Women ask for pay raises as often as men, they just don’t get them: study

If a woman asks for a pay raise at work, it’s pretty likely she won’t get one, suggests a controversial new study.

In fact, researchers at the Cass Business School in London, the University of Warwick in the U.K. and the University of Wisconsin, found that women who ask for an increase in their salary are 25 per cent less likely than their male colleagues to actually receive one.

The result, the study suggests, is evidence “women do ask but do not get.” (Which is contrary to previous research that suggests women don’t push for equal pay.)

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“We didn’t know how the numbers would come out,” says Andrew Oswald, co-author of the study and professor of economics and behavioural science at the University of Warwick, in a statement. “I think we have to accept that there is some element of pure discrimination against women.”

The study looked at a random sample of 4,600 workers across more than 800 employers in Australia and used data from the 2013-2014 Australian Workplace Relations Survey, which details queries made regarding pay negotiation.

3:25 Wage gap continues to separate men from women

The reason for choosing Australia for their study, Oswald says, is due to the fact that it’s the only country in the world to collect systemic information on whether or not employees have asked for raises.

When researchers compared the men and women, they found men were able to obtain a pay increase 20 per cent of the time while women were only 16 percent successful.

There was, however, a silver lining researchers found when they broke down the data by age.

Younger women under the age of 40 were able to successfully negotiate higher pay just as often as young men.

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“Young women today are negotiating their pay and conditions more successfully than older females,” says Amanda Goodall, co-author and associate professor at Cass Business School in a statement,” and perhaps that will continue as they become more senior.”

According to the World Economic Forum 2014 Global Gender Gap Report, there is no country on Earth where women make the same money as men for the same work.

The Canadian Women’s Foundation reports that both full-time and part-time women workers in Canada earn about 67 cents for every dollar earned by men. Between 10 to 15 per cent of the wage gap in Canada, the foundation says, is attributed to gender-based wage discrimination.

The foundation has gone on to offer some suggestions for how Canada can eliminate the gap. They include:

• Helping women enter high-wage jobs
• Helping girls enter careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics
• Address systemic discrimination, particularly in male-dominated fields
• Recognize gender stereotypes that reinforce notions of “appropriate” work for men and women