The Guardian: The truth about why women are paid less

[Gladi]

Bright day
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The truth about why women are paid less - even if they ask for more


New research shows that women who haggle over money are seen as 'less nice' by their bosses. By Shankar Vedantam

Tuesday August 21, 2007
The Guardian


About 10 years ago, a group of graduate students lodged a complaint with Linda Babcock, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh: their male counterparts in the PhD programme were teaching courses on their own, whereas the women were working only as teaching assistants. That mattered, because doctoral students who teach their own classes get more experience and look better prepared when it comes time to go into the job market.

When Babcock took the complaint to her boss, she learned that there was a simple explanation: "The dean said each of the guys had come to him and said, 'I want to teach a course,' and none of the women had done that," she said. "The female students had expected someone to send around an email saying, 'Who wants to teach?'" The incident prompted Babcock to start systematically studying gender differences when it comes to asking for pay rises, resources or promotions. And what she found was that men and women are indeed often different when it comes to opening negotiations.

These differences, Babcock and other researchers have concluded, may partly explain the persistent gender gap in salaries, as well as other disparities in how people rise to the top of organisations. American women working full time earn about 77% of the salaries of men working full time, Babcock said. That figure does not take differing professions and educational levels into account, but when those and other elements are factored in, women who work full time and have never taken time off to have children still earn about 11% less than men with equivalent education and experience.

In one early study, Babcock brought 74 volunteers into a laboratory to play the word game Boggle. The volunteers were told they would be paid anything from $3 to $10 for their time. After playing the game, each student was given $3 and asked if the sum was OK. Eight times more men than women asked for more money.

Babcock then ran the experiment a different way. She told a new set of 153 volunteers that they would be paid $3 to $10 but explicitly added that the sum was negotiable. Many more now asked for more money, but the gender gap remained substantial: 58% of the women, but 83% of the men, asked for more.

Another study asked students who were graduating with a Master's degree, and who had received job offers, whether they had accepted the offered starting salary or had tried to negotiate for more. Four times as many men - 51% of the men as opposed to 12.5% of the women - said they had pushed for a better deal. Not surprisingly, those who negotiated tended to be rewarded: they got 7.4% more, on average.

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% pay rises each year. And this is without taking into account the fact that the negotiators don't just get better starting pay; they also win bigger pay rises over the course of their careers.

The traditional explanation for the gender differences that Babcock found is that men are simply more aggressive than women, perhaps because of a combination of genetics and upbringing. The solution to gender disparities, this school of thought suggests, is to train women to be more assertive and to ask for more. However, a new set of experiments by Babcock and Hannah Riley Bowles, who studies the psychology of organisations at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, offers an entirely different explanation.

Their study found that men and women get very different responses when they initiate negotiations. Although it may well be true that women often hurt themselves by not trying to negotiate, this study found that women's reluctance was based on an accurate view of how they were likely to be treated if they did. Both men and women were more likely to subtly penalise women who asked for more. The perception was that women who asked for more were "less nice".

"What we found across all the studies is that men were always less willing to work with a woman who had attempted to negotiate than with a woman who did not," Bowles said. "They always preferred to work with a woman who stayed mum. But it made no difference to the men whether a guy had chosen to negotiate."

In this study, which was co-authored by Carnegie Mellon researcher Lei Lai, Bowles and her colleagues divided 119 volunteers at random into different groups and provided them with descriptions of male or female candidates who tried to negotiate a higher starting salary for a hypothetical job, along with descriptions of applicants who accepted the offered salary. The volunteers were asked to decide whether they would hire the candidates - who were all described as exceptionally talented and qualified. While both men and women were penalised for negotiating, Bowles found that the negative effect for women was more than twice as large as that for men.

Subsequent studies used actors who recorded videos of themselves asking for more money or accepting salaries they had been offered. A new group of 285 volunteers were again asked whether they would be willing to work with the candidates after viewing the videos. Men tended to rule against women who negotiated but were less likely to penalise men; women tended to penalise both men and women who negotiated, and preferred applicants who did not ask for more.

In a final set of studies, Bowles's team had 367 volunteers play the role of job candidates and left it up to them to decide whether to ask for more money than they were offered. Women were less likely than men to negotiate when they believed they would be dealing with a man, but there was no significant difference between men and women when they thought a woman would be making the decision. The applicants, in other words, were accurately reading how males and females were likely to perceive them.

"This isn't about fixing the women," Bowles said. "It isn't about telling women, 'You need self-confidence or training.' They are responding to incentives within the social environment."

The findings, published this year in the journal Organisational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, help explain why some other studies have reached conflicting conclusions. For example, one study by Barry Gerhart, then at Cornell University, found little difference between male and female MBA students in whether they negotiated over their starting salary. Similarly, Bowles said, the new study showed that women did not act in the same way at all times: they were more likely to negotiate when dealing with another woman than when dealing with a man.

