Do Women Really Ask for Raises Less Frequently Than Men?

Photograph of Money

In the New York Times last week, Joanne Lipman declared that women's progress has stalled because "we've focused primarily on numbers at the expense of attitudes." She tells one story with a precise tally: "In my time as an editor," she writes, "many, many men have come through my door asking for a raise or demanding a promotion. Guess how many women have ever asked me for a promotion? I'll tell you. Exactly ... zero." Reluctance to ask for a raise is, in Lipman's eyes, a problem of the prevalence of trying to be a "passive 'good girl.'"

Is she right that women don't ask for raises? Amanda Fortini, writing a response to Lipman on Salon, skewers the idea as "antiquated" and offers a counterexample: "My mother, who runs a marketing company, tells me her female employees do in fact ask for promotions and raises, often with a greater sense of entitlement than the men."

Who is right, in this sample-of-one face-off? Linda Babcock, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, has done research on this question. In her book Women Don't Ask, Babcock and co-author Sara Laschever discuss studies and experiments they've conducted, which suggest there is, in fact, a pretty noticeable discrepancy between men and women's propensity to negotiate for a raise.

One study compared the starting salaries of students graduating with master's degrees from Carnegie Mellon, and found that men's starting salaries exceeded women's by an average of almost $4,000. Because these salaries were set before the men or women had started working, Babcock looked at the process for negotiating salaries and found something startling: while Carnegie Mellon's Career Services department strongly advised all students to negotiate for their starting pay, only 7 percent of women had asked for more money than their initial offer. In contrast, 57 percent of men—8 times as many—asked for more money. Moreover, Babcock calculated that the starting salary difference for those who negotiated was on average $4,053 higher than those who did not. That number—almost the exact discrepancy between the starting salary of men and women in general—suggested that if women had simply negotiated for higher starting offers the pay gap would have narrowed dramatically.

Babcock and her colleagues followed this finding with a laboratory experiment designed to test women's willingness to ask for more. The researchers asked students to play the game Boggle and told them they would receive between three and 10 dollars. After four rounds of playing, the game ended and a researcher would give the subject three dollars, saying "Here's three dollars. Is three dollars OK?" If the subject asked for more money, the experimenter would give him or her 10 dollars.

The result? Nine times more men than women asked for more money—a discrepancy similar to the one in the study on starting salary. The women in the study rated their own performance at Boggle as highly as men did, and complained as much about the low $3 rate. The only difference between them and the men was that the men were much more likely to ask for more pay. So Lipman was on to something.

Photograph of stacks of money by Medioimages/Photodisc/Getty Images.

Tags: Joanne Lipman, money, salary, workplace equity

Danny Townsend is a senior at Yale University and an intern for DoubleX.

Comments

I just read the intro to

By: buggie | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 16:11

I just read the intro to Babcock's book on Amazon, and I was really surprised by one of the anecdotes- the woman who told her employer she didn't care what she was paid as long as she was offered a job. The implication that this was an inappropriate response surprised me. While I probably would have phrased that answer differently, I have ALWAYS been told by career counselors NEVER to give a number to a potential employer who asks that question because basically, they are trying to trick you. In practice, whenever I have been nagged by a potential employer to state a preferred salary, I have been rejected for the position on the basis that the salary I requested was too high, or even accused of being greedy by the potential employer, even though I provided a range rather than a firm number and had evidence to support how I arrived at it. I'm going to pick up the whole book, and see if there's more on the issue, but it struck me as odd upon first read.

Women are simply more risk averse

By: Xando | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 14:30

Across the entire spectrum of human activity, men are more likely to take risks than women. It shouldn't come as any surprise that the same behavior translates into confronting someone about a raise or promotion.

Perhaps women are simply more

By: buggie | Tue, 11/03/2009 - 16:56

Perhaps women are simply more sticklers for "rules." Or maybe more *trusting* of the "rules." When I finished grad school, I didn't negotiate any salaries in my job search because the (male) career counselor from the business school told us that these days, that's "not how it's done." In fact I had a fairly good understanding of the sectors/industries that I was applying with, and I "knew" that they have general starting salaries at different levels that are generally non-negotiable. In fact, the large consultancy I ended up taking a job with told me this when they hired me "we don't negotiate salaries" and that the higher level position I had originally applied for was given "only to PhDs." I found out that both of these claims were false, but it never occurred to me to challenge them at the time I was hired, because I figured it was set in stone. I figured it was better to play by the rules than risk them rescinding my offer! I wonder if men see these types of things differently.

Interesting also the comment about women not wanting to claim knowledge of something unless they are "practically international experts." I definitely fall into this category. I think that again it is part of playing by the rules. My first job out of college put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the bosses were "experts" and their underlings basically knew nothing. There were a lot of rules of what you could claim to have an inform opinion on even just internally. Interestingly in that job three of us out of college started together, and the one male came in and basically just shared ideas with whomever would listen, while the two of us females played by the rules and just did what we were told and believed that in fact, we knew nothing. Of course in the end, the male ended up getting promoted over and over while the two of us remained buried in the trenches.

