Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella apparently does not believe women should lean in. Speaking at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (really!), Nadella had this advice:
“It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise,” he said. “That, I think, might be one of the additional superpowers that, quite frankly, women who don’t ask for a raise have. Because that’s good karma. It’ll come back because somebody’s going to know that’s the kind of person that I want to trust. That’s the kind of person that I want to really give more responsibility to. And in the long-term efficiency, things catch up.”
Who wants money when they could have karma, right? Except, in "the long-term efficiency," things don't catch up. Unless we're talking about karma over multiple lives, and in the next life you're going to be a rich man. Because all of that not-asking-for-raises women do combines with the discrimination they face and the lower pay our society attaches to female-dominated occupations and the extra time women spend caring for children and family members and in the long term, it all adds up to women losing huge amounts of pay over their lifetimes. In a male-dominated industry like tech, this is particularly pervasive.
Nadella later reversed himself in an email to employees:
I answered that question completely wrong. Without a doubt I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap. I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. And when it comes to career advice on getting a raise when you think it’s deserved, Maria’s advice was the right advice. If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask.
"Completely wrong" is completely right, but what sends a stronger message to women? A major CEO's unvarnished, spontaneous thoughts, or his subsequent walk-back presumably involving advice from the company attorneys? Bryce Covert
points out that Nadella's initial thoughts were common ones:
Both men and women are less likely to want to work with or hire women who ask for raises, while they don’t penalize men and end up rewarding them with higher pay. Research has generally found that when women act assertively at work, by for example asking for a raise or a promotion, they encounter “both social and financial backlash.”
If I were a woman at Microsoft, I'd be asking for a raise about now, though. With the spotlight shining on Nadella's remarks, maybe there's a combination of self-examination and defensiveness that will yield a little pay justice for women at the company.
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This isn't just a question of corporations doing the right thing on their own. Nadella's casual sexism would be harder to put into action if the United States had stronger equal pay laws.