A first real negotiation at 47, minute by minute
Picture her as Maren. Maren exists only as a composite, so she is neither a member nor a client of our San Antonio chapter. She is 47, a finance director being courted for a vice president post at another firm, and at 2:03 on a Wednesday afternoon she is on the phone with a recruiter who has just quoted $215,000.
That figure sits $30,000 beyond her present salary. For twenty-four years, reflex has pushed her toward the same polite reply, "that's great, thank you," which she has offered word for word to each job offer since she turned 23. This time there is a sheet of paper on her desk with three figures written on it, and the highest one reads $255,000.
What she risks losing
Taken on its own, the offer is solid. The new firm is financially sturdier than her existing employer. Her recruiter keeps a warm tone and has let slip twice that the hiring manager is still talking to other candidates. If she presses and they step away, she returns to a role she has outgrown, under a manager who has told her twice there is no money in the budget. If she accepts without a fight, she begins at a figure she already knows sits under the posted band, and each raise over the next ten years builds on that lower starting point.
She has also worked through the research on the matter. A 2023 Berkeley Haas study found that 54% of women negotiated their latest offer, compared with 44% of men, and the women still ended up with less. Asking is not the entire remedy. Asking well may be.
The turning point
At 2:04 she begins, "Thank you. I'm very interested. Given the posted band and the experience I'm bringing to this position, I'm asking for a $255,000 base salary." After that she stops talking entirely.
The stillness holds for a full nine seconds. She counts them. The hiring manager responds, "I'll bring that to the team." Maren replies, "That sounds good. Could you tell me when I'm likely to hear back?" and then hangs up. It has lasted seven minutes.
At 4:40 that afternoon, the recruiter calls again to offer $240,000 plus a $15,000 signing bonus. She answers, "That works. Please send it in writing." Two calls, roughly forty minutes of talking, spread over a single afternoon. That is $40,000 above the first offer in year one, plus a bonus and a retirement match calculated on the higher base for as long as she remains.
Why this reaches well past Maren's own case
The usual guidance is to "negotiate," and many women in fact do so. What the evidence points to is that the gap lies in what happens after the ask: who fills the quiet, who apologizes for the figure, who takes the first counteroffer without a second thought. What gets left out is the written number and the nine quiet seconds, since an observer would see nothing unusual in either.
Three takeaways to remember
Jot the figure down before you pick up the phone, and deliver it as a flat statement rather than a hopeful question. "I'm looking for X" holds up perfectly well by itself. Phrasing it as "Would something like X be possible?" gives the other side an easy opening to refuse.
Pause and wait. Quiet after a request makes both parties squirm, yet only one of them can convert that squirm into a higher salary. Count to ten if you need to. Avoid the temptation to cushion your request by tacking on "but I'm flexible."
Hear the response as an opening move in the discussion, not as the last word. If it lands close, accept it and request it in writing. If it does not, ask one more question: "What would it take to get to X?" Then go quiet again.
Maren has not grown comfortable with silence. Once a year she rehearses it at the figure she wants, and those few seconds of quiet have covered the cost of a new kitchen.