An excerpt appears below. Read the full article, written by Suzanne de Janasz and Beth Cabrera in Harvard Business Review.

Tara, an MD/PhD who works for a large public university, contacted one of us (Suzanne) a few weeks after participating in a negotiation workshop she ran, wanting to share some positive news about successfully negotiating an 11% pay increase. A faculty member for six years, she had come to learn that she was not only underpaid but also had a higher teaching and clinic load than others in her group. She, like many women, accepted her job offer without negotiating.

How common is Tara’s situation? Research suggests that 20% of women never negotiate at all. A woman who opts not to negotiate her starting salary upon graduation will forgo an average of $7,000 the first year, and will lose between $650,000 and $1 million over the course of a 45-year career. Why would women leave money on the table? There are several factors. When selecting metaphors for the process of negotiation, men pick “winning a ballgame,” while women pick “going to the dentist.” Expectations drive behavior. If women see negotiation as a chore, they either don’t negotiate or do so in ways that can hurt the outcome. There is also the (very real) fear, backed by research, that negotiating may come at the cost of being disliked.

Read the full article, written by Suzanne de Janasz and Beth Cabrera in Harvard Business Review.