Women Don't Ask
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serves” (the minimum they would accept). They were also taught to
monitor their progress by tracking the goals they attained and to reward
themselves by celebrating the goals they achieved.43
The researchers hoped that this type of training might enhance per-
formance by improving each negotiator’s sense of control over the nego-
tiation. They thought that higher levels of perceived control might help
the students feel more self-confident and that this would translate into
“greater effort, persistence, and performance.”44
After the second round of training, the students participated in an-
other negotiation. The researchers found that the training in goal-setting
increased the goals of both men and women and led to improvements
in negotiated results for both. However, gender gaps in performance
remained because the women and the men increased their goals by
about the same amount and consequently raised the salaries they nego-
tiated by about the same amount—and the average difference between
them did not change. So the men still did better than the women. This
tells us that goal-setting can indeed increase women’s negotiated out-
comes, but if men receive similar training, gender gaps will persist.
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The “self-management” training produced more dramatic results.
This training, the researchers found, increased the salaries negotiated
by both men and women but increased them far more for women—
and completely eliminated the gender gap in performance. To explore
whether they were correct that the “self-management” training in-
creased the students’ feelings of control during their negotiations, the
researchers measured the students’ perceived control before and after
the training. As the researchers suspected, the women’s perceived levels
of control increased significantly after the training, but the men’s did
not (presumably because the men already felt fairly high levels of con-
trol before the training). The researchers concluded that changing the
women’s feelings of control over the negotiation process eliminated the
gender gap in performance. They also concluded that this type of self-
management training program can be extremely effective in improving
the agreements negotiated by women who have the “tactical knowledge”
they need to negotiate (they have studied basic negotiating tactics) but
lack the self-confidence and skills to use that knowledge—to translate
that knowledge into action.45
Linda proved the efficacy of this approach. Once she realized that
her female Ph.D. students were not asking for or getting what they
wanted enough of the time, she organized a series of workshops for
female graduate students. In the workshops, she helped the women
articulate the barriers and challenges they faced in obtaining what they
wanted. She encouraged them to examine which of these barriers and
challenges were real and which were imagined. She shared many of
the ideas that formed the foundation of this book, talked about ways
students could increase their feelings of control over the negotiation
process, and encouraged the women to try out these ideas in their
daily lives.
The results were striking. Paula, a senior graduate student, reported
that she had chosen not to teach for several summers in order to focus
on her own research. Then, the summer after she participated in Linda’s
workshop, an associate dean asked her to teach again. She agreed—
with the condition that she teach precalculus, which wouldn’t require
much preparation because she’d taught it before. A few weeks later, the
associate dean told her that he really needed her to teach calculus in-
stead. This required all new preparation and a big time commitment.
Paula was reluctant to agree, but the associate dean was in a bind and
she finally said okay—provided she could have a teaching assistant for
the course.
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When the summer session began, only five students had scored high
enough on the placement exam to enroll in calculus. At the first meeting
for summer instructors, the program coordinator told Paula that her
teaching assistant would be reassigned to a precalculus class and she
would have to do all the grading and administrative work for her five
students herself. Paula was sure that before taking Linda’s workshop
she would have accepted this. Instead, she told the coordinator that she
had an arrangement with the associate dean and she still wanted the
teaching assistant. But, since the grading would not be as time-consum-
ing with only five students, Paula offered to split the T.A. with the
precalculus instructor.
The coordinator seemed shocked that Paula was insisting on a T.A.
for such a small class. He thought it perfectly reasonable to ask her to
do all of the work associated with the course. But she hadn’t wanted to
teach in the first place; she was doing the associate dean a favor; and
she had a lot of her own work to do that summer. At another time in
her life, Paula would have felt guilty about making trouble and would
have conceded to the change without a fight. Instead, with her confi-
dence bolstered by Linda’s workshop, she not only insisted, she felt
fully justified in insisting. She thought she had offered a reasonable
compromise and wasn’t required to consider further concessions.
Paula got the half-time T.A. and felt good about how she’d handled the
situation.
