Women have lower career expectations than men, anticipating smaller pay cheques and longer wait for promotions.
Prof . Sean Lyons from University of Guelph, Canada, discovered that women expect starting salaries to be 14 per cent less than that of men.
This gap in wage expectations widens over their careers with women anticipating their earnings to be 18 per cent less than men after five years on the job, reports the journal Industrial Relations.
As for their first promotion, the study found women expect to wait close to two months longer than men for their first step up the corporate ladder, according to a Guelph statement.
"It's a bit of chicken-and-egg-situation," said the business professor, who worked on the study with Carleton University professor Linda Schweitzer and Dalhousie University professor Ed Ng.
"Women know that they currently aren't earning as much as men so they enter the workforce with that expectation. Because they don't expect to earn as much, they likely aren't as aggressive when it comes to negotiating salaries or pay raises and will accept lower paying jobs than men, which perpetuates the existing inequalities", said Prof Lyons.
The study involved surveying more than 23,000 university students about salary and promotion expectations as well as career priorities. The reality is there is a gap in salary with university-educated women earning only 68 per cent of the salaries of equally qualified men, according to a 2008 Canadian Labor Force Survey.
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