by Gneezy, Uri
When Minott first drove us from Guwahati airport into the city of Shillong, every square foot of the road was filled with people—women in colorful saris, dark-haired men in cotton shirts, half-naked beggars, children—all pushing and pulsing against one another in the sweltering heat. The next day, when Uri went to a local bank for the cash we needed for the experiments, the people behind him crowded over his shoulders as if they were trying to board a train. (Once again, he was a rich Westerner, parachuting into a foreign culture.) When he made the request to cash $60,000 worth of travelers’ checks, the cashier went to speak to his manager and, hours of negotiations and discussions later, Uri got a huge bag full of rupees and proceeded to count them out in front of everyone.
Fearing that the people pushing behind him would tear the bag right out of his hands, he turned and pushed his way through the crowd, then fled as fast as he could. (We now understood the exhilaration that the famous bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde must have felt after each heist.)
Minott drove us up impossible roads to our destination—a peaceful village in the midst of verdant hills and fecund fields. Though rich in natural amenities, the village was economically poor. We dropped our gear, including the bag holding all that money, in our unlocked, rented house. Then we set out to meet the villagers. Instead of being greeted by suspicious, red-robed Masai warriors who stood squinting at us, we met warm, welcoming, smiling people.
We discovered that life is considerably better for Khasi women than it is for their Masai counterparts. The Khasi are one of the world’s few matrilineal societies; inheritance flows through mothers to the youngest daughter. When a woman marries, she doesn’t move into her husband’s home; rather, he moves into hers (and out of his mother’s). The mother’s house is therefore the center of the family, and the grandmother is the head of the household. Khasi women don’t do much of the farming, but as the holders of the economic power they wield a great deal of authority over men.
Over the following weeks, we conducted ball-throwing experiments identical to those we conducted in Tanzania.
On one side of the village school building, the Khasi men dutifully queued up, and the researchers wrote down their survey data, just as we had done in Tanzania. One young man named Kyrham, who chose not to compete, was dressed in a simple white shirt and jeans. He smiled gently as he took hold of the first tennis ball. He seemed a little tentative at first, and his first attempt missed the bucket by a couple of feet. On the next try, he threw a bit more strenuously, and the ball landed on the other side of the bucket. He was clearly disappointed, and bit his lip. On the third try, he managed to land the ball squarely inside the bucket.
On the other side of the building, a woman stepped up to the line. Her assertiveness impressed us. Shaihun didn’t hesitate to choose the competitive option. She pulled up her sleeves, grasped a tennis ball, and squinted, ready for battle, at the plastic toy bucket ten feet in front of her. Confidently extending her bangled arm, she tossed the ball toward the target. She missed, but that didn’t lower her spirit. As the second ball landed inside the bucket, she shouted with joy. In fact, she sank the ball five times and in so doing won plenty of money for a few minutes’ worth of games. She was totally, wonderfully competent, sure of herself, and in command. It was time for her competitors to move over.
The percentage of men and women who chose competition, per society, tells the culture story. In competitive games, Khasi women chose to compete not only more often than US and Masai women, but even more often than Masai warriors.
We had landed in a world turned on its head, gender-wise. Our results, summarized on the previous page, showed that 54 percent of the Khasi women chose to compete, whereas only 39 percent of the Khasi men did. Khasi women were more likely to choose to compete than even the super-patriarchal Masai men. Generally speaking, the Khasi women behaved more like the Masai (or US) men.
The Khasi experiment sheds some insight—in this domain—into the long-standing debates about sex differences. Of course, we looked at the behavior of women in a society unlike most others in the world. But that was the point: to strip away, as much as possible, the cultural influences of a patriarchal society. In the case of the Khasi, the average woman chose to compete much more often than the average man. Or, put more simply, nature was not the only player in town. For the Khasi, nurture is king—or queen, as the case may be.
Our study suggests that given the right culture, women are as competitively inclined as men, and even more so in many situations. Competitiveness, then, is not only set by evolutionary forces that dictate that men are naturally more so inclined than women. The average woman will compete more than the average man if the right cultural incentives are in place.
Can Women Negotiate Effectively?
So how does this interest in competing affect Khasi women’s behavior in the marketplace, where strong economic incentives rule? To find out, we visited an open-air market in Shillong, where Khasi and non-Khasi people live side by side.
The Shillong open-air market—one of the largest in the world—is a lively affair. As you walk among the crowds, you take in the odor of rotting meat and blood; the fresh smell of tomatoes, onions, and peppers; the scent of flowers, straw hats, and cotton shirts. Cheap electronics and shoes flood the stalls.
To see how culture affects negotiation style, we gave Khasi and non-Khasi men and women money to buy two kilos of tomatoes in the market. Prices ranged between 20 and 40 rupees per kilo, depending on how well they haggled; our participants earned more if they negotiated a lower price. For every tomato-buying negotiation, we recorded the starting price, how long the bargaining lasted, and the ending price.
