Women Don't Ask

by Linda Babcock

  Virginia Valian agrees with this analysis: “Because parents see infre-

  quent tasks as ones that call for payment, they are not likely to pay a

  daughter, for example, for washing the dishes, but they will pay a son

  for washing the family car.”17 Valian believes that this “gendered” ap-

  proach to chore assignments teaches children not only that there is a

  difference between “men’s work” and “women’s work,” but also that the

  appropriate rewards are different for each. “Children have reason to

  think that boys labor for payment, while girls labor ‘for love,’ ” she

  writes.18

  As a result of this early training, many women struggle when they

  must assign a value to their work. Lory, a 30-year-old theater produc-

  tion manager, said, “I have a hard time putting a monetary figure on

  the work that I do.” Although she manages three productions (in three

  cities) of a long-running hit show and works punishing hours, including

  most nights and weekends, she “feels weird” asking for more money

  because she thinks she should be working for “the love of the theater.”

  Emma, the social science researcher, said that at the beginning of her

  career she didn’t have many reference points to help her evaluate her

  work, and she actually worried that she was making more money than

  she should. “I genuinely thought that I was overpaid. And I also thought

  that I was working on social service issues, where there’s this sense of

  ‘How can I be making all this money when I’m working on issues related

  to improving services for low-income people? It’s not really fair or ap-

  propriate.’ ” If women believe that doing important work—work that

  they care about and even love—means that they can’t place a value on

  their time and contribution, or that their time and contribution there-

  fore have a lower value, it’s no wonder that they have trouble gauging

  what their work is worth.

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  Having been trained to think that they should work “for love” rather

  than money also makes gratitude, strangely enough, another limiting

  factor for women. Grateful to be paid at all, many women accept what

  they are offered without negotiating. Angela feels that she made only a

  half-hearted attempt to negotiate a higher salary for her current position

  in part because “I was glad to get this job. . . . I really, really wanted the job and I knew I was going to take it no matter what.” Emma described

  a similar experience in which gratitude held her back from asking for

  more than she was offered:

  I talked to people in Personnel, and they said, “Well, this is the high

  end of the salary range, and this is all we can do.” And so I just

  accepted that. And then after my son was born, my costs were so

  high for child care and other things that I went to the person responsi-

  ble for administration and said, “I have to have a substantial increase.”

  And I got it. And I realized after that that I could have really negoti-

  ated for much more. I could have negotiated for fewer hours; I could

  have negotiated for a signing bonus; there were a lot of things I could

  have negotiated for, but I didn’t. Because I accepted, “Oh, I want to

  tie in with the range. I should feel lucky I have this job.”

  Barbara, 59, a human resources consultant, told us about being hired

  by a consulting firm to create and head a whole new division. Brought

  in at what the company called “Level 2,” she quickly realized that as a

  division head she should have been at “Level 1.” But there were practi-

  cally no women at Level 1 in the company, and, she said, “at the time

  I was kind of grateful,” so she didn’t fight it.

  We’re not saying, of course, that any of these women should have

  pushed so hard for more that they jeopardized jobs that they obviously

  wanted and liked. We’re simply saying that an exaggerated sense of

  gratitude should not have prevented them from gathering information

  about what was fair and available—and using that information to get

  more of what they needed or deserved.

  Sometimes, women feel grateful simply for being paid enough to live

  well. Louise, the power company executive, explained that she never

  pushes too hard for higher compensation, even though she knows she

  is paid significantly less than her peers. “I think it is this whole thing

  about feeling like I have a lot and . . . I’m pretty grateful for what I

  have,” she said. This highlights another reason women have trouble

  estimating what their work is worth: Rather than thinking about their

  value in the marketplace, they instead focus more narrowly on what

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  they need. This may be because until quite recently women in western

  culture worked at jobs outside the home only if they “needed” to—if

  their spouses weren’t bringing in enough to support the family, or if

  they had no other source of income because they were orphaned, un-

  married, divorced, or widowed. Even now, when a woman is divorced,

  many judges determine her financial settlement from her husband

  based on what the judge decides she “needs”—not based on any objec-

  tive evaluation of her contribution toward the accumulated assets in the

  marriage.19 As a result, women have learned to think of their incomes

  in terms of what they need rather than in terms of what their work is

  worth. As Angela explained, another reason she didn’t negotiate for a

  higher salary at her current job was that “It would have been difficult

  for me to even make the case that it was an issue of what I needed.”

