Wars of words

I’m always a tad suspicious of overarching gender observations — not because they can’t be good, solid, well-thought-out considerations, but because they often come along with large axes to be ground.

This book, though, looks kind of interesting: Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide, by Linda Babcock and Sara Lachever. Its conclusion is that while women may be better at negotiating win-win situations in general than more competitive men, they usually avoid negotiations to begin with.

”Everything we know about gender is about when a negotiation is already taking place,” says … Babcock …. ”There’d been nothing asking the question: `Do women negotiate in the first place?’ My research says a resounding `no.”’
The idea for Babcock’s book came a few years back when a group of female grad students came to her office to ask why the men in their program got to teach their own courses while the women had to labor as graders for senior faculty members. The dean explained to Babcock that every student who asked to teach and offered a reasonable proposal was invited to give a course. Simply put, he said, ”More men ask.”
Babcock soon discovered that in the public policy master’s program where she taught, men landed average starting salaries that were 7.4 percent, or $4,000, higher than those of women. Surveying newly employed graduates, she found that even though the career services office urged everyone to negotiate their salary, only 7 percent of women did so, as against 57 percent of men. How much more money did the men bargain for? About $4,000.

The idea seems to be that women, being less confrontational, are more likely not to get into negotiations to begin with. As another reviewer put it, “Men see situations as adaptable; women see them as unchangeable. Men use metaphors like ‘winning a ballgame’ to describe negotiations; women use metaphors like ‘going to the dentist.’ Women are ‘more likely than men to think that simply working hard and doing a good job will earn them success and advancement.'”

Does this play a role in the gender gap in earnings? Perhaps.

This does tie in, it would seem, to the Mars/Venus idea of women being less confrontational, in general, and more relationship-building. Going in to dicker over used cars, or a pay hike, isn’t a good place to encourage folks to see things as win-win.

(Is there room for research here on how many women vs. men go for “fixed price” auto dealerships, like Saturn?)

That all being said, it’s worth noting that I, personally, loathe negotiations. I’m terrible at it. I’m terrible at negotiating for myself, and I’m terrible at negotiating from the “power” position.

Hey … maybe that writing test thing had something to it, after all.