54% of women asked for more versus 44% of men. "Just ask" was never the problem.

Across two decades, the standard advice to women has been a simple one: if you hesitate to ask, ask anyway. That message has filled bestselling books and countless workshops, and it has one flaw. Women are, in fact, asking.

What most people take for granted

The notion grew out of research from the early 2000s showing that men were much more likely than women to negotiate a first salary. That finding held up at the time, and it was repeated so often that it reshaped a structural problem into a personal failing: if you're underpaid, you simply didn't push hard enough. The framing also suited employers well. Telling women to change their behavior costs a company nothing, whereas telling a company to publish its pay bands would cost it a great deal.

What the data shows now is laid out below.

In 2023, Laura Kray and her colleagues at Berkeley Haas surveyed business-school graduates and discovered that 54% of the women, versus 44% of the men, reported negotiating their latest job offer. The women still earned less. Seen this way, the willingness to ask was never what was lacking.

Why the gap persists even after asking

The starting point outweighs the request. Typically, a negotiation moves the number only a handful of percentage points. The number that truly matters was set before the conversation began: the band you were slotted into, the level you were hired at, the salary history that trailed you from job to job. Even a 7% increase from a low opening offer can leave you trailing a man who never bargained yet started from a higher place. This explains how two people with identical performance reviews can end up $20,000 apart after five years, since each received the same percentage raise on very different bases.

The same phrasing lands differently depending on who says it, whether in a Henrico office or a Chesterfield startup. Research on the likability penalty has time and again found that an identical request is heard as confident when a man makes it and as aggressive when a woman does. Many women sense this, so they ask carefully, and careful requests tend to receive smaller yeses.

Not everyone in the Richmond market has the same access to pay information. The real pay range for a role moves through professional networks, and those networks are still influenced by who knows whom. Without knowing the top of the band, you aim for the middle and count it as success.

Where the old advice still holds true in the RVA job market.

Asking still matters a great deal. Across Richmond and RVA employers alike, unrequested raises are rare, and those who never speak up often fall the furthest behind. Stop asking? That is not the point at all. The real shift is to recognize that asking, by itself, cannot serve as your whole approach.

A better way forward

Aim for the rank and title, not simply the dollar amount offered. Your grade or title sets the pay band, and that band influences what you will earn over the following ten years. Before any salary talk in Henrico or Chesterfield, establish which level the position corresponds to and why the company placed it there.

Get the range in writing before you accept. An increasing number of states now require posted pay ranges, and "What's the band for this role?" is a fair question to ask in any Richmond-area workplace, whether you're in Henrico, Chesterfield or downtown.

Tie your request to the work you will do in the role. Saying "for the scope we've discussed, the market rate is X" turns the focus from what you would like to what the work is actually worth.

Treat a "no" as information you can act on. When a employer declines but gives you a date and a figure, you have a concrete next step. A refusal offering neither says more about the company than about you.

What was the biggest number you ever won by asking, and the biggest you gained by walking away?