I'm surprised. In a technical PM role a few years ago I found out that I earned 20-40% less than other PM's at the company. There were more than a dozen PM's and I was the only woman who was mid-level seniority. My male direct report made almost the same as me, while my female direct reports made a lot less. In my case it was not due to lack of initial negotiation, but that at each promotion I didn't get a sufficient bump (and since I was getting a raise, I felt grateful instead of negotiating in middle of promotion/raise!) Second reason, was that a lot of the male PM's had threatened to leave in the past and negotiated their raises that way, whereas I had never done that. Since then, I have negotiated HARD for every position I've taken and have not hesitated to turn down jobs if I'm not confident that they are offering me 50th percentile relative to men in the role. I've also encouraged women to find out salary data for their peers in order to get raises. Often when someone leaves the company they will openly tell you their salary or if you are friends they will just tell you. In so many cases, where a woman is one of only 1-2 women out of 15-20+ men, it turns out that she is making far less than men who have previously held her role or been in same role. It's strange to me that HR never seems to pick up on things like this!! Seems like the first thing you'd check given all the publicity on issue. Anyway I've only seen negotiation work well (even where a woman is making way less than peers) where the woman has also gotten a competing offer, so that's number 1 thing I encourage.