Tingting Zhou, a human resources consultant in New York City, admits she didn’t negotiate salary when she got her first job.
“It all happened very quickly and I found myself speechless and ultimately accepted the offer,” the 33-year-old told Yahoo Finance.
She said her silence cost her about $5,000 in annual salary, limited the amount she could set aside in her retirement plan and set a lower threshold for future annual raises. Zhou never made such a mistake again.
“Although not every negotiation leads to a higher offer, I always insist on stepping out of my comfort zone and participating in the salary negotiation process. Even though I have negotiated many times, I still feel nervous every time. I think This serves as an opportunity to practice and improve.”
Contrary to popular belief, professional women like Zhou are negotiating for salary, and they are doing so more frequently than men, a recent survey shows. analyze Published by the Academy of Management. But they are also rejected more often.
The research overturns the commonly held belief that women are paid less than men because they indirectly choose to be less competitive and less confident. The study’s researchers said understanding the true causes of the pay gap is important to closing it.
Laura Kray, one of the researchers and a professor at UC Berkeley Haas, told Yahoo Finance: “While men may have been more likely to turn things around in the past than women, a gender gap has emerged.” No. Negotiating the gender pay gap would do double damage by perpetuating gender stereotypes and undermining efforts to eliminate them. “
Clay participated in the research along with Vanderbilt University associate professor Jessica Kennedy and UC Berkeley postdoctoral student Margaret Liss.
“The root causes of the gender pay gap”
Clay and her co-authors analyzed surveys of graduates of top MBA programs from 2015 to 2019 and found that significantly more women than men said they were willing to negotiate for job offers — 54% versus 44%, respectively.
The researchers then conducted an alumni survey of 1,900 MBA graduates in 2019. The survey asked MBAs about their salaries and included a multi-faceted question including whether they had ever asked for a raise or promotion; whether those negotiations were successful; and whether they were paid. Get an unsolicited raise or promotion.
The analysis confirms that people who demand high salaries are indeed more likely to receive higher salaries than those who do not.
But overall, they found that women earned 22% less than men. Aside from women being paid less, the only difference by gender is that more women than men say they have tried to negotiate, and more women say they have tried to negotiate. Spurned.
“We need to look beyond negotiation tendencies and understand the root causes of the gender pay gap,” Clay said. “It’s not that women don’t negotiate for job offers, even though they are told ‘no’ more often than men.”
The paper states that after completing an MBA program, women’s income is 88% of men’s, but 10 years later, women’s income is only 63% of men’s. The salary gap between MBA graduates and women at the time the degree is awarded is particularly striking given that men have nearly identical skills and qualifications,” the researchers wrote.
Yet, as they say, she persevered. “Insisting that the pay gap is due to women not negotiating can also feed into other ‘system-justifying’ beliefs, such as women choosing lower-paying jobs and working fewer hours,” Clay said.
While salary negotiations are non-negotiable for women, for some women it can backfire and go beyond just being turned down a high salary.
“I know a woman who didn’t get the job because she asked for more style,” executive Beverly Jones career coach The author of “Finding Joy at Work,” tells Yahoo Finance. “The employer was my client and he was so disgusted with the aggressive way she was trying to get a higher salary and more benefits that he concluded she wasn’t excited about the opportunity and withdrew his offer.”
Yet if you don’t ask, you don’t get, Nancy Ancowitz, a New York City career development coach, told Yahoo Finance. “I’ve coached many women who exceeded their expectations in salary negotiations—just by trying.”
This does require some legwork. “They prepare and practice answering objections so that when they are dismissed, talked about, or belittled, they stand up for their opinions,” she said. “They role-play and are attuned to verbal and non-verbal cues, often reading between the lines of the negotiation.”
They also prepare themselves to be clear about what they want and when they are ready to give up a raise, she added. “This way, they won’t get lost in the heat of negotiations and potentially underestimate themselves.”
Likewise, some women are not taken seriously in salary negotiations because “social biases associate their higher voices with lower authority,” she added. “The same goes for body language, such as not making eye contact or acting graceful, which” can come across as weak in a negotiation. I’m not suggesting that women engage in manly spreads and manly preaching, but I Women are advised to practice salary negotiation role-playing on the video to see how they fare.”
This brings us back to Clay and her theory about women and negotiation. “If people think that men get better pay just for negotiating and women don’t, then they think we just need to train women to negotiate better rather than fix a discriminatory system,” Clay said. “We call it ‘legitimizing the myth’. “
She has a point. Attracting women through negotiation courses is hot. Just google “negotiation strategies for women” and you’ll turn up millions of links to books, articles, workshops, and courses from Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and more Offered by elite universities. National associations such as Cornell University and the American Association of University Women.
“The belief that ‘women don’t ask’ is consistent with a range of explanations that essentially blame women for being paid less than men,” Clay said. “I hope this study will shift the focus away from solutions aimed at solving problems.” Programmatically shift away from it.” ‘Address women’s issues’ rather than focus on structural barriers. “
Kerry Hannon is a senior reporter and columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a workplace futurist, career and retirement strategist, and the author of 14 books, includingTaking Control Over 50: How to Succeed in the New World of Work” and “You’re never too old to be rich.” Follow her on Twitter @kerryhannon.
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