Vincent Tsui for HBR

Earlier this year, a study from my team at Fractl looked at difficult conversations in the workplace. Our research included a troubling, yet unsurprising, finding: women are less comfortable negotiating a raise than men.

In a follow-up study, which is an extension of our ongoing research on workplace issues, we examined the relationship between gender, race, and asking for a salary increase. As part of our research, we surveyed a racially diverse group of 550 African-Americans, 550 Asian-Americans, 550 Hispanic/Latino Americans, and 350 white Americans about raise negotiations. Our survey found that men are more comfortable requesting a raise, that they are more likely to have asked for a raise during their careers, and that they ask for more money than women. While gender was a bigger factor than race in salary negotiations, we found significant racial differences as well. And when examining race and gender together, there were multiplicative effects.

Just over half of our survey respondents have asked for a raise at some point in their career. As we found before, men are more likely to ask for a raise than women. And when it comes to differences among racial backgrounds, white Americans were the most likely to have asked for a salary increase while Asian Americans were the least likely.





The effects multiply when we factor in both gender and race. The biggest disparity: white men are 1.8 times more likely than Asian-American women to have asked for a raise. Across all racial backgrounds, the men were more likely to have asked for a raise than women, although Asian-American men were not far ahead of the average for all women. Nearly the same percentage of white, Hispanic or Latina, and black women have asked for raises.

We also asked how comfortable people were asking for raises at their current employers. African-Americans were most likely to feel comfortable asking for a raise at their current job. Seventy percent of black men and 64% of black women said they were at least somewhat comfortable asking for a raise. Our data show this level of comfort does not translate into action for the women, however, considering that just 47% of black female respondents have asked for a raise during their career. Similarly, although black men are most comfortable asking for a raise, they are less likely than white men to have asked for a raise before. If black men and women are the most comfortable asking for a raise, why aren’t they asking? Although this question has no simple answer, a possible explanation is they aren’t confident a raise would be granted.

As we saw in our previous study, overall, men are more comfortable than women when it comes to asking for a raise. Asian-American men are the exception to this, with African-American and Hispanic/Latina women more comfortable asking for a raise than Asian men. Asian men are also significantly less comfortable than men of other racial backgrounds, with 48% of Asian men feeling at least somewhat comfortable requesting a raise, compared with more than 60% of white, Hispanic/Latino, and African-American men. But Asian men are not the least comfortable group – that distinction goes to white women and Asian women. For some perspective, African-American men are about 1.7 times more likely to feel comfortable asking for a raise than white women and Asian women.

What accounts for these differences? Cultural upbringing and expectations probably play a role. “Culturally, people of Asian-American background place a high value on respecting authority and not creating conflict,” says Dr. Sondra Thiederman, a consultant and speaker on unconscious bias and author of Three Keys to Defeating Unconscious Bias. At the other end of the spectrum, she points out that white men are culturally conditioned to be assertive.

We also wondered if people might be more comfortable negotiating with a boss who looked like them. More than half of all respondents said they would indeed be more comfortable negotiating a raise with someone of the same gender or race as them. Negotiating with someone who is the same gender is slightly more preferable than someone of the same race: About 38% of respondents said gender wouldn’t make a difference, compared with 41% who said race wouldn’t make a difference when it comes to who they’re negotiating with.

While there weren’t any sizable differences between genders on these questions, the differences become greater when we segment the results by race. Sixty-two percent of African-Americans said they’d be more comfortable asking for a raise from someone who is the same race as them. Hispanic or Latino Americans were close behind with 58% saying they’d be more comfortable. About 50% of Asian Americans and just under half of white Americans would feel more comfortable asking someone of the same race for a raise. One-third of African-American respondents said that the race of the person they negotiate with wouldn’t make a difference, compared with just over half of white respondents.

A key finding from our survey may partially explain the preference for negotiating with someone of the same race or gender: More than a third of female respondents believe they’ve been passed up for a raise on account of their gender or race. Perhaps women feel they are less likely to be rejected if the person across the negotiation table looks like them. While white women were most likely to think their gender played a role in a denied raise request, non-white women were more likely to believe a raise was denied due to their race or a combination of factors.