By Elizabeth Pace, author of  The X and Y of Buy

If 80% of your customers got a 17% raise tomorrow, would your bottom line grow? Women still make 83% of what men do. But women also make 80% of all buying decisions. Pay equity could be the catalyst to an economic turnaround. And I can’t imagine any woman who would decline a 17% pay raise.  But unfortunately, she won’t ask for it.

According Marilyn Davidson a professor of work psychology at Manchester Business School women’s fear of feistiness is to credit for the pay discrepancy. Women simply don’t ask for more… when we interview or get a promotion. Check out her survey to see if you have male or female negotiation tendancies in her article Why XX must think more like XY to earn more K in an article in the BCC News.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8048707.stm

Research shows that women will go to bat for their clients, team, a cause and their children just as aggressively as a man. So ladies go negotiate a raise. If you can’t do it for you, do it for an economic turnaround.