Don’t ask for a raise. Keeping quiet will give you “superpowers” that will translate into employer trust and other “good karma” that will eventually come back to your purse.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was widely derided Thursday for his foot-in-mouth statement at an event celebrating women in computing. He later apologized.
Men are eight times more likely than women to negotiate salary when taking a job, according to a study by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever for their 2007 book “Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation and Positive Strategies for Change.”
So how’s that good karma working out?
• On average, women in the U.S. working full time were paid 78 cents for every dollar that men earned in 2013, according to Census figures.
• Women in the computer technology industry earn an average of $6,358 a year less than men, factoring in education, age, region and occupation differences. That’s according to a recent study by the nonprofit American Institute for Economic Research.
• Female engineering majors earn about 88 percent of their male counterparts’ salaries. Female computer and information sciences majors earn 77 percent, says a study of 15,000 grads by the American Association of University Women.
• Most of the technology companies that have revealed diversity figures this year say women comprise less than one-third of their workforce. Women make up 29 percent of Microsoft employees.
• Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg continues to publicly champion women in the workplace, but women make up only 31 percent of Facebook workers and only 15 percent of those women work in tech.
• Thirty percent of people who work at Google Inc. are women, but when it comes to leadership positions, the number drops to 21 percent.
