Boston to help you get that higher salary

From the Boston Globe, May 21, 2015

About 275 business leaders, most of them women, gathered at the Seaport Hotel Wednesday to broach a touchy subject: the fact that they earn less than men. It’s a timely topic, with the City of Boston in the midst of gathering gender-specific salary data from local companies. And the city used the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce event to announce yet another step toward closing the wage gap.

This fall, the city plans to hold the first of hundreds of free or low-cost salary negotiation workshops, aimed at teaching women — and men if they so desire — the best ways to boost their pay.

Megan Costello , director of the city’s Office of Women’s Advancement and a panelist at the morning event, said later that she hears stories every day about women underselling themselves, worried about asking for too much “because that’s going to seem egotistical or presumptuous, all these attributes that women tend to see as negative.”

The panel, moderated by Victoria Budson , executive director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School, also featured Cathy Minehan, dean of the Simmons College School of Management; Evelyn Murphy , former lieutenant governor and president of the WAGE Project; and Beth Williams , president of Roxbury Technology LLC, a manufacturer that rebuilds toner cartridges.

Williams told the group that after she agreed to be part of the citywide effort to close the wage gap, she examined her own payroll and found more men in supervisory positions. She subsequently promoted two women.

“If I could, I would hire all women,” she said, “but then I’d get in trouble on the other side.” — KATIE JOHNSTON