Diversity Woman Magazine

FALL 2012

Leadership and Executive Development for women of all races, cultures and backgrounds

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We Mean Business Negotiating Salary > Te response, she says, was quick. Te cap was lifted and Parsons received a $15,000 raise. "Te worst they could say is no," says the 35-year-old Parsons, who credits her law school background and upbringing as an immigrant from Jamaica for having the chutzpah to make the request. "I'd rather ask and see what could happen in- stead of wondering, 'What if?'" If only all salary negotiations had happy Accelerate endings as Parsons's did. Unfortunately that's not the case. Female MBA graduates, on aver- age, are paid $4,600 less in their first job than men, according to a 2010 report by Catalyst, a nonprofit with a focus on women and business. On top of that, it found that men's salary growth after graduation outpaced women's— whether or not women had children. What's going on? Te basic premise is M By Ellen Lee ad doesn't even be- gin to describe how Keesha Parsons felt when she found out that she had been passed up for a raise three years ago. "I was so upset I was seeing stars," says Parsons, an administrator of trademarks and patents at a Manhattan law firm. www.diversitywoman.com Told that she had hit a salary cap, Par- sons spent two weeks building her case: She updated her résumé, researched how much others in New York with the same responsibilities and education were earn- ing, and outlined the new clients she had landed and the additional work she was doing. Ten she packaged the informa- tion, along with a suggested range for her new salary, and asked her boss to pitch the firm's decision makers on her behalf. that women just don't ask. An oft-cited Carnegie Mellon study found that only 7 percent of female MBA graduates had attempted to negotiate their start- ing salary, compared with 57 percent of their male counterparts. In the Catalyst report, male MBA graduates were more likely than their female classmates to counter their first post-MBA offer by ask- ing for a higher salary. Te repercussion is that women start the career ladder at a lower salary rung, making it all the more difficult to catch up and close the gap as they advance. But there's more to the disparity than that. Women face a series of land mines when they do want to ask, such as pre- sumptions about how men and women should behave in the workplace. Men are rewarded for being hard charging and re- fusing to take no for an answer. Women, on the other hand, are expected to be collaborative, nurturing, and less de- manding. In a joint study, researchers at Harvard and Carnegie Mellon found that Fall 2012 DIVERSITY WOMAN 33 THINKSTOCKPHOTOS How Much Are You Worth? Simple strategies for geting top dolar

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