Another student, Marie, told Linda about shopping with her husband
for air conditioners at a large national chain. They were purchasing
three units, so Marie asked the sales clerk for a quantity discount of 15
percent. The clerk said he couldn’t do that. Instead of backing down
immediately as she would have before Linda’s workshop, Marie coun-
teroffered and asked for 10 percent off. The clerk said okay. When
Marie and her husband got home, they found that the boxes had already
been opened and the units appeared to have been used. Marie called
the store and asked them to pick up the old ones and deliver new ones.
She also asked for an additional 10 percent off the units for her trouble.
To her husband’s astonishment, they agreed. Marie had never raised
her voice, threatened to sue, or used harsh language. She determined
what she felt was fair (a discount, delivery), and calmly asked for it.
Her husband, who until then had rarely seen her stand up for herself,
was stunned and delighted.
The rest of the workshop participants reported similar successes.
Very quickly, these women stopped accepting the status quo and began
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challenging it; they aimed higher in their negotiations and resisted con-
ceding too much or too soon. As a result, they were able to open up
opportunities for themselves, negotiate better salaries and benefit pack-
ages, and overcome barriers that previously would have stopped them.
Linda keeps in t
ouch with most of these students and regularly hears
how, at every stage of their careers, these women continue to examine
the circumstances of their lives, identify desirable improvements, and
ask for things they haven’t been offered. They don’t always get all they
want, but they don’t give up too easily—and rarely fail to improve their
lot. Even more important, perhaps, they feel comfortable and confident
exerting far more control over their lives and careers.
Wanting Different Things
Sometimes a woman sets a low target for a negotiation not because she
lacks self-confidence or perceives asking for more to be too risky, but
because she has other goals for the negotiation—goals that are not less
important than a man’s goals, just different.46 These may include getting
a flexible work schedule or shorter hours so that she can fulfill some of
her personal goals, such as being a good mother. Goals of this sort
are so important to many women that they will sacrifice many of their
professional goals, such as increased job responsibility, higher pay, and
greater opportunities for career advancement, in order to get what they
want. Although it’s important to recognize that women may bring a
broader array of personal goals into their job negotiations, in many cases
women probably don’t need to sacrifice as much as they think they do.
When Melissa, the social worker, went back to work after the birth
of her first child, her principal goal, she said, was to get the hours she
wanted so that she could pick her daughter up from day care and ac-
tively participate in her schooling and her life. Believing that this was a
lot to ask, she accepted the first job that agreed to give her the hours
she wanted and she accepted the salary she was offered without negoti-
ating. “I did feel like I was conceding other things,” she said, but “if
they were willing to give me this [the hours], then it didn’t matter that
this job was kind of a go-nowhere job for me.” Her belief that asking
for the hours she wanted was a lot to ask impelled her to compromise
every other goal she had for her professional life. The lesson here is not
that women shouldn’t want what they want. Melissa’s goal of spending
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a lot of time with her daughter was a great goal. But she probably didn’t
have to give up so much else to get it.
Of the adult females in this country who work, only 71 percent work
35 or more hours a week.47 Many of the others choose to work less than
full-time in order to attend to some of their other goals, but it’s im-
portant to remember that these preferences, to a large degree if not
completely, have been socially constructed—and that they can limit the
choices of both men and women (working fewer hours may be less
socially acceptable for a man than for a woman, for example). In addi-
tion, limited opportunities in the labor market may explain some of this
difference, with women less able to find full-time jobs than men.
The bottom line is that whatever their personal and professional aspi-
rations, women can achieve more in a negotiation if they walk in with
more ambitious goals. Whatever they want, pitching their goals higher
helps them focus more, hold their ground, and come away with more.
Not the Whole Story
Will persuading women to raise their targets be enough to get women
paid what they deserve? Will helping women increase their self-confi-
dence around negotiating ensure that they get recognized for the work
they do? Unfortunately, not always. Despite all the positive change
achieved over the past half-century, some employers still will not con-
cede as much to a woman in a negotiation as they will to a man. In
addition, employers often make lower first offers to women than
they make to men and take it for granted that women will work for
less. In the next chapter, we look at the ways in which external forces
prevent women from negotiating more successfully even when they set
high targets, feel confident about what they deserve, and valiantly resist
conceding.
