For women, asking for raise is damned if you do and if you don’t

http://www.today.com/money/women-asking-raise-damned-if-you-do-if-you-dont-2D11658374

Allison Linn
Nov. 27, 2013

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Contrary to conventional wisdom, researchers say it can hurt women to ask for more money. That’s because when women do request either a raise or a higher starting salary they are more likely than men to be perceived as greedy, demanding or just not very nice.

“To do that requires being assertive, taking initiative, probably taking out your list of accomplishments and thereby self-promoting,” said Laura Kray, a professor of leadership at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “It turns out people don’t like it when women do this.”

Kray said both male and female supervisors can have these negative feelings about women when they ask for more money. And that can hold back women’s careers — either because they don’t get as much money, or because they do but they endure the repercussions of not being very well-liked.

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In her leadership classes, Kray said the most gratifying feedback she gets is that her class made a student rethink his or her response to a woman in those types of negotiations.

“They say, ‘You know what, since then I really think a little bit differently about those knee-jerk reactions I have and I ask myself, ‘Would I be responding the same way if (this) were a man?’” she said.