Why women and men need to negotiate pay rises differently

The first study showed that, among recent MBA graduates employed at Carnegie Mellon, men were eight times more likely to negotiate their starting salary than their female peers. It meant the men started out earning 7.6 per cent more than the women did on their first day.

In the second study, which took place in a lab, men and women were observed playing a game and were told they would be paid between $3 and $10 for taking part. At the end of the experiment, when they were asked if $3 was acceptable, men requested more money nine times more often than the women did.

A third, larger and online, study asked how often men and women had negotiated. The findings? Men negotiate far more often and regard more interactions as opportunities for negotiation than women do.

So is the trick to closing the seemingly intractable pay gap, for women to simply ask for more?

Sadly not.

In 2005 Hannah Riley Bowles of Harvard University and Linda Babcock and Lei Lai of Carnegie Mellon University, pierced a hole through the popular theory that women are too polite about money.

Their study showed that, if you are a woman, it does hurt to ask for more. Managers were less likely to want to work with female employees who had asked for a pay increase than those who had not.

Women who negotiated for higher compensation were considered far more demanding and less "nice" than those who didn't ask for what they wanted. Men were not penalised in this way. They concluded this was because women asking for more contravened the social norms expected from women.

"Negotiating in an assertive, self-interested way contradicts the feminine stereotype of women as selfless caregivers, and the social costs of contradicting this stereotype can be significant," Hannah Riley Bowles explains. "This social cost is substantially greater for women than for men."

Social costs aside, a 2016 study found that Australian women actually ask for a pay rise as often as their male colleagues but they don't succeed as often. Men are 25 per cent more likely to get a raise when they ask for one than women are.

The data used for the global study Do Women Ask by London's Cass Business School, the University of Warwick and the University of Wisconsin was from Australia because it is the only country in the world that collects systematic information on whether employees have asked for a rise.

A randomly chosen sample of 4600 Australian workers across more than 800 employers found no support for the idea that women earn less because they are not as pushy as men.

"Ours is the first proper test of the reticent-female theory, and the evidence doesn't stand up," co-author Dr Amanda Goodall, from the Cass Business School in London, said.

To describe the issue of pay as a minefield is an understatement. So how can a woman ask for a pay rise without being penalised as unlikeable and succeed in achieving an outcome?

Have the facts

This is 101 but be armed with as much information as possible when you sit down to negotiate. You need to build the case for what you are worth and why you are entitled to a raise. Do your research.

Enlist an advocate

You could do worse than enlisting the help of a colleague to negotiate on your behalf.

When women are advocating on behalf of others, the social cost of being assertive evaporates, research from the University of Texas and Columbia University shows.

"Think personally, act communally"

This advice from Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg is frustrating because in effect it means buying into the expected norms, but it is pragmatic. In her seminal bestseller Lean In, Sandberg advises women to refer to the collective efforts of the team in their business case because it demonstrates their regard for organisational relationships. This can neutralise the backlash that can be associated with women asking for more. It is why she also advises women to explain that they are negotiating for a higher salary because women in general are often paid less than men. She says it shows concern for all women, not just themselves.

Cite Sheryl Sandberg

In Lean In Sandberg described her own reluctance to ask Mark Zuckerberg for more money than he initially offered. When she did, he came back with a better offer and that anecdote appears to have emboldened many women to ask for more. BuzzFeed's editor in chief Ben Smith wrote that within a month of Lean In being published he had female staff reference the book in negotiations. "Sheryl Sandberg would be disappointed in me if I didn't ask you about money," one female staffer said. "She said invoking Sandberg helped her overcome 'the hardest thing for me about asking for a raise - the social awkwardness of it'." Harvard's Hannah Riley Bowles says referencing a known authority like Sandberg potentially strengthens the legitimacy of her arguments.

Georgina Dent is a journalist, editor and TV commentator with a keen focus on women's empowerment and gender equality.