department. We went back and forth and I ended up short of my desired salary by only a little bit ($1,000 or so). Concurrently, they were hiring a person in the same job role as me, who happens to be a male. They told me they wouldn’t meet my salary request because they couldn’t pay me that much more than him (I think my request was $5,000 more), but I think (without knowing for sure) that I ended up making a little bit more than him. I figure that I had 3 years of institutional knowledge plus background in the field that deserved to be paid more compared to his lack of career work in the field (but translatable work experience). I tried VERY hard and feel like we came to an acceptable negotiation.
I don’t have any issue negotiating, and I don’t think anyone looks at me differently because I tried hard.
In my first job, I took the salary they offered, which was absymally low, because I truly didn’t know any better. I wasn’t taught that stuff in college or at home! Since then, I always negotiate up and ask for more.
The only real way, I think, to get ahead in salary is to change companies. If you are moving up internally, they have so much more control over you that your negotiation power is pretty low. When going outside, you can present more of a take-it-or-leave-it attitude and really mean it. It isn’t uncommon to get a 10%-30% premium for the exact same work just by changing companies…
Many years ago, I worked in a company in which the boss for our division retired. His replacement was a woman from the ranks.
Because the women in the office assumed they were making less than the men, because their salaries were so low, they figured now they had an ally in the boss’s office.
The new boss said one of her first priorities was an equalization of wages based on similar jobs and experience.
Because the women in the office included several part-timers (still in college) as well as some full-timers working about 37.5 hours/week, the average was about 32 hours/week per person.
The raises granted were, on average, 4 cents per hour or, for a 32-hour average week, $1.28.
But the boss’s look at wages also found an even greater disparity among the men, with some later hires getting much more than others.
As a result, several men (me included) got substantial raises; mine was nearly $50/week.
Thanks, ladies!
Interesting. I have a new boss who has several times appealed to my sense of “fairness” when discussing business decisions in a really odd way. It’s been bugging me. One has been about a co-worker who asked for 3 weeks leave. I have projects in the pipeline for him to work on and when I voiced this, my boss asked me how I would feel if I needed time off to “recharge” and was being asked to continue working.
It was irritating because the issue on the table was how to cover for him with our obligations and has nothing much to do with how I feel, personally, about time off from work.
In another conversation, where I had asked him to help settle another resource issue, I was needing my counterpart to adjust her deadline to accommodate my project’s deadline. Tricky stuff, for sure. Before we talked it over he asked me whether that was fair and how it would make me feel if she came to me asking me to move my deadline. Again, these are business decisions. We need to decide as a business how we rise to our challenges given high competition for our internal resources.
Anyway, it just hasn’t been sitting right with me. And that also makes your boss’ request that you consider the fairness of what you are asking for and adjust your ask. That puts the onus on you to be fair and compassionate. I have a weird feeling that bosses would be unlikely to appeal to a man’s sense of fairness and compassion in their regular business requests (more time, more money, more resources). It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?
“Are men being rewarded without even having to ask? Do women have to raise their hands and seek recognition to an even greater extent than men do to receive the same outcomes?”
Where I work, the answer to both these questions is “Yes.” The owner of our (small) company is obviously biased and has actually told me that men are better workers. I am a manager and can point to numbers that say otherwise, but facts do not convince her.
Yes, the owner is a woman. And I’ve heard the same from the male owners of two previous companies that I’ve worked for.
That is frustrating and disgusting.
I negotiated a couple months ago for my salary. It was a promotion and move into a different position within my department. We went back and forth and I ended up short of my desired salary by only a little bit ($1,000 or so). Concurrently, they were hiring a person in the same job role as me, who happens to be a male. They told me they wouldn’t meet my salary request because they couldn’t pay me that much more than him (I think my request was $5,000 more), but I think (without knowing for sure) that I ended up making a little bit more than him. I figure that I had 3 years of institutional knowledge plus background in the field that deserved to be paid more compared to his lack of career work in the field (but translatable work experience). I tried VERY hard and feel like we came to an acceptable negotiation.
I don’t have any issue negotiating, and I don’t think anyone looks at me differently because I tried hard.
In my first job, I took the salary they offered, which was absymally low, because I truly didn’t know any better. I wasn’t taught that stuff in college or at home! Since then, I always negotiate and ask for more.
