Written evidence submitted by Dr Amanda Goodall, Cass Business School
Please note that this response is based primarily on findings of Dr Amanda Goodall’s Women Do Ask[1] research paper, in which further relevant information can be found.
Should it be useful to the Committee, Dr Goodall would be pleased to contribute further to the inquiry through the provision of oral evidence – expanding on this initial written submission.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Dr Amanda Goodall is a Senior Lecturer at Cass Business School and a regular media commentator. Her research focuses on expert leadership and organisational performance. She also researches gender, specifically helping to understand the gender pay gap.
Dr Goodall publishes regularly in both academic journals and practitioner magazines and has been a research fellow at Yale, Cornell, Zurich University and IZA in Bonn.
SUBMISSION
In September 2016, research[2] from Cass Business School, the University of Warwick and the University of Wisconsin showed that women ask for wage rises just as often as men, but men are 25 per cent more likely to get a raise when they ask.
Research co-author Dr Amanda Goodall feels that the recent case of Carrie Gracie is an excellent example of this research in the real world - - Ms Gracie did, repeatedly, ask the BBC for pay parity but her requests were unsuccessful.
Using a randomly chosen sample of 4,600 workers across more than 800 employers, the research was the first to do a statistical like-for-like test of the idea that women get paid less because they are not as pushy as men. The researchers found no support for the theory. Women do ‘ask’, they found.
It also examined the claim that female employees hold back for fear of upsetting their boss, and again found no evidence for this theory either.
The researchers didn’t know how the numbers would come out. Having seen these findings, I think we have to accept that there is some element of pure discrimination against women.
Various ideas have previously been suggested as to why women might be reluctant to ask for an increase in their pay packet. These include: women don’t want to deviate from a perceived female stereotype, and they may fear being less popular at work.
The research is the first proper test of the reticent-female theory, and the evidence doesn’t stand up.
When like-for-like men and women were compared, the men were a quarter more likely to be successful, obtaining a pay increase 20 per cent of the time. Only 16 per cent of females were successful when they asked.
The research used data gathered in the Australian Workplace Relations Survey (AWRS) which covers the period 2013-14 and is a representative sample of Australian employees and workplaces.
The survey has the distinctive feature that it asks individuals a set of questions about whether their pay is set by negotiation with the company, whether they have successfully obtained a wage rise since joining the employer, whether they preferred not to attempt to negotiate a pay rise because they were concerned about their relationships, why they decided that, and about their levels of job satisfaction.
Using statistical methods, the authors’ analysis shows that it is crucial to adjust for the number of hours worked (because part-time workers feel hesitant to ‘ask’). The analysis also took into account the nature of the employer, the industry, and the characteristics and qualifications of workers.
Despite the dispiriting findings, the authors did pinpoint one encouraging sign in the data - young Australian female employees get pay hikes just as often as young Australian men.
Therefore, this study potentially has an upside. Young women today are negotiating their pay and conditions more successfully than older females, and perhaps that will continue as they become more senior.
Amanda suggests that if the BBC wants to understand whether there is pay discrimination among its employees, management could ask a similar question: Controlling for factors such as performance, do men and women at the BBC ask for pay rises equally and are they successful or not equally? Randomly selected samples of men and women could be selected from different departments.
The Women Do Ask research is a collaboration between the University of Warwick, Cass Business School, City, University of London and the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, USA.
Authors:
[1] The full paper Women Do Ask can be read here: http://www.amandagoodall.com/artz29Dec2016ArtzetalGenderWomenAsk.pdf