No More Mr. Nice Guy...er, Girl
“Women working full time earn about 77 percent of the salaries of men working full time,” and researchers have finally begun to crack the code to explain why.
Recent experiments show that, given the opportunity, men tended to be four times more likely to ask for more money than women in the same circumstances. And the ability to ask (or lack thereof) is part of the problem. Women often shy away from demanding higher pay as they feel it will lead them to be perceived by their peers and superiors as less nice. According to Professor Linda Babcock of Carnegie Mellon University, “Men are simply more aggressive than women, perhaps because of a combination of genetics and upbringing.”
In addition, men who were surveyed displayed a preference to working with women who did not negotiate their salary. Whether or not these men felt threatened by more “aggressive” women remains to be seen.
Those individuals who fought for higher pay benefited more than you might imagine too. “Although differences in starting salaries are usually modest, small differences can have big effects down the road. If a 22-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman are offered $25,000 for their first job, for example, and one of them negotiates the amount up to $30,000, then over the next 28 years, the negotiator would make $361,171 more, assuming they both got 3 percent raises each year.”
However, it may not be as easy as encouraging women to be more self-assured or cutthroat; the passive response is merely a product of their environment. Read More about the social stigmas here.
Posted by Shelly Paul, Career Management Coordinator, The H.S. Group
Recent experiments show that, given the opportunity, men tended to be four times more likely to ask for more money than women in the same circumstances. And the ability to ask (or lack thereof) is part of the problem. Women often shy away from demanding higher pay as they feel it will lead them to be perceived by their peers and superiors as less nice. According to Professor Linda Babcock of Carnegie Mellon University, “Men are simply more aggressive than women, perhaps because of a combination of genetics and upbringing.”
In addition, men who were surveyed displayed a preference to working with women who did not negotiate their salary. Whether or not these men felt threatened by more “aggressive” women remains to be seen.
Those individuals who fought for higher pay benefited more than you might imagine too. “Although differences in starting salaries are usually modest, small differences can have big effects down the road. If a 22-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman are offered $25,000 for their first job, for example, and one of them negotiates the amount up to $30,000, then over the next 28 years, the negotiator would make $361,171 more, assuming they both got 3 percent raises each year.”
However, it may not be as easy as encouraging women to be more self-assured or cutthroat; the passive response is merely a product of their environment. Read More about the social stigmas here.
Posted by Shelly Paul, Career Management Coordinator, The H.S. Group
posted by The H.S. Group at
8:08 AM
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