Tag Archives: Women Don’t Ask
Women Don’t Make More Because They Still Don’t Ask – And Then, When They Do, They Are Penalized For It
Women don’t ask. They don’t ask for raises and promotions and better job opportunities. They don’t ask for recognition for the good work they do. They don’t ask for more help at home. In other words, women are much less likely than men to use negotiation to get what they want.
Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide
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This really is an amazingly difficult unfairness. I presented the excellent book, Women Don’t Ask, back at the February, 2004 First Friday Book Synopsis. My colleague Karl Krayer presented their next book, Ask For it, at the May, 2009 First Friday Book Synopsis. The authors, Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, have been pounding away at this simple truth: women don’t make as much as men because they don’t ask for it.
And now, after championing this one simple truth, they have made another discovery: women who do ask for it are penalized for asking – because it is not a “feminine trait” to aggressively ask. So, not only do women have to start asking for more money, they have to learn to ask like a woman should ask.
Al of this was part of an excellent segment yesterday on All Things Considered. (Read the transcript, and listen to the segment, here).
Linda Babcock
Here are some key excerpts:
In the face of a persistent gender pay gap, researchers and women’s advocates are focusing on one little-discussed part of the problem: Women simply don’t ask for more money.
“I tell my graduate students that by not negotiating their job at the beginning of their career, they’re leaving anywhere between $1 million and $1.5 million on the table in lost earnings over their lifetime,” Linda Babcock says.
And so – just ask – right? Not so fast:
Babcock showed people videos of men and women asking for a raise, following the exact same script. People liked the man’s style and said, ‘Yes, pay him more.’ But the woman?
“People found that to be way too aggressive,” Babcock says. “She was successful in getting the money, but people did not like her. They thought she was too demanding. And this can have real consequences for a woman’s career.”
To be clear, both men and women thought this way.
Women can justify the request by saying their team leader, for example, thought they should ask for a raise. Or they can convince the boss their negotiating skills are good for the company. The trick, Babcock says, is to conform to a feminine stereotype: appear friendly, warm and concerned for others above yourself.
“I gotta say, that was very depressing!” she says with a laugh.
Here’s the challenge. If you are a woman, learn to ask for more (more money; more opportunities; more accounts; more of everything); then ask; but, ask while conforming to a feminine stereotype.
As I said – this is an amazingly difficult unfairness.
Women Still Don’t Ask
“FINALLY! I hear we’re all living in a women’s world now.” So begins the Joanne Lippman article “The Mismeasure of Woman.” On the most e-mailed list at the New York Times for three days, this article states simply that all of the progress made by women may not be as much as people had thought. I encourage you to click on the link and read the article. Here are a couple of excerpts:
For the first time, women make up half the work force. The Shriver Report, out just last week, found that mothers are the major breadwinners in 40 percent of families. We have a female speaker of the House and a female secretary of state. Thirty-two women have served as governors. Thirty-eight have served as senators. Four out of eight Ivy League presidents are women.
Women do have a different culture from men. And that can give us some tremendous advantages. Women are built to withstand hardship and pain. (Anyone who has given birth knows what I’m talking about.) That’s a big benefit at a time like this, with the unemployment rate at 9.8 percent and rising.
Women define success differently; for some it may be a career, for others the ability to stay home with children. They also define themselves differently. I’m in the unfortunate position of witnessing many friends and colleagues laid off over the past year. But the women are less apt to fall apart — and this goes even for the primary breadwinners — because they are less likely to define themselves by their job in the first place.
But evidence is mounting that women have not found the flexibility and advancement that they had hoped for within the corporate world. More and more have to carve out their own entrepreneurially driven companies to really get what they want.
But one specific that really struck me in the article was this:
We can begin by telling girls to have confidence in themselves, to not always feel the need to be the passive “good girl.” In my time as an editor, 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.
Women Still Don't Ask
It is proof of the contention in the terrific book by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Here’s a quote from the book:
Women don’t ask. They don’t ask for raises and promotions and better job opportunities. They don’t ask for recognition for the good work they do. They don’t ask for more help at home. In other words, women are much less likely than men to use negotiation to get what they want.
I think the question is very much still an ongoing one – what do women need in the workplace? But this I think I know – as they figure it out, they need to learn to actually ask for what they want and need.
