Smash that glass ceiling!

How can women land pay packets on a par with men?

November 15, 2014 04:42 pm | Updated November 16, 2014 08:17 am IST

Women need to fight for their rights.

Women need to fight for their rights.

It took Kamolika Peres almost a year, at an overseas posting, to discover she was being paid less than similarly qualified colleagues. “Women don’t do as much hanging around the coffee machine,” says the 42-year-old, now Vice President, Consulting and System Integration, Ericsson India. Peres was then working with another global IT company she would prefer not to name. When she found out she was being paid less, it took her some courage to take her concerns to her boss, and from there to Human Resources, to have the ‘compensation conversation’. The company was receptive, all ended well, and the imbalance was ‘to a large extent’ rectified. “It’s kind of comforting to believe your performance will be recognised. But just like markets are supposed — in theory — to be perfect but are not, so also there are often discrepancies in individual effort and rewards,” she says.

Discrepancies in salaries between men and women do exist, varying only in degrees. Worldwide, women earn less than men for the same job, says Catalyst Incorporated, an international research firm. Inequality starts early: Just one year out of college, college-educated women working full-time earned $35,296, compared to $42,918 for college-educated men working full-time. Women MBAs are paid, on average, $4,600 less in their first job than men MBAs, says Catalyst. A difference of approximately $5,000 at the starting level ends up becoming half a million dollars by the time the woman is 60, say Linda C. Babcock and Sara Laschever, authors of Women Don’t Ask .

“Women don’t play hardball in interviews when it comes to salary. A man would say outright ‘I expect (for instance) a 33 per cent rise’, but women are diffident. ‘I’m ok’ or ‘Whatever your company standards are’ is their response,” says Ankush Agarwal, founder of Mint RPO, a Mumbai-based recruitment firm specialising in technology recruitment for global positions. These differences can start early, at entry level jobs. Even where starting salaries offered to graduates or post-graduates are identical; there are candidates who would negotiate better deals and bonuses, especially for high pressure sales jobs that come with a lot of travel. “Women especially in technology often shun these jobs. Even as far as travel goes, they prefer jobs with well-planned travel, rather than having the ability to jump on a plane whenever,” says Agarwal, who says the perception of the jobs women do can sometimes be skewed.

“For management, it is a blind spot. They don’t think they are being unfair, he is on a sales team, getting orders, and she is on account management. What the woman needs to do is to make her case, which is that account management is paying the bills, and that the value of the account has grown x per cent. Nobody can argue with hard core data, people can argue with perceptions,” says Agarwal.

There are many factors that skew salaries and compensation against women. Women shift jobs less than men, says Radhika Gopalkrishnan, partner at Aon Hewitt Associates, a global management consulting firm. So they miss out on the larger salary jumps that happen, most often, when you come into a job from outside. Besides they tend to compromise constantly, coming back after a sabbatical with hesitancy, almost grateful that they got their jobs back. “Research has shown again and again that women are bad at networking and bad at asking,” she says.

So, why don’t women ask for higher pay? “It is because asking is perceived as being aggressive in a culture where women are lauded for being ‘nice’ women, instead ask them ‘Should I come across as being aggressive?’” asks Professor Ruchi Sinha, Assistant Professor of Business, Organisational Behaviour at Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, who also teaches a course on negotiation. “Women are great negotiators when it comes to representational negotiation; that is when they are negotiating for someone else. They have the ability to be empathetic and nicer than men who can be more aggressive, and are extremely successful in negotiating on someone else’s behalf.” says Sinha, who teaches women they can indeed negotiate for themselves.

The first step to negotiating is recognising women’s natural disinclination to negotiate for themselves, says Sinha. When asked what the negotiation experience was like men have likened negotiation to playing a ball game or a wrestling match, whereas women have compared it to going to the dentist. “Women feel a lower sense of entitlement than men. They don’t feel they deserve so much. They also struggle with the pressure to be ‘nice’, both externally and internally. They are apprehensive of being perceived as aggressive. They fear the backlash — from both men and women — that invariably occurs when a women gets too assertive. Internally, women don’t want to look bad in their own eyes by being overly aggressive and asking for more pay.”

“Don’t bother much with salary hikes, concentrate instead on work,” said many women friends and colleagues in a Facebook chat that Peres was part of. “It’s working without worrying about results in a (Bhagvad) Gita kind of way,” says Peres, voicing the ‘ karma ’ theory that gave Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella so much bad press when he referred to it recently in response to a question on how women should ask for more pay.

“You can ask for money in multiple ways,” says Sinha, who feels women should leverage their distinctive strengths of being polite and empathetic, and be assertive, but not aggressive. They should use good negotiation tactics like anchoring the discussion, by naming a figure, and being prepared to provide a justification for that figure. “Never agree to a salary in one sitting. If you say ‘yes’ immediately, you don’t get a chance to evaluate, to ask around through common contacts,” says Agarwal.

Asking for a raise can’t be a feeble exercise either. “An emotional outcry for a raise is not well received,” says Peres. Her advice: “If you are a great performer and you are not on a par with your peers (compensation wise) you should present your case objectively, and with data.”

At the end of the day, it’s all very well to be nice but what is considered competent, especially in an environment that is extremely masculinised, is not niceness, says Sinha, who declares, “Nice women don’t get noticed.”

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