"It is not that women always act one way and men act another way; it tends to be moderated by situational factors," Bowles said. "The point of this paper is: yes, there is an economic rationale to negotiate, but you have to weigh that against the social risks of negotiating. What we show is that those risks are higher for women than for men."

Interesting if they truly have good figures backing it. I have read and heard anecdotal evidence, when women were chided for not being enough "emphatic" or "nice".

PS: We are all grown folks, I hope so at least. Please discuss the article and The Guardian.

 

[warpus]

Didn't someone post an article a month ago or so which claimed that women were paid more than men?

 

[Japanrocks12]

so the "glass ceiling" is not a myth then. I started a thread relating to this and was convinced that time taken off contributes to overall decrease in salary compared to a male coworker, but this study seems to point to the contrary.

 

[Brighteye]

It's a trend. Women tend... Men tend...
I tend not to negotiate salaries. I dislike haggling entirely. I'll find the best job on offer and take it. If someone else wants me more, they should offer more, not wait for me to haggle about it.
Similarly, if the best job pays poorly, I'll think of a different profession. Allowing negotiation and haggling reduces the level of information available to the job market and reduces the effectiveness of a free market in employment.

Apparently I'm also subject to a glass ceiling.

 

[Masquerouge]

women who work full time and have never taken time off to have children still earn about 11% less than men with equivalent education and experience.

That's a worrying figure.

 

[dh_epic]

I think I remember a lot of nerds really upset about Star Trek Voyager for its captain (among many other reasons, I'm sure). A woman in a leadership role being assertive just rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Although I'd like to think that's changing.

 

[Kozmos]

They are women. We dont need no other reason.

 

[Little Raven]

But the times, they are aaaa-changin...

 

[Phlegmak]

I think I remember a lot of nerds really upset about Star Trek Voyager for its captain (among many other reasons, I'm sure). A woman in a leadership role being assertive just rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Although I'd like to think that's changing.

Someone was actually upset about that? I remember on the Sci Fi channel a half hour show introducing the new Voyager. It focused primarily on the female captain. I couldn't help but think, "Get over it and stop mentioning it."

 

[Kennigit]

I think I remember a lot of nerds really upset about Star Trek Voyager for its captain (among many other reasons, I'm sure). A woman in a leadership role being assertive just rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Although I'd like to think that's changing.

Including her voice, character, and overall cruminess of many Voyager episodes.

On topic- I guess the glass ceiling will take a long time to go away if it ever will.

 

[Little Raven]

The problem with Janeway was not the she was a woman. It was that she was Janeway.

I would have followed Ivanova to the gates of Hell and back again. I also would have been planning a mutiny approximately 10 minutes after being stranded in the Delta quadrant.

 

[dh_epic]

Interesting that there's another sci-fi show with a strong female lead that's getting some respect. That's a positive development, IMO. Not that every show should have a strong female lead, but in a truly egalitarian world, it would naturally be about 50/50.

 

[LordRahl]

Someone was actually upset about that? I remember on the Sci Fi channel a half hour show introducing the new Voyager. It focused primarily on the female captain. I couldn't help but think, "Get over it and stop mentioning it."

Don't forget that Voyager was pretty much the only Star Trek case, where the ship was lost throughout pretty much entire series. That's not doing much for dispelling the "women are bad drivers" stereotype.

 

[Phlegmak]

I thought the character of Janeway sucked because it sucked, not because she was a woman. And the actress wasn't right for the role either.

 

[Elrohir]

I think I remember a lot of nerds really upset about Star Trek Voyager for its captain (among many other reasons, I'm sure). A woman in a leadership role being assertive just rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Although I'd like to think that's changing.

I don't think it's so much women in positions of authority in and of itself. It's that a lot of women don't seem to get the difference between being authoritative and confident, and being a [female dog]. I don't have a problem listening to a woman who is authoritative, while being polite and confident. I do have a problem with women who think being in charge means treating everyone beneath them like snotty preschoolers who need to be whipped into shape.

I'm not saying all women are like that, or even most - just that there are enough women like that that it makes women's jobs even more difficult for them, because men need to evaluate whether she's going to be a good leader or another one of "those" women bosses who you need to avoid.

Just my perspective.

 

[aneeshm]

in a truly egalitarian world, it would naturally be about 50/50.

Not really.

 

[Truronian]

I loved Janeway...

 

[.Shane.]

Too bad the thread got mired in some ST dorkiness.

But, thanks for posting that. It was an interesting read. So, women no generally less aggressive, but, when they consider being aggressive, they are seen differently than a man who is equally aggressive. How do you remedy that? I wonder if when women are the bosses being asked for the higher salaries how the perceptions of men vs. women change.

 

[Pasi Nurminen]

Absolute gender equality is neither desired nor possible.

 

[EdwardTking]

I thought that Katherine Janeway was
OK as a Captain and definitely bonkable.