Bastiges

[urstwile]

No more excuses (http://www.msmagazine.com/fall2006/nomoreexcuses.asp)

[morea]

God, I hate salary negotiations.

This is so wrong.
<sigh>

[Red Kittie Kat]

Equality is a very slippery slope .... I doubt we will every get to the point where everyone will be on a level playing field.

[frankster]

I've been burned too many times by past employers to trust future ones to pay me what I'm worth. I discovered at one job that I was being paid a third of what a male employee doing the same job was and I was taking on his "awkward" clients after he had insulted them to the point where they wanted thier money back! Pay in this company was supposed to be confidential and there was a clause in our contract that stated that discussing pay would result in us being fired, so, you guessed it, another job I quit.

[urstwile]

Equality is a very slippery slope .... I doubt we will every get to the point where everyone will be on a level playing field.
I really hope you're wrong, Kat.

[urstwile]

I've been burned too many times by past employers to trust future ones to pay me what I'm worth. I discovered at one job that I was being paid a third of what a male employee doing the same job was and I was taking on his "awkward" clients after he had insulted them to the point where they wanted thier money back! Pay in this company was supposed to be confidential and there was a clause in our contract that stated that discussing pay would result in us being fired, so, you guessed it, another job I quit.
Dang, Frank, you've had some horrific jobs.

What trips me out about this article is that women are expected not to negotiate their salaries at the risk of seeming aggressive, but also are seemingly not able to look for recourse because they didn't negotiate their salaries! That's just crazy talk!

[budafist]

The economist also has shown that negotiating can sometimes hurt a female job candidate. In research she copublished last year, she found that female candidates who ask for higher salaries before receiving a formal job offer are often not hired at all. Not surprisingly, males who negotiate do not face similar negative consequences.

I feel like that. I've never negotiated in my life. :( I guess when I was looking for a job, I just wanted any design job. I definately felt that if I negotiated that I might lose the chance to get it. Sad huh?

[morea]

very sad.

[Navian]

I asked an employer about that once, just out of curiousity, they told me that they pay women less, because of one thing: getting pregnant. But, once you are out for medical leave for having a baby, for a 3-6 months (which is required by some state laws, not sure about everywhere else), your production drops to 0%, you cost the company (whom still pays you i think 1/2 your wage) money being on medical leave. I dont want to sound like an ass.. but you have to think the mindset of an employer, and them making money or profits for the company.

[budafist]

Well not all women get pregnant and if that's not a sexist policy I don't know what is.

In New Zealand any parent - regardless of gender can get parental leave.

[urstwile]

Employers have used any number of excuses as to why not to hire women (back in the old days more so than now), or to hire them at a much cheaper rate than men. The pregnancy thing is just one among many gambits they use. And as Buda already said, a) not all women who are in the work force get pregnant and b) being out of the workforce for 3 months at the expense of the company is not equivalent to years and years of being paid less than the men working around you. Unless a woman's droppin' a baby every nine months in rapid succession, that argument simply doesn't make any sense.

I don't feel like doing the math, but it's not just a bottom line thing, it's just another excuse to pay us less.

[Samakimoto Graphics]

[QUOTE=urstwile]Employers have used any number of excuses as to why not to hire women (back in the old days more so than now), or to hire them at a much cheaper rate than men. The pregnancy thing is just one among many gambits they use. And as Buda already said, a) not all women who are in the work force get pregnant and b) being out of the workforce for 3 months at the expense of the company is not equivalent to years and years of being paid less than the men working around you. Unless a woman's droppin' a baby every nine months in rapid succession, that argument simply doesn't make any sense.QUOTE]

;)

[LeftBrain Artist]

What about the 43% of men who don't negotiate their salary, who's playing a violin for me, err, them?

OK, so, if 7% of women who negotiate their salary

"Babcock concluded that women are essentially trained not to (negotiate) and penalized by employers when they do. Rigid gender-based stereotypes and behavioral norms urge women to behave modestly and wait to be given what they deserve rather than negotiate for it."

Umm, what percentage of the 7% were penalized for their aggressive behavior? They don't say, do they? In light of witholding that particularly useful piece of information, their conclusions seem to be based on opinion and conjecture rather than concrete evidence. The argument in this article are presented as point A (a few numbers that mean nothing by themselves), and point B (the conclusions), but any attempt to connect the two in a logical manner is absent, or obfuscated by opinion and conjecture.

While I agree that women by and large are unfairly compensated when it comes to wages, and I also agree that women are discouraged from negotiating salaries, I would have liked to have seen the article connect those conclusions to the facts in a more logical manner. We all know the world is full of A-holes, and we know that most of them are men.

If we're going to ask courts to make sure women are treated fairly, isn't it logical to assume that those 43% of non-negotiating men should be treated fairly as well? Or, because society supposedly trains them to be aggressive and dominant, and rewards them for such behavior, should we consider the other half of men to be failures and incompetent, and so do not deserve to be treated fairly at all?

[urstwile]

LBA, I'd venture to say that more comprehensive statistics are available in the book the article was excerpting from. It'd certainly be an interesting read. I think maybe I'll save that for a day I feel I need to be pissed off about something more than I already am. ;)

[budafist]

I've been having one of those pissed off days too Urst...I need to go home real soon and drink something...It's 4.30pm exactly, so only half an hour to go...