But even given these experiences, I don't know if I would change my behavior. I've never wanted to sound entitled or spoiled. I've always assumed that if I tried to negotiate a salary, the employer would just say, "well if you think you're worth that much, go get it somewhere else" or if I asked for a promotion or a raise the employer would just say, "you should be glad you even have a job" and then just think less of me overall. The oddness of this is that I am rebel by nature. I always try to see how far I can bend the rules and get away with it. Yet when it comes to this sort of thing, stickler I am.

All of these comments break my heart a little bit

By: coro | Mon, 11/02/2009 - 19:31

Everybody,

I'm really grateful, and I feel really supported by your comments (I am the original poster.)

I guess I actually feared that everyone who commented would make fun of me somehow because I had admitted that I had worked as a secretary. I'm sorry for "misunderestimating" y'all. ;-)

Seriously, though, from what I've read in the above comments... executives, freelancers, secretaries, and all of the above & below, have had some or all of the same experiences with incalcitrant male bosses. Why is this still going on? Did our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers fight for NOTHING?

What can we do? What is next?

I think those are the questions we need to ask ourselves.

Great first post! Can't wait

By: yitzhak1995 | Mon, 11/02/2009 - 00:04

Great first post! Can't wait to read more.

Who Really Knows What the Game is...

By: Addis | Sun, 11/01/2009 - 17:00

I’d certainly like to know where race factors in also.

Regarding the first commentator, I really had to laugh hard at your final sentence: If I hadn't asked for a "harder" -- and, I hoped, better -- job, I might still have one today.

A raise I was always afraid to ask - though I knew I wasn't being fairly compensated as I had changed "roles" without a salary increase. It was the industry standard I was told by experienced colleagues who'd hopped around a bit to secure a desirable pay. And if I wanted more money, I would have to go to another company and perhaps find my way back to the company somewhere down the road.

But a "challenge" I was never too afraid to ask as I reasoned it to cost the organization nothing. Indeed, after I had mastered my second role with the organization, I soon became bored. And, so, I would share my thoughts with my boss with great ease, thinking he’d be delighted at my desire for more. BIG mistake. I wasn’t transferred to another department or anything, but after that talk, my life in the department became a lot tougher. He became a complete prick – all because I wanted a bigger challenge!

So, yeah, unless you are 100% sure that your boss is the cerebral type, just keep your mouth shut and play the game well.

~Addis
http://www.thoughtiswack.com

Another data point

By: lorikay4 | Sun, 11/01/2009 - 10:14

I used to work for a professor in grad school who told me that exact story from her own experience hiring graduate assistants. She said that male applicants would talk up their accomplishments, claim to know how to do things that they were only slightly familiar with, and ask for more money as a matter of course. She said her female applicants were scrupulous to a fault about their abilities and their resume claims, and wouldn't claim to know how to do something unless they felt like they were practically international experts. She said this had been consistently true in all the years she had been hiring.

I think that women are punished in some environments for stepping forward for themselves because asking for yourself isn't 'nice', and women are supposed to be 'nice' above all else.

In the Washington Post

By: dariac | Sat, 10/31/2009 - 17:14

There was a study that said when women negotiated for more pay, they tended to pay for it later in the form of shorter employment or failed employment.
I have found this to be true. By both men and women I have been treated with hostility when I have attempted to negotiate, and although I still do, and simply accept the consequences. And even though I would often not negotiate to any backbreaking level and was quite polite about it.
I am wondering if women are expected to be extraordinary in order to "deserve" that higher pay in the eyes of others. Maybe there is some form of prejudice there.

Women need to stop being martyrs for the Company.

By: KajSiCat | Sat, 10/31/2009 - 14:40

As a professional woman making close to six figures in a male-dominated field, I have to make a comment here. I think women don't go asking for raises/promotions for the same reason they don't go asking for anything else they want for themselves: because they think it's selfish or greedy to demand things from others to make themselves happy. I think many women see a sort of twisted virtue in doing their jobs or taking on more work responsibilities without asking for anything in return. They see themselves as being selfless, being "a good person": helping out colleagues, putting the project before their own needs, supporting the boss, etc. If they go off to the boss and demand money for it, then that sense of virtue goes out the window because now they're being "greedy". These women are interpreting "selflessness" as "martyrdom". Men, I think, tend to interpret "selflessness" as "generosity". They may be just as generous with their time and effort at work as their female colleagues are, but a man still has enough self-respect to civilly demand to be paid what he's worth. Women need to realize that a) martyrdom makes them look pathetic, not virtuous, and b) there is no contradiction in being selfless and having enough self-respect to demand what you deserve.

women asking for raises

By: coro | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 23:07

Huh. Interesting read.

For what it's worth, in my most recent experience, I didn't even ask for a raise -- twice I went to the Big Boss to beg just for more responsibility, even without commensurate pay, just so that I wouldn't lose my mind from boredom; but despite his promises it didn't really happen (it sort of did, but in a disappointing way, i.e., I then was reassigned to work as a secretary for an impossible boss for whom no one else would work, plus I got saddled with a lot of extra photocopying and printing - what fun!). And when, during the beginning of the recession, I was laid off, my "dissatisfaction" was obliquely referred to in the exit interview... The only reason I'm commenting is to say that perhaps women don't ask for raises or promotions because we subconsciously know that there's no point. If I hadn't asked for a "harder" -- and, I hoped, better -- job, I might still have one today.