How to ask for the raise you deserve

While many may be aware of the concept of the wage gap, what may not be clear is just how big the gap actually is. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that in 2022, women’s annual earnings were 83% of men’s. The gap is even wider for women of color. Black women are paid approximately 72 cents for every dollar paid to white men.

Asking for a raise is one way that women can address the wage gap. And although this isn’t the only way to combat the wage gap, it can be an important step in the process.

How do we encourage women to ask for more money? It’s important to first ask: What is holding women back?

Assertiveness, and how to overcome the backlash

In an article, Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation raises the issue of the backlash some new female employees might feel. It states: “In particular, the degree to which incoming employees feel comfortable assertively negotiating their starting salary may depend on their gender. When women negotiate for higher salaries, they must behave contrary to deeply ingrained societal gender roles of women as passive, helpful and accommodating. As a result, their requests often face a backlash: relative to men who ask for more, women are penalized financially, are considered less hirable and less likable and are less likely to be promoted.”

Inherently, if a woman feels that her superiors or co-workers will think ill of her for asking for what she wants, she is less likely to be successful in her negotiations.

But the narrative that women don’t negotiate as often as men do is increasingly being challenged by new research.

Impostor Syndrome? Nope. Women want to get paid.

Impostor syndrome, or doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud at work, is a diagnosis often given to women. But the fact that it’s considered a diagnosis in the first place is problematic.

Impostor syndrome is a complicated diagnosis because although it can seem like a relief for a person to pinpoint the feeling of unworthiness which creeps up at work, the label often puts the problem on the individual woman, not society as a whole. It becomes a personal problem (I’m just not confident enough) rather than a societal problem (This is a shared experience we all need to address).

Some women may have a tendency to compare upwards, which is great when its motivating or aspirational, but it can become hard to recognize that it’s a specific view. In reality, many are probably doing better than they give themselves credit for.

A greater understanding of the path forward for salary negotiation

If women want to negotiate for more money, the narrative of subtle meekness as an attractive quality needs to be reshaped. While this is a sociologically learned behavior that might feel unnatural to go against, doing so can help assert women in a better position for salary negotiations.

In addition to shaking off the constraints of the impostor syndrome label, it can be helpful to research the topic of salary negotiation. Rather than approach a negotiation like a contest or a battle, it can help to think about common goals and interests. Practicing this and not just role-playing an ask for a higher salary can help build comfort and strength. While there are some best practices, there are no perfect, foolproof ways to negotiate and it’s only through practice that you’ll find what works best for you.

Understanding why women are held back from asking for more money at work is only the first step toward actually ensuring that they start asking for raises, not to mention whether they are successful at actually receiving raises. But understanding what holds women back from asking for more money is crucial to the process of addressing the issue at large.

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