A woman who negotiates for herself and her career growth is more often viewed as selfish and aggressive.
These double standards in workers’ minds around the world deny fair opportunities and treatment for over half the workforce.
Forming workplace alliances to assert fairness and advocate for one’s rights can yield positive effects.
An international logistics company with major operations in both Mombasa and Nairobi decided to conduct a job and salary review. In it, the firm endeavoured to investigate job descriptions, grades, reporting structures and salary levels. The leadership pondered the implications of retaining an external consulting firm or utilising an internal committee for engagement in the East Africa region.
Following many deliberations, the company chose to use an internal committee that would be more knowledgeable of firm business practices and would require less briefing and preparation time. On the committee, they placed Omar and Njreri for the Mombasa office and Momanyi and Fatma for the Nairobi office.
Once constituted, the committee commenced surveys, interviews, and focus groups to delineate current versus ideal job and salary levels. As the review continued for multiple weeks, Momanyi and Omar became perturbed by the bold assertions of women in the firm clearly articulating that they deserved higher salaries commensurate with their level of effort in their positions.
Fatma became suspicious of her male counterparts’ reactions and suspected misogyny. She spent several hours going through the detailed interview, survey, and focus group notes done by the committee. She noted that men asked for raises, job enlargements, and promotions in greater proportions than women. So, why were women penalised for daring to dream?
Fatma noticed what researchers Jens Mazei, Joachim Huffmeier, Philipp Freund, Alice Stuhlmacher, Lena Bilke and Guido Hertel call role congruity theory. It covers whether different segments of a population fit into our societal expectations of them. In our innate human biases and cultural prejudices, women are frequently looked down upon for seeming ambitious in their careers.
A woman who negotiates for herself and her career growth is more often viewed as selfish and aggressive. Further, women also fear being viewed selfishly when seeking career advancement. The very real fear matches the, unfortunately, real perception bias of others.
Why? The researchers in their meta-analysis found that expectations of female work roles involve humility, quietness, calm and contentment instead of ambitious career advancement.
When women pursue their just rights as equal employees, they are punished for not fitting in these medieval gender roles.
Further, women are viewed positively when they advocate for others instead of themselves. Women are viewed favourably as caring when they are seen as supporting others.
These double standards in workers’ minds around the world deny fair opportunities and treatment for over half the workforce. Often, the wrong employee gets promoted or the wrong leader empowered as a result of biases, and this harms organisational performance in addition to fairness.
The research shows that the gender gap can be reduced in three ways. First, as women gain more experience in negotiating to ascertain the nuances, timings, phrasing, and perceived empathy when interacting in job negotiation settings. The experience helps to know how to build rapport during the process and overcome unfair biases.
Second, when women are given a bargaining range directly or research and discover plausible bargaining ranges, then they are more comfortable and assert their job dues and rights robustly while knowing they do not have to fear overstepping.
Third, when women negotiate on behalf of someone else, they are listened to more than men. Forming workplace alliances to assert fairness and advocate for one’s rights can yield positive effects.
In closing, our workplaces, just like the rest of society, is not yet just and equal to all demographics and particularly not yet fair to women. Understand biases and the sad reality of role congruity theory to push ahead and shatter glass ceilings.
