It has been two decades since the first publication of “Women Don’t Ask.” In a study from this book, men are eight times more likely to negotiate their salaries than women. And according to Forbes, many people still believe that women speak less about salaries.
However, the landscape is changing. The workforce has seen a significant influx of women in recent years, leading to shifts in labor market trends. Despite enduring gender inequalities, women have been fighting silently for their rights, demonstrating that their professional skills and capabilities are on par with those of their male colleagues.
This is particularly visible on professional networking platforms like LinkedIn. Women are leveraging these online spaces not only to forge work connections but also to assert their professional presence. So, what strategies are women employing on LinkedIn to navigate and reshape the professional landscape?
1. Creating Professional Profiles
Currently, LinkedIn is the best social networking site for businesses and individuals looking to expand their professional connections. Many believe that men care more about their careers and that LinkedIn is still a network dominated by males, while Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest are more for women.
However, over the past decade, the female user base of LinkedIn has increased from 35% to 43%. In Vietnam, this figure is up to 51.6%. Cayla Dengate, an advisor at LinkedIn, shared that the company strives to improve gender imbalance, meaning that more women will be encouraged to join LinkedIn.
Not only are women more present, but they also utilize this platform better than men. Harvard Business Review reports that the completeness of a LinkedIn account is directly proportional to the user’s salary. This is even more true for women, as female users with more comprehensive LinkedIn profiles earn 8.8% more than their peers with less complete profiles, while the corresponding figure for men is 3.1%.
The reason is that when women provide more information and build detailed profiles, it gives recruiters an objective perspective. They have more data to evaluate the candidate’s capabilities instead of just using the gender-biased view that women may not perform as well as men.
Therefore, without needing to make much noise, just by refining their online presence, women have significantly contributed to narrowing the gender pay gap.
2. Tapping into Women’s Connection Potential
The queen of Fulbe, Ashanti Ghana, Ameenata Koita, who has nearly 13,000 followers on LinkedIn, shares that we can leverage the benefits of LinkedIn to connect women on this platform, creating a community that helps each other.
Not just Ameenata, but the number of women with high positions on LinkedIn has been increasing in recent years. They also use their influence to help more women.
Jerrilynn Thomas, a LinkedIn Marketing and Collaboration strategist, believes that the biggest limitation for women using LinkedIn is that they do not fully understand the platform’s connection potential. She has proved this by successfully connecting thousands of influential women on LinkedIn through her Smart Women Partner project.
At the project’s biggest networking event last year, Jerrilynn invited five speakers from her group of 100 female business owners. They agreed that women connect better on LinkedIn due to their adept communication skills and natural intuition. Women can easily identify those who are right for them to expand their network of like-minded people.
By harnessing this potential, women can connect with experienced mentors, access better job opportunities, and an endless source of knowledge. From there, they pave the way for thousands of other women to advance.
3. Inspiring Women to Speak Up for Their Rights
32-year-old Charlotte Chaze contributes to addressing the income disparity issue in her unique way.
Like many young people, she is interested in salary transparency. Instead of sharing with friends or colleagues, Charlotte publicly disclosed her salary for each job she has held on her LinkedIn channel, from her earliest unpaid work to her current $150,000 salary.
However, Charlotte, no longer a contract employee and earning a relatively high salary, does not encourage everyone to disclose their salaries like her publicly. She does this in the hope of encouraging women to confidently demand the salaries they deserve, knowing they can do so.
Charlotte’s post garnered over 21,000 views with many positive comments, proving that women are increasingly aware of injustice and ready to stand up for their rights.
A more powerful example is LinkedIn’s global campaign “We Can Do It.” It began with an emotional film about the real-life inspiring stories of seven women from seven countries working in seven different fields.
LinkedIn highlights the excellence of the women’s community, how they become allies, helping each other maintain careers through pandemic difficulties or smoothly transition to new jobs.
Throughout the #WeCanDoIt campaign, the voices of female members on the platform have been elevated and encouraged. More people are using the hashtag to share their personal stories to help and cheer for working women worldwide.
Additionally, to help individuals and businesses implement gender equality steps at work, LinkedIn also provides practical free online courses, bringing essential knowledge and soft skills to women to enhance their abilities and earn more competitive salaries in the market.
Challenges Ahead in Requesting Commensurate Salaries
Worry and hesitation in interviews also prevent women from negotiating fair salaries. A new study by professors at Harvard University indicates that the fear of backlash significantly reduces the chances of successful salary negotiations.
Women often feel uncomfortable discussing salaries with employers because of the stereotypes telling them not to, fearing it may disrupt harmony. Perhaps that’s why, even though the rate of women negotiating salaries has improved, sometimes even higher than men, their income remains lower.
Moreover, businesses may find it difficult to openly share specific salary ranges without direct communication and understanding the candidate’s capabilities. Thus, it falls to the candidate to research market-standard salaries and then correlate them to their own, proposing the most appropriate figure during discussions.
Employers aren’t always the villains trying to offer the lowest possible salary. Good employers actually want candidates to stand up for their rights. Discussing salary is a plus, showing you have initiative, understand the market well, and can fully prove the skills and achievements previously listed.
Bamboo Careers hopes to accompany you on your journey to find a suitable salary. Our salary lookup application will help you position yourself on your career map so you can be more confident in your next interview.
Translated by Tuong Nguyen