Women Don't Ask Read online

  an obvious answer, “Um, sure,” he said. “I deserve the things I want—

  yeah.” This is a confident answer, while the answers we heard from

  many women tended to be far more tentative about what they deserved.

  Mike, the entrepreneur, responded to this question with what

  amounted to confusion, saying, “Interesting question! . . . The sense

  that I deserve something is not a sense that I carry with me, generally.

  Do I deserve this, or deserve that?” Where women are often preoccupied

  with ascertaining what exactly they deserve, it doesn’t really cross

  Mike’s mind to consider whether he deserves something or not—this

  approach isn’t relevant to his thinking.

  Another study looked at this question of entitlement in a different

  way. Lisa Barron asked MBA students to negotiate for a hypothetical

  job with an actual job recruiter; afterward, she interviewed the students

  about their experience. To explore entitlement issues, she asked

  whether the students thought they were entitled to a salary similar to

  or greater than that offered to other job candidates. Of the subjects who

  thought they belonged in the “entitled to more than others” category,

  70 percent were men and 30 percent were women; of the subjects who

  fit into the “entitled to the same as others” category, 29 percent were

  men and 71 percent were women.28

  Hoping to further illuminate this issue, Linda and her colleagues

  created an entitlement scale to ask men and women directly about their

  sense of entitlement. Using the web survey described in the introduc-

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  tion, they presented people with a series of statements about what they

  thought they might or might not deserve and asked them to rate, on a

  seven-point scale, the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with

  each statement. Not surprisingly, men scored significantly higher on

  this scale than women.29 What was surprising was the extent of the

  disparity: More than half the women respondents and almost twice as

  many women as men turned out to be suffering from a low sense of

  entitlement (52 percent of the women and only 29 percent of the men).

  Only 6 percent of the women displayed extremely high levels of entitle-

  ment, whereas almost twice as many men (11 percent) fell into this

  category. In addition—and this is important, because the younger peo-

  ple we interviewed insisted that this would not be the case—the gender

  differences in entitlement for people in their twenties and early thirties

  were just as large as the gender differences for older people.

  All of these studies, using different approaches, go a long way toward

  explaining why women are less likely than men to ask for more than

  they already have: Women are not sure that they deserve more. As a result, even when women can imagine changes that might increase their productivity at work, their happiness at home, or their overall contentment

  with their lives, their suppressed sense of entitlement creates real barri-

  ers to their asking. Because they’re not dissatisfied with what they have

  and not sure they deserve more, women often settle for less.

  Where’s the Problem?

  But if women are satisfied with the personal and professional rewards

  they receive, where’s the problem? Who are we to decide that people

  shouldn’t be satisfied with what they have? Does it do anyone a service

  to persuade satisfied people to be unsatisfied? We think it does. We’re

  convinced that as a society we are paying a substantial price for leaving

  women undisturbed and unaware of how much they may be missing.

  We wouldn’t be comfortable with a system that consistently paid people

  born on even-numbered days less than it paid people born on odd-

  numbered days—such a suggestion sounds preposterous. But women

  make up half of our society, just as people born on even-numbered

  days do. Why should we tolerate a society in which half our citizens

  are arbitrarily undervalued and underpaid? Fairness as a principle

  doesn’t work if applied only in response to demand; it must be safe-

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  guarded and promoted even when its beneficiaries don’t realize what

  they are missing.

  Let’s start with the social costs. Undervaluing themselves and being

  undervalued by society can be bad for women’s health. The close link

  between a positive “self-perception” and psychological good health is

  well-known.30 More recent research now indicates that the opposite is

  also true. A negative self-evaluation combined with stress can lead to

  depression,31 and two-thirds of all depressed adults are women.32 De-

  pression is not only a problem in itself but can lead to other health

  problems. As reported in the January 20, 2003, issue of Time magazine,

  “Each year in the U.S., an estimated 30,000 people commit suicide,

  with the vast majority of cases attributable to depression.” Time also points out that depression makes “other serious diseases dramatically

  worse,” such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, and osteoporo-

  sis.33 Unfortunate for each individual, depression often represents a real

  cost to society as well—to provide care for the uninsured or underin-

  sured at a time when health-care costs are skyrocketing. (And most

  people are underinsured for mental health care.) Then there’s the ques-

  tion of lost productivity due to depression, which Time estimates “costs the U.S. economy about $50 billion a year.”34

  We’re not claiming, of course, that persuading women to ask for

  what they want more of the time, and convincing society to accept and

  encourage this, will do away with depression and increase production.

