More than half of all female professionals (57%) have never attempted to negotiate a pay rise, and if they do it will result in them getting less than their male colleagues.
A similar number of professional women (54%) – are unsatisfied with their pay, feeling it is not a fair reflection of what they do.
According to a new report from recruiter Robert Walters and Totaljobs, men are 23% more likely to negotiate a pay rise across all stages of their career.
On average, men tend to receive an 8% increase in salary following a negotiation, whereas women typically receive 6%.
Robert Walters and Totaljobs surveyed more than 9,000 professionals across the UK as part of the research into diversity in the workplace.
Chris Hickey, UK CEO at Robert Walters, said: “Women need to feel more confident about their value to firms and its clear employers can do more to help empower them for scenarios such as negotiating pay rises or striving for promotion.
“What this report also highlights is that women – from junior through to senior levels – see a lack of gender representation (at their level or) above as a key barrier to them being able to progress. Employers need to understand the effects of unconscious bias, and take active steps on how they can best eliminate this.”
The top three challenges to progression at work were lack of opportunities, cited by 41% of female professionals, balancing work and family (35%) and lack of training (24%).
Over a quarter of men (27%) claim to know what they need to do to get a promotion whereas only 19% of women feel the same.
Twenty-two per cent of women, versus 13% of men, reported that a lack of confidence was a barrier to progression.
A third of men and women reported that they struggled to equally balance their work and family commitments. According to the research, flexible hours are ranked as the nation’s most preferred work perk, by 63% of women and 48% of men respectively.
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