Women Ask for Pay Raises as Often as Men—But They Still Earn Less

Women ask for a pay raise at the same frequency as men but they still earn less, a new study found.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin in the U.S. and the University of Warwick and Cass Business School in the U.K. analyzed data collected from 4,600 Australian workers across more than 800 employers, the Guardian reports. They concluded that when investigating why women typically earn less than men, “the women don’t ask account is incorrect” and instead “women do ask… however, women do not get.”

The study, titled “Do Women Ask?,” debunks the myth that the reason for the gender pay gap is that women do not ask for pay raises because they are more concerned than men about the quality of their relationships in the workplace, the researchers said.

The report concludes that the finding “is potentially consistent with the existence of discrimination in the labor market.” Women earned 83% of what men did in the U.S. in 2015, according to an analysis by The Pew Research Center.

The paper’s co-author Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Warwick, told the Guardian that “having seen these findings…we have to accept that there is some element of pure discrimination against women.”