Can Your Gender Impact How You Negotiate? Research Says Yes.

Gender inequality, or the unequal treatment of Men and Women, is a longstanding issue that is still relevant today. While significant progress has been made in the past decades, gender role bias can show up in several instances - including negotiations.

Negotiation is an unavoidable part of life. From haggling with a seller on the streets to delicate discussions about higher pay with managers, negotiation is an art everyone must master. This is especially true in the professional world, where your ability to advocate for oneself is a role that cannot be outsourced. But how does gender disparity impact one’s ability to negotiate?

How Does it Manifest:

Linda Babcock, co-author of ‘Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide’, explains how she identified the critical difference in how men and women approach negotiations.

• As a Professor, she noticed that male graduate students were teaching classes, while female graduate students were not - rather, they were working as assistants. Why? Because the female students never asked for better opportunities.
• Linda Babcock and co-author Sara Laschever discovered that women struggled to stand up for themselves. They were, due to social conditioning, lower self-esteem or simply an inability to see the unique value of their own work, unlikely to negotiate fair compensations for themselves.
• Men, however, seem unafraid to express their opinions and demand what they believe they deserve. This leads to them earning better opportunities than their equally talented female counterparts.

A deeper dive into this interesting social phenomenon reveals more.

• As Babcock and Laschever recount in Chapter 4 of their book, employment opportunities arose for women only in the last few decades. Workplaces now had assertive, bold and aggressive career women in the spotlight.
• Male employees, previously unacquainted with such expressions of female power in the workplace, were said to find these women ‘angry’, ‘bossy’, and ‘arrogant’. It can be noted here that these traits, when found in working men, are typically celebrated.
• Women in the workplace realised that being confident resulted in disapproval from peers and even professional setbacks. As a result, they may have chosen to conform and comply simply to protect their careers.
  • This is backed by research, which found that when women were as aggressive as men in the workplace, they were less liked by peers, only considered worthy of lower pay and seen as less competent for their roles.

Consequences:

When women avoid voicing themselves in the workplace, they face very real and unfair consequences. In addition to encouraging poor gender stereotypes, women are unable to earn the economic and professional benefits they deserve. However, they may also face repercussions upon speaking up, resulting in a complicated situation. As a result, there is a need for increased discourse on how to minimise gender bias in negotiations, and how women can take steps to mitigate their own growth.

Sources:

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691089409/women-dont-ask 
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/gender-bias-work-assertiveness-double-bind-felicity-menzies-fca/ 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2021/01/21/why-women-fall-short-in-negotiations-its-not-lack-of-skill/?sh=2e1b770b5d02