Why Women Should Negotiate at Work, According to Experts

“You can only save as much as you earn, but you can always earn more money.” This is Vivian Tu’s money mantra. The finance expert, known online as Your Rich BFF, actually received this advice from her mentor, and it’s stuck with her since.

“While frugality is important and mindful spending is important, we should also be focusing on maximizing our income, living below our means, and investing the difference,” Tu said in a PS interview ahead of the season two premiere of her “Networth and Chill” podcast in partnership with Vox Media and PS, and sponsored by Marshalls.

Earning more, however, often requires salary negotiation, which has long been a hurdle for many women in the workforce. Though progress has been made, according to an Indeed and Luminary study conducted earlier this year, 73 percent of women still fear how they will be perceived when they advocate for themselves at work. And so, for the latest podcast episode released on Oct. 16, Tu spoke with Kathryn Valentine, a negotiation expert and founder of the consulting firm Worthmore Strategies.

Read a snippet from the conversation below, and for more negotiating advice, listen to the full episode, “Not Bossy, Just a Boss – How to Negotiate as a Woman,” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you get your podcasts.

Vivian Tu: Is there a specific moment in your life that like got you into negotiating? Because for most people, it sucks. We hate doing it.
Kathryn Valentine: Well, actually that’s what got me into it, because it sucked so bad. The first negotiation I ever prepared for and really tried to do well in, ended up going so poorly that I was escorted out of the office by security.

VT: Wait, tell me about this. We need to know.
KV: I was getting my MBA and doing an MBA internship, which is basically like a three-month job interview. So, no pressure. And I decided that I wanted to negotiate to be placed on another team. I did everything you were supposed to do: I Googled how to negotiate. I ordered a bunch of books I underlined and highlighted. I figured out what I wanted to say. And I went in on a Monday morning at 10:00 a.m. and used that script to negotiate. Immediately, as I was saying it, you could see the person that I was negotiating with stiffen up, at which point in time she said, “Actually based on this conversation, I don’t think that you’re a culture fit.” And once you’re not a culture fit, you’re definitely not gonna get that job. At that point in time, I needed to go find a job, so we agreed to end the internship and per company protocol, a very large security guard showed up, escorted me out, and deposited me on the sidewalk with all of my things.

VT: Looking back on that moment, do you feel like you dodged a bullet? Or is there a little tinge of regret?
KV: There’s a little tinge of regret there. The joke I always make is that I derailed my career in less time than it takes to order a latte. The whole thing was 15 minutes. But the reason why I did it isn’t because I didn’t do good work, or it wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy being there, it was because I had taken tools that were built for men and acted as if I was gonna get the same results using them. And the research shows that’s not how it goes. I just didn’t know any better.

VT: What do you mean by that?
KV: The bulk of sort of a negotiation advice that’s given now is given largely by men, but it’s given based on personal experience. The problem with that is, even when they pull into the research, they’re usually pulling into research that was done on men in largely male environments.

What researchers started to release about 10 years ago is research done on women in workplaces, at which point in time it became very clear that the advice commonly given was significantly more likely to lead to backlash for women than men — which is good for women to know. It’s also good for men to know because 50 percent of the population is women. So, if you’re negotiating at work with your manager or with somebody that works with you, it’s helpful to know that there are some of these biases inherent in those conversations.

VT: I talk about this all the time: It is so critically important for women to negotiate, and you are the queen of negotiation. Tell me why it’s so, so valuable when women do decide to negotiate.
KV: I’m gonna give you five reasons.

By negotiating, you actually increase your perceived value — accepting less implies that you are delivering less value, which is not something we wanna do.

Relatedly, when you negotiate, you can actually accelerate your career advancement because you can get more resources, which will allow you to deliver more impact in less time or with less stress.

The third reason is the impact we’re seeing it have on mental health, when you have control in your situation and are able to negotiate the things that bring help to you. We’re all such different and unique people, and we should be negotiating different and unique things.

Number four is, new research shows that when women learn to negotiate in gender-specific ways, they have a significantly higher chance of staying in the workforce, which has some pretty intense financial implications. We did one experiment with a big consulting firm and they had a 50 percent reduction in intent-to-leave after women were taught these skills.

And then the fifth one is the financial: [researcher] Margaret Neale at Stanford says, regardless of what you make, it will take you eight more years to work to make up for choosing not to negotiate during your career. So, if you have nothing else that you’d rather do with eight years, then let’s not negotiate. But if there are other dreams that you have, let’s talk about how you can maximize what you’re getting for what you’re giving.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Kelsey Garcia is the associate content director of PS Balance, where she oversees lifestyle coverage, from dating to parenting and financial wellness. Kelsey is passionate about travel, skin-care trends, and changes in the social media landscape. Before joining the PS team more than eight years ago as an editorial assistant, she interned at Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, among other publications.