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To purchase my synopsis of Women Don’t Ask, with audio + handout), and to purchase the synopsis of their follow up book, Ask For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want, presented by my colleague Karl Krayer, go to our companion web site 15minutebusinessbooks.com.
Be bold – ask for what you want!
Cheryl offers: Our business, like so many others, has enjoyed the affects of the economy. You know I use the word “enjoyed” with a smile here. We recently decided to sit back and look at our business activity to see what we noticed. It was pretty apparent. We weren’t asking for enough business. Now this is embarrassing to admit, since we both spent a fair amount of our careers in sales. It occurs to me how easily it is to slip into what I might call “complacency habits”. A good economy helps you do that. We also reminded ourselves of the research in the book, “Women Don’t Ask” by Sarah Laschever and Linda Babcock. “Wanting things for oneself (like business deals if you are an entrepreneur) and doing whatever may be necessary to get those things-such as asking for them-often clashes with the social expectation that a woman will devote her attention to the needs of others and pay less attention to her own.” As a result of this well spent time in contemplation, we began to proactively ASK different questions. Amazingly, business is emerging from conversations almost every day. Thank goodness. Now I wonder, “What else have I become complacent about that the new economy might help me remember?”
Sara adds: Could be questions…could be courage. When I read what Cheryl offered, I thought of Richard Carson’s, “Taming Your Gremlins.” Carson helps explain the voice in my head. You know the one, the one that says, “You should be happy with what you have” or “Don’t ask for too much, you probably aren’t worth it.” For me, it that voice that what keeps me from asking for the business and following up aggressively. Carson explains, “Your gremlin is the narrator in your head…he uses some of your past experiences to hypnotize you into forming and living your life in accordance with self-limiting and sometimes frightening generalizations about you.” No wonder Carson calls it a gremlin! But there’s hope! The first step in stilling the voice is in becoming AWARE that it’s just a voice. Then bring in the courage. The voice would hold us back. Courage puts the voice in the background and action in the foreground. Wondering how to make that happen? Join us next week – we’ll talk about overcoming our own status quo!
Do What You Love — and the… Influence will Follow
It’s been years since I read the terrific book by Gail Evans, Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman: (What Men know About Success that Women Need to Learn). But this week, I presented my synopsis of this book at the first Take Your Brian To Lunch program. (Congratulations to our blogging team members, Cheryl Jensen and Sara Smith, for their success in the launch of this event, focused on issues of women in business).
As I took a fresh look at this book, something hit me in a new way. We all know the adage, “do what you love, and the money will follow.” (By the way, I’m not really sure I have ever entirely believed this. After all, I love eating Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla, but I have not figured out a way to get rich doing so…) But some quotes from Evans’ book really got me to thinking. Here are the quotes:
The ultimate winner in the game of business is not necessarily the person with the most power or the most money or the most fame. Rather, it’s the person who loves his or her work. Loving what you do is self-empowering.
If you can’t keep finding ways to maintain your enthusiasm for your job, you’re going to get flat.
Gail Evans is certainly concerned with financial rewards for women. But the book is about that, and so much more. It is about standing, her place in the (corporate) world, her influence. And it hit me. If you don’t love what you do, the people around you will know that, and then you have no credibilty (what Aristotle called ethos). You cannot be a thought leader, a pace setter, if you have no passion for your work. You have to love what you do to have such passion — to develop, and maintain, ethos. To actually have a position and reputation of influence, you have to matter (in a business sense, not just a personal sense) to those around you. And this means to matter to those around you, in the sense that your leadership, your ideas, your thoughts, your very presence, matters.
So — if you think that you do not have enough influence, maybe you are in the wrong arena. Because if you truly love what you do, there’s a pretty good chance that influence will follow.
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• You can order the synopses of my original presentation of Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, and also of the book Women Don’t Ask, which I also presented at the Take Your Brain to Lunch event, at our companion web site, 15 Minute Business Books.
