GUELPH, Ont. — Female university graduates looking for their first jobs expect to earn less than men, and those lower expectations may be the very reason the very real wage gap persists, a new study suggests.
“Women know they currently aren’t earning as much as men so they enter the workforce with that expectation,” said Sean Lyons, a University of Guelph researcher who helped conduct the study.
“Because they don’t expect to earn as much, they likely aren’t as aggressive when it comes to negotiating salaries or pay raises and will accept lower-paying jobs than men, which perpetuates the existing inequalities.”
When asked to estimate their starting salaries, female students entering the work world predicted their pay cheques would be 14 per cent lower than the wages men said they expected to pull.
The gap widened over the course of their anticipated careers, with women expecting to make 18 per cent less than men after five years. And it was most pronounced in male-dominated fields such as science and engineering.
Women also expected to wait two months longer to be promoted.
Statistics Canada says the real gap in salary between university educated women and men is 32 per cent. That is, women earn only 68 cents for every dollar earned by equally qualified men.
Jennifer Dunn, who at 21 is a fourth-year commerce student at Ottawa’s Carleton University, said many students are clueless about how much jobs should pay.
“I don’t think we have a very good idea about how much we could be making, so not knowing what to ask for (is a problem),” said Dunn, whose parents never discussed their salaries when she was growing up.
Dunn said first-time job seekers are also afraid they’ll be passed over in favour of other candidates if they appear greedy.
“When someone’s asking what do you expect, you don’t want to ask for a ton and not get the job,” she said.
Lyons said the findings suggest women entering the labour force need to actively research what men in their chosen fields are making, and speak up and ask for the same.
“The most important thing we need to do is to arm young women with information that can help them when they’re doing negotiations,” he said.
“They really need to know what their male colleagues are expecting.”
Dunn says she has no idea how much she should expect to be paid if she lands her dream job as a manager at a non-profit organization such as a women’s shelter or an environmental group.
But the suggestion that Canada’s wage gap is the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy has taught her she needs to find out. Dunn is making plans to ask her school’s career centre for guidance.
“I would definitely negotiate higher than I thought,” said Dunn. “But I would like some training and for someone to tell me what are reasonable expectations.”
The study, which surveyed 23,000 students, was a joint effort by Lyons and Prof. Linda Schweitzer at Carleton University and Prof. Ed Ng at Dalhousie University in Halifax.