  Wrong Comparisons

  Even when women do collect information about the market value of

  their work, they often make the mistake of comparing themselves to

  the wrong people. Research has shown that people typically compare

  themselves to others whom they consider to be similar, meaning that

  men are more likely to compare themselves to other men and women

  to other women.20 As a result, rather than looking at everyone per-

  forming a comparable job who has comparable training, experience,

  and skill, male or female, women tend to compare themselves only to

  other women21—women who are still paid 76 cents to every man’s

  dollar.22 Women therefore compare themselves only to people who are

  likely to be underpaid—and men compare themselves to people who

  are typically paid more. In addition, since professional networks

  tend to be gender-segregated, as we describe later in the book, women

  often have fewer opportunities to compare themselves to men because

  they know fewer men and have less access to information about what

  men earn.

  Eleanor, 34, a literature professor and biographer, has been reluctant

  to push for more pay and better “perks” (such as a larger office and

  adequate funding for her research) because compared with her female

  peers of the same age, she has “way more.” “The people who have more

  than I do are not my peers,” she said. “They’re people who are more

  se
nior than I am.” A committed teacher with a high professional profile

  and an excellent reputation, Eleanor had already written two highly

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  regarded books that were published by a prestigious publisher and won

  several important prizes. She confidently declared to Sara that she was

  far more valuable to her department and to her university than many

  more senior people who were better paid and enjoyed more perks. But

  when it came to concrete rewards for her contributions, she didn’t com-

  pare herself to them; she compared herself to her female friends from

  graduate school, few of whom had been as successful as she.

  Angela, the community development bank marketing director, told

  us how, in the early years of her career as a lobbyist, she worried that

  she was “getting away with something” or fooling her employers be-

  cause she was making such a good salary. Eventually, she traced her

  concern to a misplaced comparison. “I was comparing myself to my

  peers age-wise. But when I began to compare myself to my peers profes-

  sionally, what other lobbyists were making, and even though I was very

  junior, I was a lobbyist and I was out there, you know, spending the

  same time and energy. I thought, ‘yeah, I deserve this.’ ”

  Once she learned this lesson, she was able to go to her boss and say,

  “Hey, I’m a bargain to you right now.” He agreed, and immediately gave

  her a raise to keep from losing her. The critical change, for Angela, came

  when she began “spending more time professionally with my peers ver-

  sus my personal buddies.” She didn’t compare herself to lobbyists who

  had 25 more years of experience than she had, but she compared herself

  to other lobbyists of both sexes with experience comparable to hers.

  This is a lesson from which many women can learn: In order to judge

  their worth more accurately and develop a well-founded idea of what

  the market will pay them, women need to learn how to make the right

  comparisons by seeking out information about their professional peers

  of both sexes.

  Unsure of What They Deserve

  Women may also expect less and feel satisfied with less because they’re

  not sure that they deserve more. Liliane, the electrical engineer, de-

  scribed feeling as though she didn’t deserve to be interviewed for an

  engineering job despite her impressive college record. This lack of self-

  confidence made her so thrilled when she was offered a job, she didn’t

  care what she was paid—and didn’t negotiate her starting salary. Later

  on in her career, despite notable success, she is still struggling with this

  issue of what she deserves. Although she feels well compensated in

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  many ways for her work, she hasn’t negotiated for a higher title that she

  wants and that more accurately describes her role. When asked why,

  she explains that other people might deserve the title more, although

  she also admits that many less talented and productive people have

  already been awarded the higher title. Liliane is struggling with what

  social scientists call a low sense of personal entitlement—a problem

  that research has shown to be rampant among women.

  Before deciding to negotiate for more than you’ve got, then, you don’t

  just need to feel dissatisfied. You also need to feel sure that you deserve

  the change you want. Here, too, women struggle with a powerful disad-

  vantage—a disadvantage that they often manage by waiting to be of-

  fered what they want rather than asking for it directly. When we inter-

  viewed Lory, the production stage manager, she told us that for the past

  several months she’d worked hundreds of hours of overtime and was

  waiting for her bosses to notice. She wanted them to recognize her

  dedication and reward her. Having them acknowledge her work with-

  out her needing to ask would make her feel good, she said, and asking

  for the recognition was not going to feel nearly as good—even if she

  got it.

