For decades, women have been told they don’t ask for what they’re worth. Lean in. Speak up. Negotiate harder. The message has been clear: the gender pay gap exists because women simply don’t advocate for themselves at the salary negotiation table.
Except there’s one problem with this narrative: it’s not true anymore. New research from UC Berkeley, Harvard, and Vanderbilt reveals that women are now negotiating their salaries more often than men—and they’re still earning less.
Let that sink in. Women are doing exactly what they’ve been told to do for twenty years, and the pay gap hasn’t budged.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
In a 2024 study surveying 990 MBA graduates from a top U.S. business school, researchers found that 54% of women negotiated their first post-MBA salary compared to just 44% of men. In a follow-up survey of nearly 2,000 business school alumni, 64% of women reported negotiating for promotions or higher compensation versus 59% of men.
The trend is unmistakable. While historical data from 1982 to 2015 shows men negotiated more in earlier decades, the gender difference in negotiation rates declined around 1994 and completely reversed by 2007.
Women heard the message. They started asking. They kept asking.
And yet? Women who negotiated still earned 22% less than men.
So What’s Actually Happening?
If women are negotiating at equal or higher rates than men, why does the pay gap persist? The research points to three critical factors:
1. Women Get Rejected More
Women reported being turned down for raises and promotions at higher rates than men, even when they asked. It’s not that women aren’t asking—it’s that when they do ask, they’re more likely to hear “no.”
This isn’t speculation. It’s measurable. Women negotiate. They get rejected. The gap widens.
2. The Backlash Effect
Here’s where it gets particularly insidious. Research from Harvard Business School found that when women negotiate assertively—especially women with outside offers or positions of power—the likelihood of negotiations ending in an impasse nearly triples, regardless of whether they’re negotiating with men or women.
Women face a catch-22: if they’re not assertive enough, they don’t get their desired outcome, but if they are assertive, they risk backlash. And this backlash intensifies as women gain more power in organizations.
The system is literally designed to punish women for the same negotiation tactics that work for men.
3. The Anchor Problem
When women enter negotiations, the initial offer they receive is often lower than what’s offered to men—the so-called anchor that sets the range for the entire negotiation. Even when women negotiate successfully, they’re negotiating within a lower range from the start.
Over years and across promotions, these incremental disadvantages compound. That’s how you end up with women earning 85% of what men earn on average in 2024, despite negotiating more.
The Real Problem: It’s Not the Women
Vanderbilt Professor Jessica Kennedy, who led one of the studies, put it bluntly: “It’s time for employers to take a clear look at how they pay people. Let’s be sure we fix the system and get over the idea of fixing the women. The women don’t need fixing.”
This is the critical insight. For twenty years, we’ve been teaching women negotiation tactics, communication strategies, and assertiveness training. Women have done the work. Both men and women are negotiating more than they used to, and the increase has been greater for women than for men.
The problem isn’t women’s negotiation skills. The problem is a system that systematically devalues women’s labor and penalizes them for behaviors that are rewarded in men.
What Actually Drives the Pay Gap
If negotiation propensity isn’t the issue, what is?
Hannah Riley Bowles from Harvard Kennedy School explains: “Economic studies show that the gender wage gap is explained more by differences in men’s and women’s career trajectories than by how men and women are paid for the same work. We will make faster progress toward closing the gender wage gap by getting more women into high-paying jobs than by negotiating a little more money in lower-paid occupations.”
The gap exists because:
Women are systematically excluded from high-paying roles, particularly in leadership positions. Women face structural barriers to advancement that no amount of individual negotiation can overcome.
Occupational segregation persists. Women remain concentrated in lower-paying industries and roles, not because they choose them freely, but because of social norms, workplace discrimination, and systemic barriers that begin long before salary negotiations.
The motherhood penalty is real. Women’s career trajectories are disrupted by caregiving responsibilities in ways that men’s rarely are, and employers penalize women for these disruptions while rewarding fathers with a “fatherhood wage premium.”
Bias is baked into the system. From initial salary offers to performance evaluations to promotion decisions, bias shows up at every stage. Research shows that when negotiation counterparts hold biases—even unconsciously—about women earning less, those biases influence the entire negotiation structure and outcomes.
The Dangerous Myth Persists
Despite this research, the narrative that “women don’t ask” refuses to die.
Research found that most people still believe men negotiate 64% of the time while women only negotiate 47% of the time. These beliefs are outdated, but they have real consequences.
When people believe women’s lower negotiation rates contribute to the pay gap, they’re less likely to support legislation aimed at reducing systemic bias. They’re more likely to blame individual women for not advocating hard enough and less likely to recognize that the system itself needs fixing.
Even well-intentioned advice can reinforce harmful stereotypes. One study found that after reading passages from books aimed at getting women to negotiate, people were more likely to endorse gender stereotypes than those who read gender-neutral negotiation content.
What Women Should Actually Do
Does this mean women shouldn’t negotiate? Absolutely not.
The research confirms that people who ask for higher pay are more likely to get it than those who don’t. Negotiation still matters. But we need to stop pretending individual negotiation is the solution to a systemic problem.
Here’s what actually helps:
Research salary ranges obsessively. When women have access to information about salary ranges and market rates, they rely less on gendered behavioral expectations and more on objective data. Use sites like Levels.fyi, Glassdoor, and industry salary guides. Talk to your network. Know your worth before you walk into that room.
Reference external data, not just your value. Frame your negotiation around market rates and comparable positions rather than just your contributions. This provides cover against the backlash effect.
Recognize when you’re hitting a ceiling, not a skill gap. If you’ve negotiated multiple times and consistently been turned down or given minimal increases, that’s not a you problem. That’s a signal that this organization may not value you appropriately.
Consider strategic job changes. The data is clear: most people who significantly advance their careers do so by leaving, not by waiting for internal promotions. Sometimes the fastest way to close your personal pay gap is to go where you’re valued.
Build multiple income streams instead of depending entirely on one employer’s willingness to pay you fairly. The future of work increasingly belongs to people who create their own economic security.
What Organizations Need to Do
Individual strategies will only take you so far. Real change requires organizational action:
Standardize salary ranges and make them transparent. When pay ranges are public, the anchor problem diminishes and negotiation outcomes become more equitable.
Audit pay equity regularly. Don’t just look at whether men and women in the same role earn the same. Look at whether women are proportionally represented in high-paying roles.
Ban salary history questions. Past inequities compound. Asking about previous salaries perpetuates the pay gap.
Create family-friendly policies that work for everyone. Make leave policies and flexible work genuinely accessible to all genders, which reduces the career penalties women face.
Reduce bias in hiring and promotion decisions. Use standardized interviews, clear promotion criteria, and data-driven performance evaluations that minimize subjective judgment.
Stop telling women to negotiate better. They already are. Fix the system instead.
The Truth Nobody Wants to Hear
Women have done everything they were told to do. They got more education. They leaned in. They negotiated. They asked.
And they’re still paid 15-22% less than men, depending on which data you look at.
As Professor Kennedy said: “If women could rectify the pay gap by negotiating, they would!”
The uncomfortable truth is that no amount of individual negotiation can overcome systemic discrimination. The pay gap exists not because women don’t ask, but because when they do ask, they face rejection, backlash, and anchors that men don’t face.
We need to stop acting like this is a skills problem women can solve with better negotiation tactics. This is a system problem that requires structural solutions.
Women are negotiating. They’re asking. They’re advocating.
The system is still saying no.
Ready to understand your market value and negotiate strategically? Explore our career strategy guides, money management resources, and strategies for building wealth at WMN Magazine.
