According to the 2013 U.S. Census Bureau report women earn 78 cents to every dollar that men earn. This difference in salary between women’s and men’s earnings is known as the gender pay gap.
A number of factors have been put forth to explain the gap. Women report spending more time on childcare and housework per week than their male partners. Many women also report that their childcare and home duties had hindered their career advancement.
While certainly diversity has lagged behind in high paying jobs like in business, the tech industry and, science, technology, engineering and mathematic (STEM) professions, some studies that found that the pay gap persists in nearly every occupation.
Some suggest that women don’t negotiate as often or as aggressively as men and failure to do so can cause millions of dollars left on the table over a lifetime. However, regardless of whether a women negotiates her starting salary, her worth is still deemed to be lower than her equally experienced and educated male counterpart.
A tool that provides discipline-specific salary statistics can help women (anyone who would rather avoid negotiating) succeed stress-free at the negotiating table. Stay tuned for the next installment for my vision of the new project “The Negotiator”.
