What a decade of "lean in" got wrong, and what actually moves women up
A clear majority, fifty-four percent of the women, bargained over their latest job offer. Forty-four percent of men did. Still, the women who bargained ended up with smaller paychecks. That finding comes from Kray, Kennedy and Lee at Berkeley Haas, released in 2023 and covered by Fortune, and it alone undercuts a decade of career guidance.
Under the "lean in" framing, the story went that women are paid less and promoted more slowly simply because they never speak up and ask. Teach them to ask through confidence workshops, negotiation seminars and a firm reminder to value themselves, and the difference disappears. Employers found this story easy to accept, since each fix placed the burden on the woman herself. The Berkeley findings flip that reasoning on its head. Women are asking more often than men, and they are still getting less.
Source of the data
Working out of the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, Laura Kray, Jessica Kennedy and Margaret Lee studied how job seekers haggled over recent offers. The surprise was that women bargained at a higher rate. The real takeaway is that they still ended up with less. A single study does not prove that women negotiate better or worse across the board, nor does it account for every factor behind the disparity. Still, it strips away the most convenient excuse. A gap cannot be pinned on a behavior that women are already doing more of.
Other studies, pointing the same way, have reached similar conclusions. Studies of the likability penalty keep finding that the same request sounds assertive coming from a man and pushy coming from a woman. Combine the two bodies of work and the story shifts from "women don't ask" to "women ask, and the people across the table penalize them for it."
How it shows up in practice
Picture yourself in Indy, holding an offer for the job you have been hoping to land. You have reviewed several postings that list pay ranges, you know where the midpoint falls, and you ask for it calmly, with your reasons laid out. The recruiter promises to "see what she can do," then comes back with roughly two thousand dollars more and calls it a real stretch for the company. Another candidate interviewing for the same job asks for the top of the range and lands close to it, described as "competitive." You negotiated and so did he, but the results differ, and nothing you said on that call could have changed the outcome. The decision about what your request was worth had already been made before you spoke.
How this affects your position
If anyone has ever told you that you need more confidence, consider what that advice accomplishes. It locates the gap inside you, where fixing it costs the employer nothing. Tulshyan and Burey made a similar point about imposter syndrome in Harvard Business Review in 2021: the label shifts a structural problem onto the individual. The so-called confidence gap is that very same tactic, only dressed up in different language. You do not need repairing. The pay structure needs examining.
What to do next
Raise the pay range with your employer, not your own value as a worker. Try, "What is the posted range for this level, and where does this offer sit within it?" Pay ranges are now mandated in a growing number of states, so the question has a factual answer. Then ask the one question that cannot easily be read as a judgment of your personality: "What would it take to reach the midpoint?" You are working from the numbers, and numbers do not come across as demanding.
For Central Indiana women, the Indy Chamber's Central Indiana Women's Business Center and the Indiana Small Business Development Center offer free coaching that can help you prepare for these conversations, and groups such as NAWBO Indianapolis and the Indiana Women's Collaborative provide peer networks for comparing notes on offers.
Think back: when did you last ask for more, and what did holding back end up costing you?