Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations? [pdf]

http://www.fieldexperiments.com/uploads/w18511.pdf

by Uchikoma • 14 years ago

34 41 14 years ago

mherdeg• 14 years ago

I often find that when people discuss studies they rarely get beyond the abstract (and sometimes not even past the title!)

Just to get you started and maybe entice you to read the paper, the abstract says: "We observe interesting data patterns. For example, we find that when there is no explicit statement that wages are negotiable, men are more likely to negotiate than women. However, when we explicitly mention the possibility that wages are negotiable, this difference disappears, and even tends to reverse. In terms of sorting, we find that men in contrast to women prefer job environments where the ‘rules of wage determination’ are ambiguous. This leads to the gender gap being much more pronounced in jobs that leave negotiation of wage ambiguous."

One interesting result that's not in the abstract: even when the wage was explicitly negotiable, only about 25% of people bothered to negotiate! (This is for an "administrative assistant" style job.)

Nursie2• 14 years ago

That's weird.

Saying explicitly that it's negotiable means to me that there's more available and I only have to say a few words or pretend not to be interested in order to get that money.

I also learned early on in my career that when taking a job it's better to push for a higher salary at the beginning, because raises always seem to be based on what you're getting now, and targeted at just enough to stop you going elsewhere.

--edit-- male, for the record.

rprospero• 14 years ago

See, I would have had the opposite interpretation. Declaring the salary negotiable means to me that they're willing to hire a less qualified candidate (e.g. no degree) for a lower salary. By opening negotiations, I'm never going to get more than the original salary and they're going to start working at finding an excuse to pay me less.

xiaoma2• 14 years ago

My feelings is that everything is a negotiation... but there's always a price.

HelloMcFly• 14 years ago

If you want more information on this topic you can start by looking up articles by Alice Stuhlmacher, a professor and researcher at DePaul University.

michaelochurch4• 14 years ago

I don't think it's just a problem for women. Most of us enter adulthood with terrible negotiation skills, especially in engineering. I certainly did. The percentage of people who are decent negotiators is small and, empirically, most of them seem to be men.

Successful people negotiate everything: job title, compensation, authority in hierarchical companies, project allocation. If turned down for a raise, they get a better project or a "meaningless" title that improves the CV. They're resilient against rejection (an inevitable outcome of negotiation) but they keep trying and working to improve. The rest, who don't, get mediocre results-- male or female. In software, there are a lot of people who don't know how to negotiate-- at all.

In school, we live in an artificial environment where everyone is assessed on similar projects and grades are fairly objective. So negotiating for a better result-- a B rather than a C-- is seen as dishonorable and weak. You should have studied harder. This no-negotiation zone is reasonable in a world where grades are (in comparison to workplace performance reviews) exceedingly fair and 90-95% get passing grades. If you're on the threshold (a 'D' student) it means you were a weak performer who managed to squeak by.

But in the real world, for promotions and favors and work autonomy and VC funding, pass rates are << 50% and if you don't have it in you to negotiate for a better outcome, you're screwed.

theorique2• 14 years ago

In software, there are a lot of people who don't know how to negotiate-- at all.

Excellent points.

Many "computer people" are really good at what they do because they leveraged their introversion into uncommonly high levels of programming skill. In such an environment, the interpreter is "fair", the compiler is "fair" (although often uncompromising and unforgiving).

Once you get the "right" answer, it stays right and doesn't change unless external circumstances change (e.g. new compiler, new hardware, something breaks).

On the other hand, the human world is not always "fair", and it's often possible to push back against a judgment, using only high confidence and a loose but passionate argument.

Belief that the human world operates with the same exact logic and precision as the computer world is a source of many misunderstandings.

nradov• 14 years ago

I don't know about that. What I've learned is that compilers and interpreters are often ridden with defects, and you have to negotiate hard with suppliers to get them fixed.

Surio7• 14 years ago

In software, there are a lot of people who don't know how to negotiate-- at all. I've seen that. But I've also seen some very very hard negotiators in software as well. So, I don't agree with your generalisation. It's something else, but it is late and I am already depressed after reading some of the excellent comments. I am going to get some sleep and do the soul-searching bit on this with a fresh mind tomorrow.

This topic has been food for thought!

simonsarris• 14 years ago

> Successful people negotiate everything

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I also think you're kind-of side stepping the issue that the paper sought to quantify.

