54% of women asked for more versus 44% of men. "Just ask" was never the problem.
For two decades the guidance has been identical: women don't ask, so women should start asking. That message has filled bestselling books and packed a thousand workshops, but it rests on a flawed assumption. Women are asking now.
What everyone assumes
The notion grew out of research from the early 2000s that found men were much more likely than women to haggle over a first salary. That was accurate at the time, and it was repeated so often that it reframed a systemic problem as a personal failing: if you're paid less, you simply didn't push hard enough. The story was also convenient. Telling women to change their behavior costs employers nothing, whereas telling employers to publish their pay bands would cost them plenty.
What current evidence shows
According to a 2023 study of business-school graduates, run by Laura Kray and her team at Berkeley Haas, 54% of women reported negotiating their most recent job offer, while only 44% of men did. Even so, women walked away with smaller paychecks. Negotiating, then, was not the missing ingredient.
The reason the gap persists even after women make the request
Your starting point outweighs your request. A typical negotiation usually moves the number only a little, often by a few percent. The figure that counts was fixed before the conversation began: the band you were slotted into, the level you were hired at, the salary history that trailed you from job to job. Picture a 7% raise on a low starting point: it still leaves you trailing a man who never haggled at all yet began at a higher figure. That explains why two people with matching performance reviews can end up $20,000 apart after five years, since each raise was the same percentage of a different starting figure.
The same phrasing lands differently depending on who says it. Studies of the likability penalty have repeatedly shown that the same request sounds assertive coming from a man and demanding coming from a woman. Women frequently sense this, which is why they phrase their asks so carefully, and careful asks tend to earn smaller yeses.
Knowledge about pay is spread unequally across people. The real pay range for a role moves through professional networks, and those networks still reflect who knows whom over a round of golf. If you can't see the top of the band, you bargain toward the middle and count it as a victory.
Where the traditional guidance still applies in Hartford and beyond
Speaking up for yourself still carries weight. Raises nobody requests are uncommon, and people who never ask tend to fall furthest behind. Nobody is saying you should give up asking. What matters is recognizing that asking, by itself, cannot be your whole plan.
Better moves to try in its place
Bargain over the overall tier of the role, not only the figure. A grade or title determines the pay band, and the band shapes the next ten years. Before salary comes up, ask which level the role maps to and the reasoning behind it.
Request that the pay range be confirmed on paper so nothing rests on memory. Posted pay ranges are now required in a growing number of states, and "What's the band for this role?" is a fair question to ask almost anywhere. Here in Connecticut, that means raising it with your recruiter or hiring manager at the start of the process.
Build your request around what the role in Connecticut actually demands of you. "For the scope we discussed, the market rate is X" shifts the conversation from what you want to what the role is worth. Local benchmarks help: Hartford-area earnings for women in finance, insurance and real estate average about $84,289, which gives you a concrete reference point for offers in the region's large insurance and financial employers.
View a refusal as a source of useful detail. When a refusal arrives with a date and a figure attached, you have a workable path forward. When a refusal arrives empty-handed, it reveals more about the employer than about your worth.
What was the largest sum you ever secured by asking, and what was the largest you secured by being willing to walk away?