McKinsey’s 2023 Women in the Workplace Report was recently released and a high-level finding was that women continue to be just as ambitious as men at every level of the career pipeline. It reports that 96% of women say their career is important to them and 81% are interested in being promoted to the next level. This complements findings from a recent study by Berkeley Haas professor Laura Kray and Vanderbilt University’s Jessica Kennedy that shatters the outdated myth that women don’t ask for more money. The study found that professional women now report negotiating their salaries more often than men.
The clear conclusion is that women lacking ambition at work is a myth. But why do these outdated ideas persist?
Kray’s paper outlines several common assumptions when it comes to pay requests, such as men are typically less risk averse, women have lower salary expectations, women compete less and have more humility, and women don’t ask as often.
But Kray makes an even stronger point. “Well, no one has looked at the data,” she says. “And as early as 2003 with the book Women Don’t Ask and further reiterated by Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, these lagged views are being perpetuated going forward.” But according to Kray’s research, the trend of women not asking for more started to reverse back in the 90s. Yet the myth persists that women don’t ask for raises as often as men so therefore they do not get them.
If women are asking for more money as often as men, why is there still a pay gap? Are the requests being turned down more often? “We do see that women are asking more and getting turned down more than men,” Kray confirms. When asked why they are being turned down more often, Kray cannot pinpoint an exact reason, but she can bust another myth — that women are poor negotiators. “Well, I can tell you what I don’t think, which is that they are not asking in the right way. We’ve looked at MBA students enrolled in negotiation class, and after each negotiation where they rate their partner, we find that women are getting rated more positively.”
Women will walk without career and pay advancement
If companies don’t work — and work fast — to remedy the lack of advancement opportunities, top female talent will walk. McKinsey’s 2022 Women in the Workplace was titled “The Great Breakup” and they found this phenomenon continues to hold true in the 2023 report. The Great Breakup describes women leaders leaving companies at higher rates than male leaders at the director level — which is the group next in line for senior leadership positions.
The connection between being turned down and turnover makes sense to Kray and is an area she agrees would be interesting and useful to research. “Women are the largest immigrant group in many organizations, as these workplaces were designed for and designed by men. And if you realize you can’t make it up someone else’s hierarchy, and you’re not getting the promotion you’re asking for and you’re not getting the raise, then you’re going to leave.”
Setting women up for success
McKinsey’s report claims that “flexibility is an unlock for ambitious women’s career aspirations” and notes that women are now far more likely to feel set up for success in remote working.
Alexis Krivkovich, Senior Partner at McKinsey and co-author of the report, agrees that flexible working is a benefit for women, but says that comes with an important caveat. “Women are still more likely than men to work remotely at least sometimes. While that results in fewer microaggressions and better work-life balance, we know that it can also result in creating two different populations of employees —those that come together and those that are remote. Based on the research, men appear to disproportionately benefit from onsite work. For example, 32% of men who work on-site say getting useful feedback is a primary advantage of being in the office, compared to 23% of women who work on-site.”
Businesses must continue to encourage women to ask for what they want
McKinsey’s report states that nearly a third of women don’t speak up or share an opinion so they don’t seem difficult compared to about a fifth of men overall.
“[Not speaking up] can be traced back to cultural messaging on being a good girl and not imposing on others,” says Kray. “Women are much more vulnerable to backlash if they are too assertive and if they do speak up too much, so we’ve been trained either not to do it and/or not have the confidence that it’s going to work out in our favor.”
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