In a “Mancession,” Women in Business Keep Climbing up the Ladder
Tomorrow, the Creative Communication Network is sponsoring an event with two of our blogging partners, Cheryl Jensen and Sara Smith (CandS Knowledge Company). We are calling it: Take Your Brain to Lunch. I will present synopses of two books that are both important and useful for women in business: Women Don’t Ask and Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman: What Men Know about Success that Women Need to Learn. (I presented both of these in earlier years of the First Friday Book Synopsis). Sara and Cheryl, and a team of women, will lead facilitated discussions at the tables after each of the two presentations.
The timing could not be better. The latest figures show that the number of women currently working is nearly exactly even with the number of men. The gap has been shrinking for years, and now, in this “mancession,” it is just about erased entirely.
Earlier this year, we learned that among college graduates, women now outnumber the men in undergraduate and graduate and professional degrees awarded. In other words, in every major educational category, more women than men are earning degrees. (Check out this article for some of the details).
I first read about the “mancession” on the Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan’s blog), which linked to this enlightening post by Catherine Rampell. Here’s an excerpt:
We’ve pointed out before that the recession has disproportionately hurt men, who are more likely to work in cyclically sensitive industries like manufacturing and construction. Women, on the other hand, are overrepresented in more downturn-resistant sectors like education and health care.
Casey B. Mulligan noted, for example, that for the first time in American history women are coming close to representing the majority of the national work force. It would of course be a bittersweet milestone, given that it comes primarily as a result of men’s layoffs.
The article has additional graphs which illustrate the toll the recession is taking on male workers.
Even without the recession, the number of women receiving college and graduate degrees, and then rising up the ladder in the work force, is increasing every year. So, it is certainly time to pay attention to the insight, the wisdom, the literature focused on women and business issues.
I’m glad to participate in a group giving attention to the ever increasing reality of women in business.
Is Business Becoming a Woman’s World?
Here is a simple fact that we can all agree on — women have not always had an easy path moving up in a man’s world. I remember the time that I was a guest for lunch in the Los Angeles Club (this was a few decades ago). I was told to go up the stairs to the dining room, which I did. The dining room was small, and there were a few couples scattered around. After a few minutes, I asked the host about meeting my party, and he informed me “that would be in the main dining room, up one more slight of stairs.” So up I went, and discovered a huge dining room — filled with nothing but men. Not a woman in sight. Imagine being a woman competing in that climate!
But times, they are a changing. Our audiences at the First Friday Book Synopsis are truly a mix of men and women. (We do have a few other barriers to overcome — we’re not as diverse as we could be). But women, at our event, and in all areas of business, present a clear and growing force.
Recently, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, authors of Womenomics, wrote of this change in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Fixing the Economy? It’s Women’s Work. They wrote:
While the pinstripe crowd fixates on troubled assets, a stalled stimulus and mortgage remedies, it turns out that a more sure-fire financial fix is within our grasp — and has been for years. New research says a healthy dose of estrogen may be the key not only to our fiscal recovery, but also to economic strength worldwide.
And: The numbers make a compelling case. The studies Ernst & Young rounded up show that women can make the difference between economic success and failure in the developing world, between good and bad decision-making in the industrialized world, and between profit and loss in the corporate world. Their conclusion: American companies would do well with more senior women.
Their point is not that women should get a fair shake, a true shot at actual equality (though they should). Their point is something far more profound — things would be better, problems could actually be solved, the future could be brighter if women were allowed to speak their voices at the problem-solving tables of the world.
I have a hunch they are right.
Over the years, we have presented synopses of a number of excellent books at the First Friday Book Synopsis focused on women and business issues: Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman: What Men Know About Success That Women Need to Learn by Gail Evans; Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide and Ask For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want, both by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever; How She Does It: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules of Business Success by Margaret Heffernan; The Mary Kay Way: Timeless Principles from America’s Greatest Woman Entrepreneur by Mary Kay Ash, among others. With our fellow bloggers Cheryl Jensen and Sare Smith, I will speak at our first (hopefully) of many events focused on women and business. (Read about the August 12 event here).
This I know. Trying to solve problems, trying to succeed in business with men only is wrong, foolish, and under-resourced. The future may not belong to women alone , but it certainly belongs to women and men equally, and together.
(Yes, we will be presenting a synopsis of Womenomics this fall at the First Friday Book Synopsis).
{To purchase our synopses of the books mentioneed above, and many other business books, with handout + audio, go to our 15 Minute Business Book site}.
