Last Wednesday, I attended a salary negotiation workshop. It is a program that is made possible by AAUW and was presented by my supervisor in the Career Center. The workshop was intended for female students, especially those who plan to have an internship or enter the workforce. There were 30 available spots for attendees, and the final count came out to three students (including myself) and one university employee.
Although my supervisor was running the workshop, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I signed up. I am currently in the process of looking for a job after graduation and figured I could at least find an answer to the "What are your salary requirements" question on applications by attending. I learned that as well as a few other things…
First, let’s get familiar with the numbers:
- In the United States, women make just 75% compared to white males
- If you are a black woman, that number drops to 63%
- For Hispanic or Latina women, the number drops to 54%
There are plenty of arguments to why this could be. I myself used to think that it was simply because women tend to go for jobs that paid less than men. I learned there were a lot of things that contribute to the wage gap, some we can help, and some we can’t. Some of the reasons we talked about in our workshop were that less women apply for certain jobs, there is an assumption that women will need to take leave within a few years of accepting a position for either a wedding or pregnancy and women are more passive than men in interviews.
We learned that the main reason women are paid less than their male counterparts is because women negotiate less than men. 55% of women are apprehensive about negotiating compared to only 39% of men. This led into the workshop and salary negotiation training.
We began by making a budget for ourselves that allowed us to assign a monetary amount to every expense I could imagine having and then some. We then learned how to use that budget to help identify a target salary and benefits package for ourselves. From there, we were shown how to research the jobs we were pursuing in the cities we wished to live in order to see what the average pay would be and whether we would be able to achieve our target salary.
Finally, we used all of that information to help lead us into the main lesson of the workshop: the negotiation. I never realized that negotiation was so important in the job search process. Negotiation begins after you have been offered a position and where the conversation goes is ultimately up to you. I learned that it is more advantageous if you can respond to a number that the employer gives you rather than having to present one yourself first. We were taught different strategies to deflect questions about salary, respond to job/salary offers, and persuasive responses if the employer doesn't respond the way you would like. All in all, it is a very long process, one that will take a lot of practice and one that I most definitely cannot teach in one simple article.
So why is it important to know about/work on closing the wage gap? For one, there are more women providing for their families than in the past, and with rising costs, it is necessary for them to be making an appropriate salary. Also, fair and equitable salaries help women to pay off student loans quicker and save for retirement which, in turn, leads to greater economic security within the US.
If given the opportunity, attend a salary negotiation workshop at your school, or talk to your career center for more information. You can also visit the link to AAUW’s website (link above) in order to find more information about what the wage gap is and what you can do to help.
