Why Don't Women Ask for More Money

In order to better understand this issue of pay between men and women look at your wife’s or husband’s pay and you’ll see the difference.

Imagine what an extra 20%, or more, in your paycheck could do for you. Maybe it would be the difference between just scraping by and having a little discretionary income. Now, imagine being paid based on your own merit, and not some sliding scale which has historically favored men as the breadwinners of the family. Unfortunately, for most women, equal pay is still a dream. Today, as throughout history, there exists a gender pay gap where women are paid $0.79 to every dollar a man makes. Minority women make even less. Women, of course, have always known this gap exists, but they have had little power to change it.

Whether you are looking for a promotion or starting a new job, salary negotiation provides one of the best routes to increase your pay package. Unfortunately many people do not think of negotiating because they feel uncomfortable or are outright scared. A study conducted by Salary.com, extricates the divide by revealing that a sizable 18% of people do not negotiate for pay. The same statistics indicate that a whopping 44% of people have never considered bringing the issue to the negotiating table. The gender divide is also evident, since more women than men find themselves in this bracket.

To this day, women get paid less due to the motherhood penalty, educational opportunities, women’s roles in the society historically, choice of job, and more. All of these components affect women’s wages and the superiority of men in the labor force. One side of the argument states that women rightfully deserve the downside of this wage gap, and others posses the opinion that all workers should be treated equally. Historically, gender roles have gotten in the way of equality in pay. However, people also believe that women choose jobs that do not offer an abundance of pay. Factors such as the motherhood penalty have skewed the pay gap as well. While some people believe that women should be treated equally regarding pay, since they are doing

It is the process of negotiating salaries with employers. To many this would seem like the easiest way to go about solving the issue at hand, and one may ask why it hasn’t been done more, however, the authors Hanna Bowels and Linda Babcock claim that, “women are penalized socially more than men when negotiating for higher pay” (Bowels and Babcock). This means that by one woman trying to solve the problem maturely and merely having a conversation of negotiations with said employer, it will ultimately make the problem worse by elevating it from tangibly making less money to being socially looked down upon for wanting equal treatment as well as potentially still making less money. Bowels and Babcock took this a step further and performed multiple studies on negotiations to find the most efficient and less consequential outcomes possible. The results showed, “although adherence to the feminine stereotype is insufficient, using these ‘‘relational accounts’’ can improve women’s social and negotiation outcomes at the same time” (Bowels and Babcock). When women are negotiating for higher pay the results are more positive when exhibiting “womanly” qualities to the

The most well-known limit placed upon women in a work setting is the wage gap, or the difference between a man’s salary and a woman’s salary. Authors dive into the subject of the current wage gap because of its presence in modern society, and one author who does speak out about the topic is Caroline Fredrickson. Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, writes in her book Under the Bus: How Working Women Are Being Run Over about how the gap between a man and woman’s salaries does exist in today’s progressive society. To argue her case, Fredrickson reveals, “In the past decade, women have not made any progress at all, with the wage gap overall remaining stubbornly at 77 percent…” (44). This gap of seventy seven percent implies that the majority of women are paid only seventy seven percent of what a man is paid in any given position.

Lawyers Maria Lewis and DeMaris Trapp from the article “She works hard for less money” argues that women are paid less because of their gender and are paid less than their male counterparts. They both focused on the need for legal action to bring the wage gap to a close. Zsuza Daczo on the other hand fuses both Perry and Lewis and Trapp’s argument in his thesis “Wage inequality and the gender wage gap: are American women swimming upstream?”. He does acknowledge that there does seem to be discrimination against women, however, mentions society as the cause of the wage gap. The 4 authors, all brought up different perceptive, but Daczo who does an effective job by using various research.

The gender wage gap in the U.S. has been a topic of debate in politics through most of the 21st century. In 2015, women were paid 80 percent of what men were paid (SIMPLE TRUTH). This number is considerably smaller than that of the 1960’s because of women’s progress in education and participation in the workforce (SIMPLE TRUTH). The wage gap can have adverse lifelong effects on a woman’s life. Because women are paid less than men, a woman will receive less social security, pensions, and other resources when they retire than a man would (Fischer & Hayes, 2013). There is a common stigma that women do not get paid as much as men because they do not ask for higher wages but not everything can be “explained