We discovered two important things. First, Khasi women, trained from birth to be assertive and self-confident, proved to be successful negotiators; our ball-tossing experiment had proven to be a good predictor of real life behavior in these markets. Our second finding was no less interesting. The market functioned very differently, depending on whether the pricing rules were set by women from the matrilineal tribe or not.
When the Khasi women entered a section of the market in which non-Khasi people set the price, men and women sold goods and haggled side by side, and the Khasi women proved themselves to be forces of nature. Shaihun was among them. She was a fantastic bargainer, reaching excellent prices for such items as tomatoes or cotton shirts for her sons. Interestingly, when Shaihun and her peers entered a section of the market in which only the Khasi set the price and only women bought and sold goods, we noticed that there was not much haggling. The shopping prices appeared, as it is in the West, to be more set than negotiated. It seemed that the surroundings and socialization were instrumental in dictating how people behaved.
The two observations are related. Women can be nurtured to react to incentives in similar ways as men and to negotiate just as well as men. But given the option, Khasi women set the incentives in their part of the market differently than men. By setting standard prices, they simply made the environment less competitive and aggressive, and they reacted to the social incentives that they themselves set.
Can Women Save Mankind from Itself?
Another lesson we learned from the Khasi is this: when women are in power, everyone seems to benefit.
In 1968, ecologist Garrett Hardin published a paper called “The Tragedy of the Commons,” in which he described what happens when a public resource becomes depleted because too many people are taking advantage of it.1 In the article, he described a situation in medieval Europe in which herders shared a common parcel of land on which everyone was allowed to graze cattle. As long as herders didn’t allow too many cattle on the land at once, everything was fine. But if one greedy herder brought additional cows to graze, the damage to the pasture increased, eventually depleting the parcel so much that none of the cattle could graze at all. (Remember the discussion of negative externalities when splitting the bill?)
Think, for example, about coastal fishing rights. In many places,
overfishing has so depleted stocks that the future of a number of fish species is in serious question. Given the high demand for fish, each fisherman has an incentive to fish as much as he can; but if everyone does the same, nothing will be left for future generations—at some point the fish population decreases so much that it doesn’t recover.
One conventional assumption about women is that they tend to care more about public goods, like fish stocks and grasslands, than men do. We set out to investigate this assumption with the Khasi, as well as in a neighboring village of Assamese, a patriarchal tribe, using a standard game from economics called the “public goods game” (so named because it emulates what happens when we contribute money to provide public goods for all, such as well-cared for national parks and clean air).
We gave each group the same set of instructions: “In this game, you can choose to invest in the community, or to invest in yourself.” We told some of the participants the following: “Every rupee you invest in yourself will yield you a return of one. Every rupee invested in the group exchange will yield a return of one-half for every member of the group, not just the person who invested it.”2
Given what you know now about their society, you might guess that the Khasi people were more inclined to spend their rupees to invest in the group. And you would be correct. Khasi men and women invested more in the group than did their Assamese counterparts. Basically, our results found fewer selfish people, regardless of gender, among the Khasi. These results open up a question—would a society “ruled” by women be very different than the one we live in today?
What Can We Do?
The edgy television series Mad Men shows us how far gender relations have advanced in American society since the 1960s, when public discourse held that women were supposed to look and act like Marilyn Monroe, and men were supposed to look and act like Rat Pack predators. The series offers an important look at the way society dictated male and female behavior before anyone dreamed of a women’s movement, black power, or gay liberation. People may not have been sure of who they were, but they knew who it wasn’t safe to be.
Fast-forward to the twenty-first century. Now we know that men and women react differently to competitive incentives; and this difference in reaction to incentives is strongly influenced by culture. Together, such social factors help to explain the gap between men’s and women’s job status and earnings. As the Khasi taught us, once women hold economic power and can express their true preferences without risking public scorn, they can learn how to react to competitive incentives to achieve considerable economic gain, and become true leaders in their societies.
The implications of our two key findings—(a) that women can be just as competitive, or even more competitive, than men; and (b) that when women have stronger economic influence, the society becomes more consensual and public-spirited—are profound. When we watched women haggle over tomatoes, we thought about American women who don’t apply for competitive jobs or ask for raises. We thought about the structural problems in Western societies that prevent women from achieving everything they can. And when we watched the women’s market operate with less friction, we thought about the US Congress, where bickering and grandstanding are the norm.
So if we want to encourage women and girls to be more competitive and to increase their earning power, what changes should we bring about to make that happen? What does all this mean for our daughters and yours?
Uri’s nineteen-year-old daughter, for example, believes that she can be successful in her future career. Her parents have encouraged her to believe that the sky is the limit and that she can achieve whatever she desires. At the same time, she feels that, at least in the culture of San Diego today, she can’t go out and compete as freely as her male peers. So how can she get to the top without behaving as aggressively they do?
