What do you believe explains the gender pay gap?
With a 17 per cent pay gap nationally, increasing to 20 per cent if you are from a minority background and 45 per cent if you live and work in London (Fawcett Report) – three key things:
1. Straightforward discrimination, consciously or unconsciously. 40% of the issue is simply this, which explains why we are still talking about it in 2010.
2. Most work done by women is in traditional roles such as education, and cleaning, caring and retail which get paid less. Male traditional roles tend to be better paid.
3. The UK have some of the longest working hours in the world, as long as women continue to lead with childcare they will never have the same number of hours to dedicate/compete with their male counterparts within work. Women still work just as long hours; they just often have a personal (childcare) as well as a professional role to share these hours between.
These all then lead to the big issue around the majority of big roles being male, driving the real pay gap. Women often don’t have a qualification at management level for top positions, five times less likely than their male counterparts. This might be because they tend to grow into these roles from the bottom, often via a vocational route as well as not having enough time for additional study because of childcare commitments.
How important are women’s negotiation skills, or lack of, in securing equal pay, promotion and perks?
Really important! It’s always going to be tough unless they do something about equal pay legislation right at the top in Government. Women need to take some responsibility themselves however, value what they do more and stand up and articulate that to their pay masters. Women just don’t ask the question, especially within the current climate if you don’t ask you don’t get.
In addition, when women work part time they often negotiate their salary rate down. Part time should not mean less pay or less value, flexibility should not come at a cheaper price. Often this becomes a desperation point, because women feel torn apart by the stress of balancing motherhood and their job.
Do you think that women need to take more responsibility for getting ahead, and be more proactive?
Absolutely, male or female, if you want a career and you feel you have value to add; you need to let somebody know where you are going and when you want to get there. Doing a great job alone, does not often get rewarded unless reward has been asked for.
Looking back to your time as an employee, how would you rate your own pay negotiation skills?
Not until recent years have I realised that I could do this a lot better.
Did you have any negotiation disasters or struggles? Did you learn anything over time about the art of negotiation? Did you take any advice from a mentor, or colleague? If so what was it?
The first real example of getting this right was when I did all the research and preparation guided by a mentor, the surprising outcome was that the answer was yes straight away when I had prepared for a long debate to prove my worth!
When pulling together your business case for more pay, you have to put it into the language of the business and show what you are doing is effecting their bottom line and help to meet the business objectives. This was made clear to me by my mentor/ supporter within the business who was more senior (and happened to be male); one gap he identified was a management qualification, which I studied over five years in the evening. I also found an external coach to gain a wider perspective in a more relaxed and open environment, giving me the ability to really share my thinking in a more open and frank way.
Do you believe that you were paid the same as your male equivalents?
I don’t have a male equivalent in my current organization. In past roles, I know I wasn’t.
As a manager in that environment, how did you perceive the negotiation skills of women compared to men? Any examples?
everywoman have thousands of members and work with hundreds of senior women every year, it is a rare women that doesn’t suffer form a lack of confidence in this area.
Why do you believe that women are generally more reluctant than men to go after, and secure, salary increases and promotions? Any anecdotes you can share?
1. Women have to make decisions and balance their lives; men just don’t have to do this to the same degree. Therefore inevitably with women something gives either family, work, salary level or sadly even health.
2. Because of career gaps for childcare, these skills are often not kept up to date, so when women re-enter the career market they enter way below their potential.
3. It always goes back to confidence, which is exactly one of the key objectives that we look to enhance within the everywoman training program.
Do you believe women are handicapped in pay negotiations by our upbringings, expectations of appropriate female behaviours, embarrassment and so on?
Not being able to talk confidently and assertively about your worth and what value you add to your company. A male will look at a job description and identify the few things they can do and think they should apply, a women will identify all the things she isn’t able to do and not.
Women are held back, which is about conditioning and the whole nature v. nurture debate. Women are also handicapped about other people’s perceptions about what women should and shouldn’t do, and sadly that’s not only men that do this.
An example of this is a woman leaving her career to bring a family up can be viewed as un-ambitious, a women coming back quickly after have a baby can be seen as irresponsible.
What traits have you seen in men that we could do well to copy to get better salaries?
The total reverse of women’s weaknesses. Men tend to set there sights on where they want to go and network above their current position to get there, seeking advice, support and mentorship to succeed. everywoman’s network of 38,000 women on and offline is about supporting and growing women’s ability to network to help them compete effectively.
What do you believe women actually lose by failing to negotiate?
In middle management women will earn a quarter of a million less than their male counterparts on average in their working life, this figure increases the bigger the gap is. But they are also just simply wasting their potential, doing jobs way below their ability and then losing out on opportunities because of this.
What is the secret of strong, confident, well paid women when it comes to securing the best possible pay package?
Knowing what you want, where you want to go and how you are going to get there. At everywoman we provide women leaders with these skills through our training programme as well as networking opportunities, helping our members develop and hon the ability to demonstrate real business value as well how to confidently articulate this message.
It sounds ridiculous, but how can a woman tell if she is a bad negotiator?
She might be frustrated about what she is doing and what she is getting paid, and she probably doesn’t feel a successful negotiator. Negotiation is about creating a dialogue and some level of bartering, if you come out of a meeting having had not done this, you probably are not a successful negotiator.
At everywoman we would always suggest you hone those skills and do something about it. These are covered in our leadership skills course; these skills are not only about working out how to get paid more but also how to get more out of your staff, and supporting your business better.
What do you believe that bosses want to see from an employee when they ask for a pay rise or promotion? And what, if anything, means guaranteed failure?
What they want to see is someone who has done there homework, demonstrating clear results, a really good case that is much more than “I think”.
Unless you have a really good case for discrimination, telling someone that you should get paid more because someone else is is simply not going to be productive, as you never know what is behind them having a higher wage.
It needs to be all about the business case delivered in an assertive and confident way, walking out of that room clearly having demonstrated your worth to the business.
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