  But, as one set of researchers put it: “Because of the potentially serious

  implications of negative self-perceptions for achievement behavior and

  psychological health, more attention should be devoted to discovering

  factors that produce inaccurately negative self-perceptions. A better un-

  derstanding of the causes of negative self-perceptions may enable us to

  prevent or at least alleviate these biases, which presently may hold back

  some females and males from achieving their full potential.”35

  There are other social costs as well from women as a group being

  unequally rewarded for their work. With many types of benefits (such

  as social security, disability insurance, unemployment insurance, and

  pensions) linked to one’s salary, paying women less means apportioning

  inadequate amounts of these “rainy day” guarantees to huge numbers

  of the populace. As a result “American women over sixty-five are more

  than twice as likely to be poor as men of the same age.”36 In addition

  to forcing so many women to struggle at the ends of their lives, leaving

  this situation uncorrected imposes substantial economic costs on soci-

  ety to support all of these indigent female elderly.

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  The phenomenon that Faye Crosby has called “the denial of personal

  disadvantage” also contributes to the social costs we all pay for underes-

  timating the value of
women’s work and time. Since, as Crosby has

  shown, “people typically imagine themselves to be exempt from the

  injustices that they can recognize as affecting their membership or refer-

  ence groups,”37 a woman may see that other women earn lower salaries

  than comparable men and yet believe herself to be exempt from this

  problem. This is unfortunate for several reasons. First, at a personal

  level, because this woman doesn’t recognize the reality of her situation,

  she may take no action to fight it. Second, at a broader societal level,

  people are more likely to push for changes in which they have a per-

  sonal stake—changes from which they themselves will benefit. The

  longer women labor under the misapprehension that they personally

  are doing okay, the longer it will take for the system as a whole to adjust

  this fundamental and counterproductive inequity.38

  There are real market costs as well. As we already reported, in the

  year 2000, women owned 40 percent of all the businesses in the United

  States (a total of 9.1 million female-owned businesses) but received only

  2.3 percent of the available venture capital dollars.39 How to explain

  this? Although there are undoubtedly many contributing causes, Joanna

  Rees Gallanter, a venture capitalist herself, has observed, “Women are

  often not comfortable talking about what they’re worth. They’ll go in

  to pitch a project and naturally put a lower value on it than men do.”40

  You may think—well, that’s too bad, that’s business. Businesses go

  under every day. But sheer scale puts this problem into perspective. If

  40 percent of the businesses in this country may be undercapitalized,

  this puts far more than the long-term survival of a few businesses at

  risk. It puts at risk the employees of those 9.1 million businesses, the

  fiscal health of the communities those businesses serve, and at some

  level the health of our national economy.

  What are some other costs? Just as a person who decides to buy a

  bottle of wine usually assumes that a higher-priced bottle will be of

  better quality than a more inexpensive one, employers tend to assume

  that applicants with better compensation records are more capable than

  those who have been paid less. Because women’s salary histories don’t

  always accurately reflect their true capabilities, employers sometimes

  fail to hire the most talented people for the jobs they need to fill, and

  their companies as well as the female applicants lose out. With this

  happening in every type of business at every level, we as a society are

  inevitably misusing our resources—our human capital. We may also be

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  limiting potential business growth and related gains in productivity (a

  major index of economic health), if more than 50 percent of our citizens

  are not making full use of their talents or being given the opportunity

  to do the best work of which they are capable.

  Finally, businesses suffer when managers don’t know what their em-

  ployees need to do their jobs well. Influential management texts, such

  as The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First, by Jeffrey Pfeffer, stress that being a good manager means keeping your employees

  happy and productive.41 An employee who doesn’t realize that changes

  in her working conditions could improve the quality of her work makes

  her manager’s job that much harder. An employee who doesn’t commu-

  nicate to her boss that her work performance is being undermined by

  financial strain, a conflict with a coworker, or a mismatch between her

  talents and the needs of a particular project prevents her boss from

  managing her most effectively. This is not just theoretical. Many senior

  people we interviewed said that it helps them to know what their people

  want. Rather than frowning on employees who ask for more money,

  new opportunities, or different “perks” and benefits, these managers

  appreciate knowing what they can do to make their employees’ lives

  easier and their work better. The trap of low expectations combined

  with a depressed sense of entitlement doesn’t merely punish women by

  preventing them from recognizing and pursuing changes that might

  improve their situation. It deprives their bosses, colleagues, friends, and

  intimates of valuable information about them. In its worst manifesta-

  tions, it wastes women’s talents and prevents them from realizing their

  full potential.