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7
Just So Much and No More
Negotiation nevertakes place ina vacuum. Everythingfrom where
a negotiation takes place (the business world, the political arena,
the commercial world, the home), the issue or issues at stake (a price,
a vote, who will do the dishes) and the roles, status, and relationships
of the parties negotiating (a boss, a business client, a salesperson, a
spouse) can influence both the tone and outcome of a negotiation. By
now it will come as no surprise that gender norms also influence how
most negotiations unfold. This chapter looks at how certain situations
can prevent women from getting more of what they want in a negotia-
tion. It looks at how people frequently enforce stricter limits on what
they will grant to women in a negotiation, force women to concede
more and accept less—and in many cases limit women’s ability to exer-
cise both personal and professional power.
Requiring More, Conceding Less
In some situations people routinely take a tougher stance against
women than they take against men—this has been conclusively demon-
strated. One study by the economists Ian Ayres and Peter Siegelman
showed that salespeople in car dealerships consistently quote higher
prices to women than to men, for example. The “buyers” in this study
were trained by the researchers with the same “script” and all tried to
buy the same type of car. They also shared a variety of characteristics,
such as age, level of education, attractiveness, and style of dress. The
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only significant differences among them were whether they were male
or female and black or white. But these turned out to be the differences
that counted: Consistently, in more than 300 buying attempts, salespeo-
ple quoted higher prices to women than to men, and much higher prices to African Americans.1 This tells us that car salespeople, as a group,
have learned (or been trained) to make higher first offers in negotiations
with women and African Americans. Since we know that higher first
offers go hand in hand with higher targets, we can conclude that car
salespeople also set higher targets against women and African Americans.
And higher targets, as we’ve already demonstrated, tend to produce
higher negotiated outcomes, meaning that women and African Americans
usually pay more than white men for their cars. The bad news is inescap-
able: In negotiations over buying a car, at least, women and African
Americans start out at a disadvantage before they even begin.
Another study, by the economist Sara Solnick, used something called
the “Ultimatum Game” to look at general attitudes toward men and
women when they are negotiating. In the Ultimatum Game, researchers
give two people a certain amount of money, such as ten dollars, to
divide. One person, the “proposer” suggests a division of the ten dollars
for you). The other person, the “responder,” then decides whether to
accept this offer. If the responder accepts, the two players are paid the
amounts suggested by the proposer. If the responder rejects the offer,
both players get nothing and the game is over—and the players know
this in advance. This game helps researchers understand people’s per-
ceptions of fairness and how those perceptions influence their behavior.
If fairness were not an issue, researchers assume, self-interest would
motivate most proposers to suggest $9.99 for themselves and one cent
for their responders. But once fairness is calculated in, each proposer
must guess the minimum amount the responder will accept as fair. The
responder must then decide whether the offer is fair enough to be ac-
ceptable, or so unfair that getting nothing would be preferable.
To look at how ideas about gender influence behavior, Solnick in-
formed the two halves of each research pair only of the gender of the
other player (they never met).2 She discovered two interesting things.
First, she found that both men and women made less generous offers
to female responders than to male responders—12 percent lower on
average. This makes it clear that people of both sexes expect women to
accept less than men and perhaps even think that this is right (women
should accept less). Given the demonstrated power of other people’s
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expectations to influence behavior, this expectation alone translates into
powerful pressure on women to do exactly that—accept less. Angela,
the marketing director for the community development bank, bluntly
summed up: “People are a lot more comfortable with giving you less
when you’re a woman.” Solnick’s second finding turned out to be the
flip side of her first: We don’t just insist that women accept less, she
discovered; we also demand that women give away more. Both male
and female responders required much larger offers from women than
they required from men to make an offer acceptable (42.5 percent larger
on average).
The expectation that women will demand and accept less and give
away more was confirmed from a different angle by our interviews.