Yes its not just a problem for women, but there's a lot more pressure on women to avoid confrontational negotiation[1] because they'll be branded much more negatively (ie "Bitchiness" or some other term), and if they are, then they risk being taken less seriously.

Men don't have the same problem, as culturally strong/pushy personalities (that might fare better in negotiation or negotiate more) are seen as less of a cultural negative. It's something explicitly expected of one gender and seen as more repulsive in the other, and that becomes a big deal for things like salary negotiation.

[1] See Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553383876/

cjbprime• 14 years ago

> See Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553383876/

For what it's worth, there's what looks to be a strong rebuttal of most of the things this book says here:

http://fdiv.net/2012/01/20/pseudo-science-and-pseudo-feminis...

(I'd tend to think that your point stands anyway as being obviously true, but after reading the rebuttal again along with the link to this article I'm not sure anymore.)

tolos• 14 years ago

Maybe I just have limited experience, but this doesn't make sense to me:

1) Woman asks for higher salary; 2) she must be a bitch. 3) Therefore, she is taken less seriously.

What does that even mean?

jvm2• 14 years ago

I was confused by your comment

> I don't think it's just a problem for women.

Since the paper provided clear evidence that this problem is worse for women. But then I kept reading and learned that you believe

> The percentage of people who are decent negotiators is small and, empirically, most of them seem to be men.

So that clarified to me that actually you a) believe women are inferior and b) that you did not read even the article's abstract which clearly stated that

> We observe interesting data patterns. For example, we find that when there is no explicit statement that wages are negotiable, men are more likely to negotiate than women. However, when we explicitly mention the possibility that wages are negotiable, this difference disappears, and even tends to reverse.

Implying that women's failure to negotiate arises from being socialized not to raise a fuss about wages rather than a difference in intrinsic ability.

All in all pretty standard for a top comment about gender issues on HN.

michaelochurch4• 14 years ago

Sorry, I was talking about "fear of negotiating" topic. I don't claim to know why there are gendered pay disparities, and there's certainly some injustice going on. Lack of desire to negotiate can't explain all of it.

I certainly don't believe that "women are inferior". I was talking about negotiation skill. It can be learned, and there are plenty of women who are excellent at it.

stcredzero• 14 years ago

> So that clarified to me that actually you a) believe women are inferior

It does not do that for me. The existence of a gender role or a population bias in current society says nothing about men or women being superior or inferior. It most likely says something about society.

The percentage of people who are serial killers is small, and empirically, most of them are men.

hackinthebochs• 14 years ago

Your comment wasn't the least bit fair to michaelochurch

>So that clarified to me that actually you a) believe women are inferior

There is absolutely no way your quoted portion could honestly be read in a way that suggests that. "Empirically, most of them seem to be men" explicitly disavows any attempt at explaining the difference.

This is the problem I see with a lot on threads on the topic of social justice here and places like reddit. Some have a pervasive need to read everything in the worst possible light, even going to the point of inventing enemies to support a narrative of widespread persecution.

>All in all pretty standard for a top comment about gender issues on HN.

I'm not sure what you expect from a forum such as this. There simply isn't much to add in terms of the socialization aspect of this article that hasn't already been hashed out in other threads about gender issues. This study doesn't really add any new information that would warrant another discussion on the issue. Discussing how everyone is affected by lack of assertiveness in general, and specifically in salary negotiations will likely have much more utility, thus comments along that line get voted up. There is nothing to be read into this.

Surio7• 14 years ago

That entire comment read like an internal monologue that I frequently have with myself. :-(. I couldn't have worded it any better or differently. And, no I don't think you sidestepped anything or claimed that A is inferior to B or some such thing either.

But in the real world, for promotions and favors and work autonomy and VC funding, pass rates are << 50% and if you don't have it in you to negotiate for a better outcome, you're screwed.

I already had a bad day and shouldn't have read that line in the end. I am going to go and crawl into a foetal position until daybreak! :-(

michaelochurch4• 14 years ago

I already had a bad day and shouldn't have read that line in the end. I am going to go and crawl into a foetal position until daybreak!

Don't be depressed about it. Three words: parallel vs. serial. Build redundancy in your system. That's what "networking" is really about. Redundancy and parallel support.

In a typical corporation, unless you're savvy enough to devote serious effort toward internal networking, you have serial dependency: you need to get along with your boss, who needs to get along with his, and so on... up to the company itself performing well in the market. It's a chain of dependencies up to the top. If one link breaks, it disrupts your career. Parallelism is what you need to aim for.

