One reason for pay gap: Women don't speak up

But even in the face of all these obstacles, it’s about time women started standing up for themselves. Everyone wants advancement and more money, but some women are not well-versed in the art of negotiations and shy away from the dreaded process with their bosses.

Pink, a women’s business magazine, found that nearly half of 2,400 women surveyed did not ask for a raise, additional benefit or promotion in the past 12 months. And alas, they’re missing out, because 72 percent of those who asked got what they wanted, according to the survey.

Women are just reluctant to talk about money, says Susan Wilson Solovic, author of "The Girls’ Guide to Power and Success." Women are comfortable talking about anything else in their lives, she says. We share the most personal details about our spouses or children, but when it comes to money we just shut up.

“Women are bad about negotiating for money because we are socialized to associate money with greed,” she explains. “We also are taught an ambitious and aggressive desire to accumulate wealth is not feminine.  We grow up believing in the fairy tale that someone will take care of us and we don’t have to worry our pretty little heads about money.  Perhaps that is why the majority of people living in poverty in this country are women and children.”

One of the key principles of negotiation is being able to promote one's self, and here women often fall down on the job.

“There is no doubt, women are less inclined to self-promote, and they’re more likely to accept what they’re offered,” says John McKee, a business success coach and author of “21 Ways Women in Management Shoot Themselves in the Foot.”

But acceptance ends up hitting women right in their pocketbooks. If you don’t start pumping up your negotiating skills right out of school, that can cost you big time.

Take the example of a young woman who at age 22 who is offered a $25,000 job but negotiates and gets the offer raised to $30,000.  If she gets a 3 percent raise every year, by the time she is 60 her annual salary will be more than $92,000, instead of $77,000 if she had accepted the lower offer. Over that 38-year career she would have made an extra $361,000.

Even with these compelling numbers it will take a lot for most women to don negotiating armor because it runs counter to how we were raised, says Carnegie Mellon’s Babcock, who is also the author of “Women Don’t Ask: Gender and the Negotiation Divide.”

“Our society teaches women not to negotiate. We get these messages from the time that they are born,” she says. “We tell girls to wait for things to be offered and not to rock the boat. We teach boys to go out there and be aggressive, to go after what they want.”

Just check out your local baby sitters.

Leslie Morgan Steiner, mother of three and author of “Mommy Wars: Stay-at-home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families,” says that over the years she’s employed about 30 sitters, mainly girls, and every single time she’s asked them how much they charged their answer was: “whatever you want to pay me.”

Morgan Steiner says she has done her part to help girls get some negotiating teeth by insisting that they come up with a price and coaching them on what to say to other parents. “I want to help them, so I tell them to say, ‘The going rate for a baby sitter is X.’ I try to give them language so after me they’ll be able to say what they charge.”

Girls need training right out of the gate. “If you can’t stand up for yourself as a 12-year-old baby sitter, you’re going to face a lot of problems because you won’t be able to negotiate with an employer, or the man you’re dating, or in so many other situations. I’d love to see negotiation skills taught in elementary school.”

Next week: Advice from the experts on how to become better negotiators, including tips from career coaches, money guru Suze Orman, and stories from women who learned how to ask for what they’re worth.

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