The following article by Kaitlin Menza was posted on the Mic.com website July 11, 2018:
When discussing the wage gap, it’s tempting to try to explain away the dramatic discrepancy. Some common theories: It’s because women take lower-paying jobs. It’s because all women are nurses or teachers (or something). It’s because women don’t negotiate well. It’s because women don’t ask for more money.
None of these are particularly good arguments against the wage gap, but we now have further proof that the last point simply isn’t true. New research published in May in the journal Industrial Relations found that actually, women do ask for raises at the same rate as men. They just aren’t granted the raises as often as men are.
Examining a dataset of 4,600 people in 800 workplaces from a nationwide workplace survey in Australia, researchers found that when they petition for a raise, men obtain it 20% of the time, while women only get it 15% of the time. Much discussion has been dedicated to why women don’t ask, or the words they usewhen they ask — the seminal 2003 book on the subject is literally called Women Don’t Ask. To understand how that theory has finally been toppled, Mic spoke to two of the researchers, Amanda Goodall, a senior lecturer at the Cass Business School at University of London, and Benjamin Artz, an associate professor at the Oshkosh College of Business at University of Wisconsin. Here are some takeaways.