Meanwhile, John’s South Side Chicago girls likewise notice that boys in their gym class who do not perform to their peak get scolded by coaches who, as we said before, tell them to “stop playing like a girl.” “Should we play like girls or boys?” John’s daughters ask. “Should we be nice, or grab what we can?”
As we noted at the opening of this chapter, women tend to avoid salary negotiations; laboratory research has shown, for example, that men are nine times more likely than women to ask for more money when applying for a fictitious job. But do such tendencies manifest themselves in the real world? And, if so, why?3
To find out, we ran a field experiment that was similar to the Craigslist experiment we described in Chapter 2. Between November 2011 and February 2012, we placed eighteen online “help wanted” postings for administrative assistants in nine major metropolitan areas in the United States. The jobs were either for a gender-neutral position in fundraising, or for positions in a sports environment, a situation that again prompted more male applicants. One ad said that that the job paid $17.60 and that the salary was negotiable. The other noted that the job paid a flat $17.60.4
We received interest from 2,422 people. What happened?
First, we discovered that when there was no explicit statement that wages were negotiable—the ambiguous case—men were much more likely to negotiate for a higher wage than women. However, when we explicitly mentioned the possibility that wages were negotiable, this difference disappeared, and even tended to reverse—in this case, women bargained slightly more than men.
In other words, when employers say that salaries are negotiable, women step up to the negotiating plate. But when employers don’t say this, and the rules determining wage are left ambiguous, men are more likely to negotiate for higher salaries.
And who applies for these positions? We found that by merely adding the information that the wage was “negotiable,” the gender gap in job applications shrank by approximately 45 percent. This was true even for so-called masculine jobs (our sports ad), where one would expect more applicants to be men.
These results show that women avoid job postings that are not explicit about the rules of the game, whereas men embrace such postings. Clearly, if they want a healthy applicant pool of both men and women, prospective employers should be explicit in the details of the job and the wage/benefit offering. We turn to further ideas in this spirit now.
What Employers Can Do
While our “salary negotiable” experiment had to do with responses to job descriptions, it didn’t involve face time between job seekers and employers. Nevertheless, it’s important to realize that when job descriptions are vague about whether salaries are negotiable or not, women should still “go for it.”
Women shouldn’t simply accept the first offer that’s on the table; they should counteroffer, and not be afraid to simply say, “I want more money,” without explaining why. That’s what men do, after all.5
Also, hiring managers should realize that many women have been acculturated to be risk-averse, which can pull them off the corporate ladder. All too often, women fail to ask for raises, or take on new projects—not because they lack talent, but because their cultural worldview has taught them that being assertive is not “ladylike.” Companies need to think about ways to encourage women to fight for the top corporate spots. One example to follow is the consulting firm Deloitte, which tries to ensure that female employees get considered for top assignments, and where at least 23 percent of senior management personnel are female.6 Firms like Deloitte will soon find themselves better off for doing so, because they will be able to uncover the true top talent in their organization, a move that will positively affect their bottom line.
Additionally, talent recruiters need to get on board. Instead of truly understanding what a candidate does and doesn’t bring to the table, recruiters typically rely on their intuition. Sometimes companies hire people because they feel the applicant would “fit” in a job without realizing that they may be biased in favor of men.
Companies that are aware of such biases can include processes that work against this tendency. For example, at Campbell Soup Company (where a woman
, Denise Morrison, is CEO), gender diversity is part and parcel of the company’s selling proposition because most of the people who buy its products are women. For that reason, the firm made a conscious decision to make sure that its leadership reflected people who looked like their customers.
Companies that understand why women react less to competitive incentives can use this information to their benefit, too. For example, the no-haggling Khasi market reminded us of a different market—auto dealerships in the United States. Many women hate the back-and-forth of “let me check with my manager” hassles that accompany a visit to buy a car. To address this, companies like Honda have tried to follow an idea first put forward by General Motors’ Saturn division, making no-haggle pricing part of its sales pitch. Though the Saturn division is gone, during its time its cars became very popular with women, who amounted to 63 percent of Saturn owners.
Policy Makers, Educators, and Parents
Policy makers, too, can do something to close the gender gap. If you are a policy maker, don’t apply bandages to old injuries when what we need is early, corrective surgery. For example, we are not sure Title IX, designed to level the playing field for female athletes, is the way to correct imbalances. Rather, ask yourself, “If we are going to create a more equitable society, what is the right point for intervention?” Given that differences in competitiveness spring partly from cultural influences, our investment in gender equality would probably be better spent on early childhood education and socialization than on making sure women’s basketball teams receive the same funding as men’s.
And if you are a parent, our studies have implications for the way you raise your kids. We are now convinced that investing in the self-confidence of our own girls is a lot like investing in retirement. Exposing our daughters to more competitive environments as they grow up, and especially early on, is vital. Such exposure is particularly important around the age of puberty.