Most of the places I’ve worked have a set salary in place that doesn’t allow for much or any negotiating (or discriminating). In fact I’m approaching the cap for my position and therefore get less of a percentage raise than I qualify for each year. I was previously in a slightly higher-tiered position but did not like the work so moved laterally to a different area. I got to keep my salary from the old position with the understanding that raises would not necessarily match with what I qualified for (there was a % raise associated with each metric met for the year).
I think maybe some industries are more susceptible to this type of gender discrimination but (and maybe this is millenial naivety talking) it seems like most of the big corporations regulate salaries more and have more women in higher-up positions as well (not to say women can’t have their own bias too though).
I’ll admit that I’m iffy about negotiating on salary (but I will always speak up about wanting more experience in a certain area) but like another poster above I chalk that up more to A) My personality and B) The type of work I do not really lending itself to negotiating.
Also my other job which will eventually become a career, is at a non-profit so getting a raise much less negotiating salary is pretty much a no-go. But yes, I don’t like negotiating, but there’s enough grey area between not negotiating and just plain being taken advantage of (IMO)that it’s not worth it to me unless I feel like I’m in the being taken advantage of category.
Now certain things I have no qualms negotiating over…cars and houses being 2 of them.
This post makes me feel a lot better. I probably could have negotiated my initial starting salary better (which I always felt bad about), but each year I get significant raises and my boss and I have a great relationship. Who’s to say it would be different if I started out asking for more, but I do feel like I am appropriately compensated for my work.
I grew up in a family of aggressive negotiators and as a result I’ve at least attempted to negotiate a higher salary or better benefits for every single job that I’ve ever worked, including my babysitting gigs when I was a teenager.
I recently scored a higher position at work. When I broached the subject of salary negotiation, I was reprimanded by our HR department, who informed me that people who negotiate salaries/benefits are “unprofessional” and that I should “Take what I’m offered and be grateful”. I’d had no problem negotiating terms on my previous two positions with the company, so I suspected this was a new policy. My suspicions were confirmed when I started talking to some of my friends who had also received promotions at our company in the last two years.
All six of the women I talked to reported getting the same reprimand. Both of the men I talked to reported successfully negotiating for more money and never being reprimanded for doing so. They also later went out and talked to more guys they knew and none of them had had the same experience that we women had.
So did we ask? Of course. Were we denied? Yep. Were we penalized for it? Yep. Can we prove that there are men in our company making more money than we are with the same or less experience, education, and responsibility? Yep.
And when I leave this company for some place operating in the 21st century instead of the 19th will I continue negotiating? You betcha.
If I were in your situation, I would think long and hard about contacting a lawyer. If you can prove discrimination (which it sounds like you can), then I would push it. That is simply unfair and companies should be held accountable for this type of shameful behavior.
“If a woman negotiates her starting salary, the employer might hold it against her. According to a 2006 study, when a woman negotiates her salary, both men and women are less likely to want to work with or hire her.”
Wow – that sounds sooo much like the double standard wrt assertiveness. If a man is assertive he’s seen as, well, manly, and a leader. If a woman is assertive she’s seen as a b!tch. I hope that younger people here have a different experience with that since it would give hope that biases are changing, but I’m sure there are older commentors here who’ve seen this play out many times.
I’ve definitely learned this lesson the hard way. I recently had to make a job change because my firm just wouldn’t pay me what I was worth. I came in at a low salary because I didn’t have experience in the field when I started, but two years later I was basically running the department for about $10k less than what anyone else was making. I only went on two interviews before I received an offer for the full amount I was asking for, which was a 20% increase over my current position. Guess I should have asked for more…
That rings true to my experience. I recently switched companies and negotiated a hefty raise in the process, but have felt some resentment from those who were involved in hiring me.
I’ve been lucky. Most of the people I’ve worked for have been pretty progressive and encouraging about this sort of thing. But I know this is a really frustrating issue that affects women as a whole, so I’m glad to see this study covered here.
I’m also glad the study includes some strategies that do work for women. I wish we didn’t need a “workaround,” though.
I do kind of feel like I have to prove my chops more as a woman. A lot of times, when I write about frugality (not just here), readers have assumed that I’m broke and have no control over my finances. I can’t help but wonder if the same assumptions would be made with a guy writer. Maybe, though.
I have been self employed for 22 years so it’s been a while since I’ve had a regular “job”. I do, however, also teach at the college level and pay for adjuncts are set when you take the job but I have noticed that I really do have to promote my accomplishments. I have to do it far more than the men in the same situation just to get the recognition to keep the job. I have made it a goal to win an award or be published at least once a year. I don’t see my male counterparts going to this extent. It is frustrating.
