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How to Ask for Money
10/16/2006
by Jeaneen Zappa, owner of Zappa Consulting, a strategic and tactical marketing firm in Pittsburgh, PA
What’s the difference between a $70,000 and a $75,000 starting salary? Answer: $381,000. According to author and economist Linda Babcock, Ph.D., keynote speaker at the 2006 Pittsburgh Athena Awards, that’s how much a woman who declines to negotiate the $5,000 increase in her starting salary would leave on the table over a 30-year career.
“The younger the age at which you start negotiating, the bigger the financial impact,” said Babcock, whose 2003 book, “Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide,” was named by Fortune Magazine to its list of the “75 smartest business books of all time.”
A 22-year-old who negotiates her salary up from $25,000 to $30,000 gains a $784,192 lifetime increase. A 30-year-old who negotiates $111,000 instead of $100,000 gains $1.5 million. That’s a lot of extra money in your pocket – or pocketbook.
But according to Babcock, director of the Ph.D. program in the Department of Economics at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), women don’t ask. “Men,” she said, “are two to four times more likely than women in a wide variety of settings to initiate negotiations.”
Why We’re Different
Babcock pointed to several reasons why women don’t negotiate as much as men, including the way we’re socialized. “From the day we’re born, boys and girls are treated differently. Boys get the message that it’s okay to go out and actively seek what they want, while girls wait until what they want is offered to them. As a result, women view negotiating as scary, while men see it as fun.”
Another factor, Babcock said, is the double-standard of acceptable behavior for men and women. “When men are assertive on their own behalf, they’re described as go-getters. When women are assertive, we have another set of words that are not very nice.”
What You Can Do
To help level the playing field between men and women, Babcock recently started PROGRESS, the Program for Research and Outreach on Gender Equity in Society. The center will teach negotiation skills to girls and, soon, to women, through a program called Catapult.
The good news, Babcock reported, is that you can change behavior. After Babcock began coaching her female students to negotiate, nearly 69% initiated salary negotiations, up from 12.5% when she started her research. Male students’ scores have increased, too, from 51.5% to 65%.
Babcock’s advice to everyone? “Be conscious of how resources are allocated. Because we know that men are more likely than women to ask for what they want, be careful not to inadvertently discriminate when you’re distributing bonuses, promotions and plum assignments.”
In addition, she said, become more accepting of assertive women. “Ask yourself, ‘How would I behave if this were a man?’”
(article provided by www.we-do.net)
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