I came across this great article called “Why Women Don’t Negotiate” on Forbes and let me say I can totally relate. When it comes to negotiating as far as money, I find it rather hard to do. I recently started working for a company and when it came to negotiating my salary I felt really stuck. I felt as if I couldn’t ask for more because I was scared I wasn’t going to get the job.
Right now I can kick myself for not stepping out and asking for more. I believe other aspects played a role in why I didn’t ask for more, one being I was negotiating with a man. I honestly think if it had been a woman I was negotiating with, I would have spoken up. The Forbes article states three points I agree with …
“… Women suffer economically because we fail to ask, but we’re punished for our nerve when we do ask. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t, right?”
“Not only has our culture instilled in women a disinclination to be self-serving, when we do work up the nerve to ask, we’re likely to experience “gender blow-back”—a subtle but powerful punishment for stepping outside our cultural gender role.”
“What we need to do is learn to powerfully ask for our true market value. We can do that by starting the conversation with offers of benefits rather than requests.”
I know next time around I will be speaking up. Do you negotiate?