  Being given a reward (a raise, a promotion, access to an opportunity,

  even just praise and thanks) without asking not only spares a woman

  the discomfort of announcing her belief that she deserves that reward,

  it can also relieve her uncertainty about whether in fact she does deserve

  it. Julianne, the graphic designer, said that her approach when she

  wants something is to “work harder so it will be clear I deserve it. I tend

  not to ask. Because it’s a little more rewarding . . . because what that

  means is that the people who are giving it to me think I deserve it.”

  This testimony is particularly telling because neither Lory nor Julianne

  is particularly shy or lacking in self-confidence. Nonetheless, both of

  them felt that being rewarded for their hard work without having to

  ask would confirm the value of their contribution and boost their self-

  esteem.

  These examples highlight the importance of external factors to a

  woman’s sense of entitlement. Although all of us feel better when we

  receive praise and approval, extensive research has shown that the aver-

  age woman’s feelings of self-worth tend to fluctuate in response to feed-

  back—whether positive or negative—more than the average man’s.23

  One study found that women’s positive feelings about their abilities and

  their work performance increased significantly in response to positive

  feedback and plummeted dramatically in response to negative feedback.

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  In comparison, men’s feelings about the quality of their work changed

  very little in response to either type of feedback.24 Being rewarded for

  their accomplishments (as opposed to asking for recognition) may not

  only increase a woman’s pride about her work, it can also enhance her

  sense of entitlement. Many women wait to be rewarded for their efforts,

  in other words, because they don’t know whether they deserve some-

  thing unless someone else tells them that they do.

  In one of the first studies on entitlement, the psychologists Charlene

  Callahan-Levy and Lawrence Messe recruited students to write a series

  of opinions about campus-related issues. Half of the students were in-

  structed to decide how much money to pay themselves and half were

  instructed to decide how much to pay someone else for the work. The

  researchers found that women paid themselves much less than men

  paid themselves—19 percent less. Furthermore, women paid others,

  including other women, more than they paid themselves. The research-

  ers found no gender differences in the students’ evaluations of how well

  they had performed the task, meaning that women were not paying

  themselves less because they believed their work was inferior to the

  work of men or other women. They simply lost their ability to accu-

  rately evaluate what the work was worth when they were the ones per-

  forming the task.25

  In a study by the social psychologists Brenda Major, Dean McFarlin,

  and Diana Gagnon that followed up this research, men and women

&n
bsp; were asked to evaluate the application materials of incoming freshmen

  and predict their college success. They were then told to pay themselves

  what they felt was fair for their labor. Although the researchers expected

  gender differences, the disparity they uncovered was dramatic: Men

  paid themselves 63 percent more on average than women paid themselves for the same task. Once again, the researchers asked the subjects how

  well they had performed the task and found no gender differences in

  their performance evaluations.26

  In another study, Major, McFarlin, and Gagnon gave male and female

  research subjects four dollars to perform a “visual perception task” in

  which they counted the number of dots in a sequence of pictures. They

  instructed the subjects to keep working until they had “earned” their

  four dollars. They found that women worked 22 percent longer than

  men and counted 32 percent more pictures of dots. This result occurred

  even though privacy was maximized—the students were not being ob-

  served by the experimenter and were instructed to put identification

  numbers, not names, on their materials. But even though women

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  worked longer and faster, the men and women were equally satisfied

  with their pay and did not differ in terms of how they evaluated their

  performance.27 The results of these three studies suggest that women

  can correctly evaluate and set expectations for others—their low sense

  of entitlement is reserved for themselves.

  A few examples illustrate how women struggle with this issue of what

  they deserve. Susannah, the political strategist, said that pursuing some-

  thing she wants makes her uncomfortable because “I don’t always feel

  that I deserve it.” She said she often doesn’t ask for things “because I

  get nervous about asking or I don’t think I deserve it so I sort of talk

  myself down from going toward it.” Lisa, 46, the receptionist-manager

  of an animal hospital, said that as a child, “my training—what is really

  engrained in me—is that you’re never quite deserving of what you

  might want.”

  When we asked men how they feel about what they deserve, we got

  very different answers. Brian, 32, an intensive-care nurse, gave an an-

  swer that suggested that he thought this was a strange question, with