For years the grind process to break the glass ceiling has pushed women to assert themselves, to speak up and to ‘lean in’, using the “women don’t ask” hypothesis as the main contributing factor as to why the gender pay gap is still so wide. But new research says to stop putting the responsibility of their own oppression on women and look at real patterns of systemic bias when it comes to discrimination and pay gap for women in the workforce. 

Women’s reluctance to negotiate their salaries may have been a key reason for the pay gap a few generations ago, but it is no longer the case; with research showing that, “Women negotiate more than men, but get told no more often”.

The "women don't ask" line of thinking suggests that women are less likely to initiate salary negotiations and, if they do, are less assertive, ultimately leading to lower compensation compared with their male counterparts.

The research study included reports of negotiation patterns in working professionals, MBA students, and alumni from a prestigious U.S. business school. The results revealed that women were negotiating their salaries, often more frequently than men. In earlier studies men exhibited a higher negotiation propensity compared to women, this gap has closed and reversed in more recent times. Both men and women are now more likely to engage in salary negotiations.

How the “women don’t ask” myth does more harm than just impact women’s position in the workplace

It explains the gender pay gap in terms of women’s behaviour rather than pre-existing work culture biases.

• Perpetuates gender stereotypes: not just in the realm of negotiations and pay patterns but also in other workplace interactions that implicitly discriminate against women. For example, the idea that women are not assertive and are viewed as the office pushovers to do more work (usually work that is viewed as domestic and/or admin) that isn’t part of their official job descriptions. 
• Scapegoat for flawed systems: putting the blame of the pay gap on women justifies flawed systems and allows institutions to continue underpaying a demographic of their work force without the implementation of official policies for pay parity. 
• Allows things to stay the same: the myth is a convenient mindset to stand behind for those in power (mostly men) to maintain the status quo that will continue to benefit (or at least not affect) them.

Harvard economic historian Claudia Goldin who won the 2023 Nobel Economics Prize for her work exposing the causes of deeply rooted wage and labour market inequality between men and women has said that, “women throughout history have often been "hidden from view and uncompensated" for doing the same labour that men were paid for”.

Goldin's work revealed that while there has been progress in narrowing the gap over past decades, there is little evidence of it fully closing any time soon.

Women still face significant pay discrepancies when compared to men despite it being illegal across much of the world for employers to discriminate based on gender. In 2022, women in the US earned on average 82% of what men earned, according to Pew Research Center. In 2021. women in Europe earned 13% on average less per hour than men, according to European Commission data.  According to a World Economic Forum report, India ranks a low 108th out of 153 countries in terms of gender pay gap, with women earning just 71% of what men earn. In 2023, according to a report by the International Labour Organization, the gender pay gap in India stands at 27%; meaning on average, women in India earn 73% of what men earn for doing the same job. This gap is even wider in certain industries, such as the technology sector, where women earn just 60% of what men earn.

In India, the COVID-19 lockdowns immediately impacted women, with 37.1% losing jobs (compared to 27.7% for men) between April 2020 and April 2021, as per data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. Women’s post-pandemic employment has been slower to recover with the increased load of unpaid household work and domestic labour hindering opportunities for women to re-enter the workforce. 

The situation for working women in India begs to question that while women have always had the propensity to know what they are worth and ask for pay that reflects it, there is more than just the apparent “ask gap” at play when it comes to pay disparity and work opportunities. 

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References

Inc | Reuters | Women's Web | Deccan Herald 

Kray, L., Kennedy, J., & Lee, M. (2023, August 15). Now, women do ask: A call to update beliefs about the gender pay gap. Academy of Management. https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amd.2022.0021