  As the sociologist Cynthia Fuchs Epstein has written, “it is in the

  nature of human motivation that when people are not appropriately

  rewarded for their efforts and contributions, they cease to aim high.”42

  She also points out that “women, like men, find that when others honor

  their contributions, listen to their ideas, and acknowledge their [work],

  they perform at higher levels.”43

  Managers also don’t want to lose good people because their employ-

  ees don’t ask for what they want and then get lured away by better

  offers. In many cases, departing employees might have saved themselves

  the trouble of changing jobs simply by telling their managers what they

  needed to improve their working conditions and increase their job satis-

  faction. The responsibility goes the other way too. Managers need to

  realize that women are less likely to ask for promotions or raises that

  haven’t been given to them. If managers don’t take steps to correct the

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  resulting wage inequities, they leave their organizations open to lawsuits

  when such discrepancies are discovered. They also risk souring morale

  in their organizations and seeing talented women leave for better-paying

  jobs when they realize that they’ve been treated shabbily. Worker turn-

  over costs businesses millions of dollars every year—and much of it

  could be avoided if managers made a point of finding out what their

  employees want and need, and workers felt free to tell them.

  Here’s an example from Linda’s own experience. Two male col-

  leagues became eligible for promotion at the same time she did. Al-

  though all three of them were equally qualified for promotion, the two

  men were promoted and Linda was not. Linda had an excellent relation-

  ship with her dean and couldn’t understand how he’d failed to recog-

  nize her significant professional accomplishments and her contribu-

  tions to the school. She felt angry and unappreciated, and she thought

  the dean should know how she felt and want to do something about it.

  Linda was lucky because she knew she was unhappy, she could

  clearly identify what she wanted (the promotion), and she felt confident

  that she deserved the promotion she wanted (perhaps because she was

  comparing herself to both male and female colleagues). So she spoke

  to her boss. The colleagues who’d been promoted, it turned out, had

  received offers from other institutions. They’d threatened to leave unless

  they were promoted. The dean wanted to keep them, so he gave them

  what they asked for. Because Linda hadn’t asked to be promoted, the

  dean n
ever even thought of her—she was off his radar. Once she asked,

  he readily agreed to promote her too.

  As Linda left the dean’s office, the words “I’m glad you asked” rang

  in her ears. The dean made it clear that knowing what she wanted was

  useful information: He wanted to take good care of his people and be

  a good manager; Linda was a valuable employee, and asking for what

  she wanted helped him do that.

  Greater Expectations

  Fortunately, women can learn to avoid the trap of low expectations.

  Research has identified situations in which gender differences in entitle-

  ment disappear—situations that help us think about ways in which

  women can overcome their tendency to underestimate what they de-

  serve. In the 1984 study mentioned earlier in which people were asked

  to review application folders and predict the success of incoming college

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  freshman (the study in which men paid themselves 63 percent more

  on average than women did), the researchers, Major, McFarlin, and

  Gagnon, also ran a variant condition that produced interesting results.

  In this condition, they left a bogus list at the students’ desks that listed

  what earlier participants in the study had paid themselves. This list

  contained eight names (four male and four female) along with the

  amount each subject had paid him- or herself. The average amounts

  male and female subjects had paid themselves were about the same. In

  this condition, they found, male and female subjects paid themselves

  about the same amount, which corresponded to the average of this list.

  The researchers also ran two other conditions. One used a bogus list in

  which the men paid themselves more on average than the women and

  the other used a list in which the women paid themselves more than

  the men. Both of these conditions produced no gender differences in

  what men and women paid themselves.44 A similar study published

  eight years later (in 1992) by Brenda Major and another colleague,

  Wayne Bylsma, reached the same conclusion—gender differences dis-

  appear when men and women receive the same information about the

  “going rates” for given jobs.45

  These studies tell us that in unambiguous situations that provide

  women with appropriate comparison information, knowledge of what