John Tory slammed for suggesting women get paid less because they don’t negotiate

Last week, President Barack Obama made gender income equality one the pillars of his State of the Union address.

The so-called 'gender income gap' is also an issue in Canada: According to the Conference Board of Canada, the gap in income between men and women is a whopping 19 per cent.

So what are the causes of it?

John Tory has an idea.

The radio talk show host — who may or may not run for the mayoralty in Toronto — is getting slammed for his opinion about reason behind the gap.

While on CP24, on Monday, Tory seemed to suggest that it was the fault of women.

"There's been quite a lot of writing recently about how the reason women make less money than men is because they don't negotiate the same way as men. Men adopt an active negotiating posture and women don't and it's interesting because the stakes are quite high in terms of the amount of money over a career that it could cost you," he told host Stephen LeDrew.

"When I've had to negotiate, but I will say to you that the number of men who came to negotiate with me when I was running a law firm or a company was much higher than the number of women. The women don’t come as often to complain. The men do, so my experience is a little different in that I do think that more men put a fuss up about their money and that may say a lot about..."

[ More Politics: Should the Harper government cap bank ATM fees? ]

Many have gone online and on social media to voice their outrage.

"John Tory, a serial loser in electoral politics, seems hell bent on keeping his losing streak alive if he decides to jump into the Toronto mayoral race," Press Progress wrote.

Liberal insider and Sun News analyst Warren Kinsella — who has publicly voiced his support for Olivia Chow for Toronto mayor — had this to say on his website.

The topic also buzzed on Twitter.

On his radio show, Tory defended himself saying that women not negotiating might be one reason for the income gap.

He also referenced some literature on the topic; one article in the Harvard Business Review from 2003 shows that women in fact, don't ask for raises.

"The first study found that the starting salaries of male MBAs who had recently graduated from Carnegie Mellon were 7.6 per cent, or almost $4,000, higher on average than those of female MBAs from the same program. That’s because most of the women had simply accepted the employer’s initial salary offer; in fact, only 7 per cent had attempted to negotiate. But 57 per cent of their male counterparts—or eight times as many men as women—had asked for more," notes the article.

"Another study tested this gender difference in the lab. Subjects were told that they would be observed playing a word game and that they would be paid between $3 and $10 for playing. After each subject completed the task, an experimenter thanked the participant and said, “Here’s $3. Is $3 OK?” For the men, it was not OK, and they said so. Their requests for more money exceeded the women’s by nine to one."

The article goes on to say women are less likely to negotiate because that's how they were socialized and because, within some company cultures, women are penalized when they do ask for raises.

What do you think?

Is Tory right? Is one of the reasons women get paid less is because they're less likely to ask for raises?

Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

(Photo courtesy of the Canadian Press)

Are you a politics junkie?
Follow @politicalpoints on Twitter!