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Comment by natchy | Hacker News Reader

How does this empower women? Sounds like lowering the bar for everyone.

The author even said she’s likely to undervalue her own worth. This proposal is a business straight up telling them their worth. Opposite of empowering. She wants prices listed like a McDonalds drive thru. She wants it easy.

Real empowerment would be teaching women how to properly negotiate a salary.

It’s not empowering to stay in t-ball.

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The measures she proposes would likely raise wages for everyone, especially women, because the employer’s chief advantage in salary negotiations is information asymmetry. They know what their budget is and want to go even further to have you tell them what you’ll accept (happily pocketing the difference if that was less than they would have paid). They also have a much better understanding of the market and comfort negotiating since they are doing this a lot more than you are.

I also think that helping women negotiate is more complicated than just teaching them techniques, because people will not necessarily react the same way to the same behavior from men as from women.

> The measures she proposes would likely raise wages for everyone

Then it’s not realistic. How can companies afford to raise their highest expense?

This will put a cap on skilled negotiators since it creates a fixed range.

Call it a “benefit”. I could see how it “benefits” more workers, but I wouldn’t call it “empowering”.

It does make good negotiators more powerless.

> This will put a cap on skilled negotiator

So what?

So it’s not “empowerment”. It’s equal outcomes. It’s not “leveling the playing field”, it’s removing the playing field. If that’s your goal whatever, but dressing it up behind platitudes is dishonest.

If there’s a band it’s still negotiable where in the band you end up.

> Then it’s not realistic. How can companies afford to raise their highest expense?

So we’re back to my original point then.

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