If you have 20 1-in-5 chances, then your odds are overwhelmingly good of getting at least one hit: 98.9%. What you have to do is string together a set of these low-probability, high-impact opportunities... and be resilient against the inevitable rejections. As much as I loathe the "Game" worldview, don't get "one-itis".

SatvikBeri• 14 years ago

"Everyone sucks at negotiating, though men are slightly more likely to try" is supported by the study. See page 10. When salaries weren't explicitly listed as negotiable, only 10.6% of men and 8.2% of women even tried to negotiate. Even when they were explicitly negotiable, only about 22% of men and 23.9% of women tried.

This is definitely cultural, by the way. Where I grew up in India, everyone negotiates for everything, even very cheap trinkets.

Surio7• 14 years ago

>> This is definitely cultural, by the way.

Actually, I also thought about this one. I was actually thinking of the market scene from "Life of Brian": "What? You don't want to haggle on price?"!

But I did not pursue this thought as this is less of culture and more of context. In cheap trinkets or some other shop, the one thing on the back of your mind is that you can always walk away from it and there is no harm done. Moreover, in this case it is a buyer's market, as in, you simply try your luck with another shop/keeper if it didn't work out with a previous shop. And in the end, humans are loss averse, so there is still a lot of satisfaction if you came away without spending a single penny/rupee/roubles/etc.

OTOH, a job negotiation is anything but that. More often than not, a job market can be a seller's market (depends on your situation as well). You have invested a lot of time and effort in a particular interview (remember humans being loss averse? Now the tables are stacked against you), and if the negotiation scenario is lined against you (no other competing offers at the same time, the company is doing work that you would love to get into and the company knows that for sure, etc.) then it is not as clear cut as a trinket price negotiation.

christopherslee2• 14 years ago

i didn't read this, but i always wondered if women's salaries are lower on average because of a reluctance to negotiate. (thus citing that women's salaries are lower than men's has nothing to do with gender bias?)

I'm not trying to say that discrimination is ok, I'm just saying that the typical system requires you to ask for money, you're not just given it out of the kindness of your employers heart.

sses• 14 years ago

Maybe that typical system has a gender bias then :)

Perhaps if women are implicitly required to negotiate, and choose not to, then they will be recruited by another organization who is willing to pay them more without negotiation. You've just lost out on a good engineer - the employer has done themselves a disservice.

christopherslee2• 14 years ago

i think both men and women are implicitly required to negotiate.

i guess like other people are saying, i'm not sure if people look at two equal candidates and discriminate based on sex/age/other.

juridatenshi• 14 years ago

It might be a contributing factor, but I doubt it's the only thing going on. There was an interesting study recently showing a gender bias in academic science [1].

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109.abst...

crazygringo2• 14 years ago

I recall (can't find them now) there are studies which basically explain away the entire wage-gap between men and women as two factors:

1) women negotiate less 2) women take more time off for children, thus advance more slowly

Basically showing that there is no inherent gender discrimination on wages in the US, in the aggregate -- that it's entirely due to choices made by women, not any kind of discrimination whatsoever.

On the other hand, there are also blind studies testing resumes in certain areas, which show that employers perceive resumes with male names to be stronger than identical resumes with female names. And on the other other hand, I feel like every engineering place I've worked would always hire an equally-qualified woman over a man, since there are so few of them to begin with.

So, who knows...

scarmig• 14 years ago

"1) women negotiate less"

Simply because it's a choice made by women doesn't mean that they're not being constrained by discrimination or sexist norms.

Consider: what if the reason women choose not to negotiate is that the penalties for negotiation are higher for women? E.g., they'll be perceived as bitchy or ungrateful, while a man would lose nothing by negotiating or even gain character points for being assertive and proactive.

Not providing evidence that that's the case, here (though to some extent it certainly is). But even free choice is constrained by the system it's embedded in.

arrrg• 14 years ago

How can this …

“1) women negotiate less 2) women take more time off for children, thus advance more slowly”

… not be due to inherent gender discrimination (mostly strict gender roles)? Those things explain gender discrimination, they certainly do not explain it away.

Tycho• 14 years ago

Salary negotiations - they should probably teach this at school. My company has a 'comp day' where you head into a room with a couple of managers and they tell you what you're getting. But I've got no idea what the protocol is for disagreeing. Presumably it's their for negotiating otherwise they would you send you a letter and skip the meeting. A lot of people, when they don't know the protocol of a situation, will just nod and be swept along.

Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations? [pdf]

Related Stories