The glass ceiling became weaker at the Women’s Resource Center Tuesday as NIU women learned about how to ask and negotiate for higher wages.

Monica Szymczak, the former graduate assistant of the WRC who recently took a job with a law firm, organized the lecture “Asking for It! Salary Negotiation Tips for College Women” with the assistance of the WRC staff and had been planning it since last semester.

“It’s something that I’ve been involved in just because of my work with mediations in a courtroom setting, and once I started looking into the data and noticing it hasn’t really been changing over the years, it became more personal as a woman,” Szymczak said.

In the data Szymczak found, women are being paid three-quarters of what men are in the same jobs when their experience is equal. The data, Szymczak said, proves that unequal pay between men and women in the workforce has been around for decades despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which made it illegal.

Szymczak found this has continued because of a variety of factors such as mid-20th century biases and the pay differences that were in place before it was made illegal, as well as the fact that employees are contractually silenced from talking about salaries. She especially pointed out that women are less willing to negotiate salary.

The lecture was designed to teach women what to look out for in salaries when being hired by a company and how to work up the courage and confidence to negotiate higher wages while being tactful and respectful about it.

Szymczak spoke of her own experience where she had negotiated her salary by proving her true worth to a law firm and wound up earning $8,000 more because of it.

Some of those who attended the lecture found it to be applicable to their lives.

Anthropology graduate student Melissa Sierra said she looks to start her own business and hoped to hear about negotiations for funding.

“I was hoping she would touch on [negotiating finance], but I suppose it’s probably a different issue all together,” Sierra said. “Still, there were some really good points and tips made about going into the job market.”

Aimee Genova, a second year anthropology graduate student, said she had found herself in a situation of unequal pay when she worked at an animal clinic where male workers were making more than female workers who were there for four years.

“I thought this was a highly informative session with some eye-opening ideas about women and gender roles in the workforce,” Genova said. “I will definitely be applying what we learned here today.”