5 tips for women to negotiate a higher salary

  Today is Equal Pay Day — March 14 — a date determined by how long into the new year American women must work to catch up to American men’s earnings the previous year. In 2022, women earned 82% of what men earned. The wage gap for Black and Hispanic women is even higher — these groups made 70% and 65%, respectively, of what white men made.

  Some of the gender pay gap can be attributed to differences in how women negotiate.

Kate Bahn: The value of equal pay to the U.S. economy

  This year, Equal Pay Day fell on April 4. This means that the average woman had to work from the start of 2016 through April 4, 2017 to earn as much as an average man did in 2016 alone. Put another way, women currently earn 80 cents for each dollar that men earn.

  As a result of these factors and others, women can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in earnings over the course of their careers. But it isn’t just women’s individual bottom lines that suffer: The gender wage gap is also a drag on the U.S. economy, and closing the gap should be a top priority of any economic policy agenda that seeks to strengthen and grow the economy. In fact, comparing it to the current top priority of the GOP—tax cuts for the wealthy—equal pay would put twice as much income back into our economy as their current proposed tax cuts.