In this op-ed, Lipman’s point is that women do, indeed, get paid less than their male counterparts for the same job and that calling out these companies for doing so will help millions of women across America. She brings up the fact that even female doctors and surgeons make less than men in the same field, refuting the opposing point that women prefer lower paying industries. She does point out that a cause for this could be the fact that men are more likely to ask for a raise, and when a woman does ask for one, she asks for less than a man would; but she goes on to say that women asking for raises is just not enough. Lipman includes the fact that “Britain has introduced a plan that requires companies with 250 or more employees to report

Women’s pay has long been a subject in the economic community and to a further extent society. With arguments being presented from both sides, but one thing cannot be disputed there is a gender based wage gap between women and men. Why is there a gap and how can society in the United States change that? First we must examine women in the workforce. Then ask why it happens then figure out how we can put an end to the pay gap.

Likewise, I believe it makes sense that increasing your goal before entering a negotiation will increase the amount you receive. The authors also claim that men set more aggressive goals, whereas women are more modest. For instance, when the authors talk about Kirk’s story they say, “...he asked for $85,000, thinking he’d probably get $60,000 or at most $70,000”(550). Taking man’s nature into consideration, I believe that the way society portrays masculinity may lead them to demand more. From the example of John and Delia provided in the essay, it can be inferred that men gain more because they pursue more. Not only do the authors provide one story, but they also provide two more stories to justify their notion. As a reader, I consider it reassuring when an author presents more than one example to support their belief. Therefore, it is refreshing to see Babcock and Laschever support their two claims with an adequate amount of evidence. Throughout my life, I have heard about the gender wage gap. However, I have never thought about the reasons that contribute to the problem. Nevertheless, I agree with the authors’ diagnosis of the problem: incomparable goals between genders. If both genders go into negotiations with equally assertive goals, then great strides will be made to reach gender equality within our labor

Many believe they are living in a country that helps the deprived succeed, but in one specific area the underprivileged are the ones oppressed. Much is unknown about how wages are distributed between coworkers. In the land of the free, one should be able to question their employer and not be at risk of getting fired from their job or reaping retributions from asking questions about pay. When women are forced to think of asking such questions, it denies the equality that women have tried for generations to achieve. At odds with what the United States preaches about “equality” in today’s modern society, men are still receiving higher pay than their women colleagues for the same work produced at the same job place.

For every dollar a man makes, a woman makes seventy-four cents. Though this is illegal due to the Equal Pay Act in 1963, there are several reasons for the existence of gender pay gaps in the United States. One reason why women make less than men is because men are more likely to promote themselves/ask for promotions then women are to do so because they fear they should be modest or else they will look abrasive. Women work hard, and higher and higher rates as time passes but they still do not take over the highest paying/highest position jobs. A study of job negotiations was done, and the results show that male workers were at least eight times more likely to negotiate starting pay than female students. Along with this, it seems that women become penalized when trying to negotiate salaries, while men are generally not questioned for negotiating salaries, so it seems like women do not have ambition when really it is very hard to ask for something as such. This labeled “lack of ambition,” as brought up above is part of the reason why women have trouble making it to the top. Since they have trouble making the connections to ask for promotions and raises and keep pushing themselves forward, they remain stagnant in their work positions while men move up. According to American Society, by Erik Olin Wright, only 4.2% of women are CEOs among top fortune 500

Women will never receive as much pay as a man. A woman cannot be hired to do a man’s job. These are so statements that are made by some men who believe women are inferior to the male them. It is a fact that some companies pay demand higher wages than women. This on their action is called the wage gap. Let’s take a closer look by what the definition of wage entails. According to WAGE (Women Are Getting Even), the ways Results in different types of sex discrimination in the workplace. These ladies stated that the wage gap can include discriminating in hiring, promotions, pay, sexual harassment, occupational segregation, bias against mothers in other ways that undervalue women ("Why Is There A Wage Gap?", n.d.). On their webpage, these determine

Inequality has been a dilemma for several years in countless different ways. A persistent problem with disproportion of income between women and men has been lingering within many companies in the United States. It has been said that women earn less money than men in the workplace for many different reasons. Some of these reasons are that women have not spent enough time in the office to be rewarded with raises and bonuses because they are busy with their home lives and taking care of their children, they, unlike men, have been taught to be timid and unaggressive which ultimately steers them away from requesting higher pay, or they do not meet the qualifications to receive promotions (Hymowitz, 2008). This essay is in response to On