Study Says Women Are Speaking Up When It Comes to Pay Raises

Study Says Women Are Speaking Up When It Comes to Pay Raises Women are told time and time again to lean in and ask for what they want (and deserve) mora often like pay raises. But asking for a raise isnt an easy feat, particularlyfor women who run the risk of coming across too aggressive. A wealth of research suggests that society expectswomen to behave conciliatory, and that there are social penalties for breakingsuch gender molds. Company cultures tend to reward and promote men over women for the same aggressive behaviors, which keeps many women fromnegotiating effectively or at all.Wagenegotiation is, in and of itself, an inherently aggressive move, and our conceptions of female power and what women are and arent allowed to do directly impacts our ability to ask for the money we deserve.Linda Babcock of Carnegie Mellon University explained to NPR back in 2011 that theres a snowball effect Women are less likely to ask for raises because ofperceptions of aggression, and, instead, t ypically wait to be offered raises. Because of that,womenare slower to grow professionally and are slower to achieve higher pay. Plus,researchers from the Kennedy School alsofound that there is sometimes a social cost forasking for a pay rise some women found that being perceived as aggressive made people less likely to socialize with them, network or collaborate, which could also affect their future prospects of a pay raise.But then in 2016, a study came out that said women do, in fact,ask for raises as often as men buttheyre 25 percent less likely to get them. This study suggested that we shouldnt place the blame on women for leid asking, but rather place the blame on companies for not rewarding women. But while the study found that men and women both asked for raises when it was made clear that pay was negotiable, 48 percent of the men surveyed thought their salary was negotiable, while only 32 percent of women did.So if women werent explicitly told that they could indeed ask fo r mora money, they tended to assume that a raise wasnt in the cards. That studysupportsa finding from 2012, in whichresearchersfound that, while women are often eager to negotiate for mora pay, theyre much less likely to do so if there isnt an explicit statement in the job description that payment is negotiable.Well, now even more research says that women do indeed ask for pay raises, and many of them areplanning todo just that or leavetheir jobs to earn more money elsewhere. According to a poll by globaljob siteIndeed, over 67 percent of women respondents are planning to ask for a pay rise this appraisal cycle as they are not happy with their current level of remuneration. Thatsin comparison to just 64 percent of men.The survey was conducted by UK-based consultancy Censuswide on behalf of Indeed among 2,005 employees from companies across sectors including IT, telecom, education,manufacturingand utilities,financeand health care. A majority of the participants were in the age group of 25 to 44 years old and in full-time jobs.About 93 percent of the respondents will possibly or definitely ask for a pay raise in the coming appraisal cycle for 2018, with women more likely to ask for a raise than men, the site reported, partially because more women than men are dissatisfied with their current pay. More than half of the respondents said they had asked for a payraise in the previous year, too, while a third said they had done so more than once during the same period of time, only to be refused due to a lack of budgets or, for close to a third, quality of work.But women wont just be asking for more money this year. Theyre also going to be considering career moves that may include changing jobs in order to secure more money.About 80 percent of the respondents 25 to 34 years old agreed that they would consider changing their jobs in order to securea raise.Some states are making moves to ensure that women are paid fairly for their work, but theres still a lot of catchi ng up to do.Washington, for example, recently passed new legislation that creates additional pay equity requirements for Washington employers. Signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee on March 21, the law will update and expand the states Equal Pay Act (EPA) for the first time since it was enacted in 1943. Vermont alsojust introduced and passed legislation that bans employers from asking applicants what they currently earn, or request salary and benefits history, as part of an employment application. AndGov.Phil Murphy of New Jersey justrecently signed the Diane B. Allen Equal Pay Act, too.As more companies change their policiesto meet thechanging state laws or just to blaze trails its to be expected that evermore women will be speaking up regardless ofwhether or not theyre explicitly told its OK to ask.--AnnaMarie Houlis is a multimedia journalist and an adventure aficionado with a keen cultural curiosity and an affinity for solotravel. Shes an editor by day and a travel blogger at Her Report.org by night.