I live in London so not sure if this works universally, but I ALWAYS ask a question that relates to women in any interview. From a female interviewer I ask about their personal experience, do they feel that their gender matters in promotions, do they feel the company has enough women at the top, are there good female role models in the company etc etc. From male interviewers I ask more general questions, ie how many of my potential future team/unit are women, or how many people in the management team are women. This makes the interviewer talk positively about women (as they are doing all in their power to prove to me they are an equal opportunity employer) and I have found no problem when negotiating my salary after this. As a bonus this saves me from a lot of headache: if I find the response from the interviewer is not to the standards I expect, the job probably isn’t for me anyways.
That sounds like a very good strategy Nina. Basically just greasing the skids before putting on the boxing gloves. I like it!
Wow. That’s pretty brilliant!
SInce it seemed that the recession was starting to wane I decided it was a good year to ask for a raise. I presented proof that I was underpaid for my position in my city. I was still rejected. Just gives you more reason to start looking for something else. It seems like employers would realize that, if they want to keep their employees.
I am a woman, and I had no problems asking and had been successful many times getting what I wanted. The only time I did not get what i wanted was because the cap was set and this is at a bank. I did not think my gender made a difference at any point. However I am concerned that age makes a difference.
In my small amount of experience, I have found this to be true. My first “real job” out of college, I was happily working with a set salary. My job was formalized when the study was expanded to multiple sites, and in that meeting meeting with the company that was funding the study, in addition to training we were told how much each of the sites were being given for our salaries, and we need to let him know if we were not receiving it. It was was 13K more than I was receiving. When I returned to work, I was rebuffed by my manager and told I could only discuss salary at the annual meeting (6 months later) I patiently waited. In that meeting I detailed what I learned. The (male) manager basically said I was lying, and I could have a 5% raise, take it or leave it. I think this kind of treatment is pretty typical. I now work in the government, where it is clear cut based on job description and experience what one’s salary, and for me I prefer this situation.
My experience corresponds with this. First job out of college I was offered a pittance of a salary and had no idea if or how I should negotiate so I didn’t. In a subsequent job, I negotiated for a good increase when going to a new company and the manager involved in hiring me totally resented the salary I had been given and spent the next 6 weeks actively setting me up to get fired, and she succeeded.
I now work for a company that treats their employees with respect and have been very happy there for the past 20 years.
I think women need to value themselves more and it’s got nothing to do with being aggressive. I remember my first serious position in a company where I started at the bottom on a low salary. Eighteen months later after proving I was a hard worker and dedicated to the company there was an opportunity to take over a maternity contract, as admin manager. This had been an opportunity to ask for more money. And ask I did. While the boss at the time was apprehensive and gave me arguments as to why such a high salary was not realistic due to my age, experience, gender and location, I counter argued and ended up getting what I wanted, over 20% raise. If a company is not willing to recognise your efforts it’s probably time to start looking elsewhere.
My current employer is great and offers the same benefits for both male and female workers. I’m not sure how the incomes differ, but apparently most start on the same base wage and then get quarterly bonuses depending on their performance.
If I were to change the position in the company, I would not hesitate to negotiate a higher salary due to my experience and proven work ethic. If you don’t ask you don’t get. And after you do ask, and get, just forget about it, don’t read into the bosses attitude. If they didn’t want to keep you they wouldn’t have given you a raise.
April –
My initial thoughts about your story was if you wanted $35K, you should have asked $40K. Then you would have ended up with $35K. Employers expect you to give a higher number than your minimum. Of course better if he gives you the number first.
At my last job, I asked for $10K more. They gave me $5K more which was my minimum.
I also agree with other commenters that in most cases the only way to get more to is go to another company. That is just the way industries work. I shoot for 15%-20% for every new job while internal raises are usually in the low 1% to 5% range.
My wife is currently applying for jobs and much of what you have share here has been true for her. She has felt a perception that if she asks for more in salary there is a huge chance that it will create bitterness on the part of her potential employer. I think even as far as our culture has come, the workforce is still totally unbalanced for women.
This is an excellent article – thank you. Another glib myth busted. That Catch-22 is frustrating indeed, but at least I have less of a sense of personal failure for the times when I just couldn’t seem to do anything right in the corporate world. Sometimes — not always, but sometimes — the deck IS stacked, and we can’t change that until we recognize it.
