Workshop teaches how to get higher salaries

Director of the Women's Center Erin Lovette-Colyer helped USD students to be proactive when negotiating starting salaries and addressed issues of the modern gender wage gap.

Held Thursday in the Student Life Pavilion Room 412, the Start Smart workshop's objective was to teach students how to negotiate a decent salary when newly entering the workforce. Lovette-Colyer emphasized the importance for women in particular to learn negotiation skills because "women are socialized not to question or challenge what is being offered, [but] rather to be grateful that they get a job."

Many fresh-faced graduates assume that an employer determines appropriate pay based on job responsibilities and employee qualifications, but Lovette-Colyer explained that this is often a myth. According to the American Association of University Women, female employees - both college and non-college educated - on average earn 77 cents for every dollar a male employee counterpart earns. According to AAUW's 2009 research report, Behind the Pay Gap, female college graduates one year out of school "earned 80 percent of what their male counterparts earned."

Why does this wage gap happen if wage discrimination is illegal? Lovette-Colyer cited gender bias and stereotyping. People tend to value males more than females, and they stereotype based on employee gender. Some particularly biased employers will assume that men need to earn more because they have a family to care for, but that women do not need to earn as much because they may start a family and leave the company after a pregnancy.

In addition to this, women also tend to rationalize that they don't need as much money as men do to survive. In the workshop, Lovette-Colyer developed a budget with the attendees to show how much money a college graduate would need to earn in order to cover his or her living expenses. The student attendees agreed on the final budget mock-up, acknowledging that living expenses do not vary between males and females, because landlords and utility companies don't discriminate when issuing billing statements.

Lovette-Colyer said that women are often socialized to think that men deserve a higher salary because they work harder, which in turn prohibits women from questioning their salaries and failing to ask employers for higher pay.

Promotions are based on an employee's starting salary, and when women start at the lower end of a pay scale, the wage gap between women and men's salaries continues to increase. The average 23 cents women lose for every dollar a man earns compounds to equal $1.2 million lost over the course of a woman's career. The wage gap is even worse for women of color. On average, Asian women earn 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, African American women earn 69 cents and Latina women earn 57 cents.

So what can college graduates do in order to avoid this wage gap? Lovette-Colyer says students - particularly females - need to educate themselves in order to avoid falling victim to the wage gap.

"Women in general, and women of color in particular, need to understand what the gender wage gap means to them personally, how it happens and why it happens," Lovette-Colyer said.

The workshop highlighted the importance of realizing that "salary negotiation is about the job and what the boss is willing to pay." Lovette-Colyer offered these tips when negotiating a salary: never be the first to name a salary figure, avoid salary negotiation before receiving the job offer and aim high and be realistic when negotiating your salary.

The Women's Center will host another salary negotiating workshop for students in the spring semester.