Women. Like men, only cheaper.

Even in the film industry

Or in sports

Which strategies exist to balance the paycheck?

Leveraging humour

Her response to discovering that she only earns 78 percent of what her male colleagues earn is simple: she’ll only do 78 percent of her work. Easy!

Learning to negotiate better

7MAKE NEGOTIATING A NORMSITUATION

Women are less likely to negotiate for themselves than men, often because they

are concerned they’ll be viewed unfavorably.25 They are right to worry. We expect

men to advocate on their own behalf and be rewarded for their accomplishments,

so there’s little downside when they negotiate. In contrast, we expect women to be

communal and collaborative, so when they negotiate or advocate for themselves,

we often react unfavorably.

SOLUTION

Review compensation to ensure that you are paying women and men fairly and

communicate to all members in your organization—especially women—that it’s

important for them to negotiate for themselves. Research shows that women will

negotiate at comparable rates to men when given explicit permission to do so.

DID YOU KNOW?

Women are four times less likely to

negotiate than men. When they do

negotiate, women typically ask for

30 percent less money.26

8 LeanInTogether.Org #LeanInTogetherTIPS FOR MANAGERS

As a manager

SITUATIONMale performance is often overestimated compared to female performance,

starting with mothers overestimating boys’ crawling ability and underestimating

girls’.2 This bias is even more pronounced when review criteria are unclear,

making individuals more likely to rely on gut feelings and personal inferences.3

Over time, even small deviations in performance evaluation have a significant

impact on women’s careers.4 This difference in the perceived performance of

men and women also helps explains why women are hired and promoted based

on what they have already accomplished, while men are hired and promoted

based on their potential.5

SOLUTIONAwareness begets fairness. Make sure everyone on your team is aware of the

gender bias in evaluating performance. Be specific about what constitutes

excellent performance, and make sure goals are set in advance, understood,

and measurable. The clearer your criteria are, the better. Be prepared to

explain your evaluations—and expect the same of others. When people are

accountable for their decisions, they are more motivated to think through

them carefully.8

2 EVALUATE PERFORMANCE FAIRLY

DID YOU KNOW? Gender-blind studies consistently

show that removing gender from

decisions improves women’s

chances of success. One study

found that replacing a woman’s

name with a man’s name on a

résumé improved the odds of

getting hired by 61 percent.6

In another example, when a

major U.S. orchestra instituted

blind auditions, the odds of

women making it past the first

round improved by 50 percent.7

3 LeanInTogether.Org #LeanInTogetherHOW TO BE A WORKPLACE MVP3

Transparency

Speak up!

Symbolic acts

Thursday 10 November marks Equal Pay Day – the date from which, as a result of the gender pay gap, women in the UK are

effectively working for free for the rest of the year.

Leverage the community

Urge your elected officials to act on Equal Pay Day

• Host an “unequal” bake sale or (un)happy hour where men will pay full price for the goods while women get a 21 percent discount (one percent for each cent of the gender pay gap).

• Launch an equal pay media blitz. Write and submit letters to the editor and op-eds to a variety of publications in your state to gain broad coverage on Equal Pay Day.

• Bring salary negotiations workshops to your community/campus.

Facilitate maternity AND paternity leave

How did Sweden paved the way

• Things didn’t change after Sweden scrapped maternity leave in 1974 replaced it with an overall allotment of paid parental leave that could be shared however the mother and father chose.

• Fathers who took time off were derisively nicknamed velourman or velourpappa and disdained for being unmanly.

• In 1974, only 562 dads claimed parental leave—about 0.5%.

Good for children, good for parents, good for the economy

• Since women’s pay was at that time typically much lower than their husbands’, couples typically opted for the mother to stay at home with the child. But that perpetuated the pay gap, as women continued to be “mommy-tracked,” penalized for the possibility that they’d bear a child. Companies entrenched this divide by looking down on fathers who did take parental leave.

• So in 1995, the government rolled out “daddy leave.” It didn’t make paternity leave mandatory, but couples lost a month of subsidized leave if the father took less than a month off. That meant he could no longer transfer all of his leave to his wife. The new policy also compensated fathers and mothers at 90% of their wages, making it harder for fathers to turn down.

• And it worked. Within a few years, more than four out of every five fathers stayed at home. And when the government added another month to “daddy leave” in 2002, the amount of time they took off more than doubled. The government also upped the reimbursement ceiling to make the package more attractive to high-earning men.

• One reason this works is that Sweden pays generous benefits for a relatively short period of leave.

Losing workers to motherhood isn’t so great for the bottom line.• The longer the leave for fathers, the less

time women take out from the job market.

• Strong leave policies reduce turnover and foster morale for employers and support workforce retention for employees.

What do YOU do to shift the paycheck balance?