Thank your for this article.
In my first job, at a small start-up, I did my research, and managed to get the boss to give a number first. He said “$40-50,000.” My panicked response was, “that’s great, how about $45,000?” He laughed, understandably, and agreed.
I learned from the mistake. At my next job, I asked for a higher salary than offered. They said they couldn’t do anything about it. I let them know I had another offer, I brought up alternative forms of compensation – nothing.
At my next job, in a bad economy, I was more modest. I negotiated for $2,000 more than they were giving me. Nothing. They didn’t budge. The HR manager assured me “it won’t get approved.” I asked her to at least check, and she said she would. She never got back to me about it, and I doubt she followed up. (I did get hired and take the job)
I’ve grown out of being afraid to ask, but it has never netted any results. Maybe this has to do with working in the nonprofit sector….
But when I compare the salaries of the men to the women at every organization I’ve worked with, I don’t think it does. This article has helped me see, perhaps, how some of the inequity starts.
I just want to add that I don’t think the ubiquitous “you guys” in your final sentence helps anyone. You’re writing an article about women and many of the commenters are women. I know people will say it’s “just” a figure of speech, but the way we talk affects how we think and act. So if you want women to be included and treated fairly, maybe start with not eliminating them from the audience you’re identifying. And women are the worst about this — they use “you guys” as much or more than men.
What a wonderful article! This is excellent use of facts, statistics and opinions. It reflects on various aspects. I agree that everyone who works hard deserves a raise. However; when women ask for a raise, they are viewed in a different light. Not only does the boss view the negotiation differently, your coworkers also look at you differently. We are still striving for equality in this regard.
We often discuss negotiations — salary or otherwise — as if they were an event instead of a process.
Your experience at the hair product company is a good example. You point out that when moving to full time your employer would have zero training cost and zero risk. That should translate into more value for you.
But those 4 years of experience, familiarity and comfort were benefits you could only get by staying with the company.
Leaving the company for a job that paid a little better creates more risk for you – more unknowns.
Once you got to your new job you may have found you didn’t like working there. The company may not have been as stable as your old employer. And if your new job was in a different industry you may have found you didn’t like it as much.
Obviously I don’t all the details about your situation. But since your boss didn’t come in the day of the scheduled meeting I have to assume she took it for granted you would not go elsewhere. In your employer’s mind you had no leverage.
You state that the man you negotiated with insisted you name a salary figure first. That tells me they didn’t have a dollar amount etched in stone. If they did he would have simply said, “The starting salary for this position is $30,000, sign here”.
Your request of $35,000 instead of $40,000 was probably the only “event” that took place during the negotiations. All the other factors that affected the result where in place before the meeting began.
We sometimes regard great negotiators with awe. As if they had some magical powers. Usually they are just good at maximizing their options and leverage ahead of time. Then they deal from those strengths in the actual negotiations.
I agree that the anecdote in the article is not exactly a great example of negotiating and failing just because of gender (not to say that the other points in the article are less valid). I’ve had successful negotiations and unsuccessful ones, but I’ve never felt they happened because I’m a woman, but because of other factors – they really didn’t have the money to give, or I had no actual leverage.
I think people who look at negotiations as a single event will often find they turn out unsuccessfully. Now it’s possible that women are more likely not to know how to properly negotiate, and so find their relationships strained afterwards, or outcomes worse than they had hoped for. I don’t know.
I simply don’t believe that women negotiate as well as men–or anywhere near it. This is something that I’ve been discussing with my friends (men and women) for several years and men are simply socialized differently. There are exceptions (my female friends who are in sales or other areas where they have to negotiate regularly) are very good at it.
I question this study, just because the figures are self-reported, and even how men and women define a tough negotiation is often different.
I’m a writer who covers women in business, among other things, and several execs and hiring managers have told me, “I’ve never had a female employee ask for a raise. Men do it all the time.” I hear these things all the time. Some male managers are absolutely stunned at how seldom most women advocate for themselves.
This is an interesting article because I’d thought this myth to be true. But I have to disagree with the first sentence of the article. From what I’ve seen, women do earn as much or even more than men. I’m not sure whether the thought that women earn less is an outdated notion requiring further research or disclaimers saying it ignores other factors like men being more likely to work longer hours, negotiating better, or more likely to take dangerous jobs.