Asking for a pay rise or promotion does not mean getting — at least if you are a woman
Some people believe that one of the reasons why there is a gender pay gap (currently 15 per cent in Australia), is because women have a lower propensity than men to “ask” for pay raises and promotions. They think that women may be reluctant to “ask,” because they might be viewed by their manager as being pushy for a female.
So these people believe that the way to close the gender pay gap is by “fixing” women.
But as recently released research shows, it’s not women who need fixing.
The research I am referring to, is detailed in the report “Do Women Ask?”. This was published in the “Industrial Relations, A Journal of Economy and Society” journal on 9 May 2018. The research was undertaken by three academics, Benjamin Artz, Amanda Goodall and Andrew J. Oswald.
These three researchers used data from the Australian Workplace Relations Survey (AWRS) for the 2013-2014 year. The AWRS surveyed 4,582 Australian employees across 840 employers. This included a series of questions specifically about two kinds of “asking” questions:
- Asking for promotion; and,
- Asking for pay rises while in the current job.
The researchers analysed the answers to these questions, and here is what they found:
- Women ask for a pay rise and / or a promotion, just as often as men. This holds across different age groups, in both large and small companies, and holds for women with and without advanced levels of education.
- Just as many women as men do not ask for a pay rise or promotion because of concern for their relationships in the workplace.
Australian women don’t need “fixing” to close the Gender Pay Gap
These results, using Australian data, confirm the view that Australian women don’t need “fixing” to be more assertive in asking for a pay rise or a promotion.
But another part of the same research, clearly shows that gender pay gap is caused by other factors, currently outside the control of women.
The research revealed that, for every 100 women who asked for a pay rise, 15 were successful. But out of 100 men who asked for a pay rise, 20 were successful.
So Australian men had a 33 per cent higher chance of getting a pay rise then women. No wonder we still have a gender pay gap in Australia!
A conclusion you could draw from this is that women’s requests for pay rises and promotions are treated differently from men’s requests. Or as the researchers say, “Asking does not mean getting — at least if you are a female”.
So if we want to start to close the gender pay gap, the focus needs to shift from trying to “fix” women. Instead, one area we do need to fix is why Australian men are 33 percent more likely to get a pay rise than women.
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Do you and your family a favour and start taking steps so you can improve the health of Your Wealth and get off the treadmill of working till you drop.
Wayne Wanders
The Wealth Navigator
wayne@thewealthnavigator.com.au
