Nazareth didn\u2019t hesitate to do just that: W wrote that the college promptly let her know that she was no longer welcome. \u201cThe institution has decided to withdraw its offer of employment to you,\u201d the terse reply concluded. \u201cWe wish you the best in finding a suitable position.\u201d<\/p>\n
What had W done wrong? Perhaps nothing, at least according to the advice to \u201clean in\u201d that women have become accustomed to hearing. \u201cThis is how I thought negotiating worked,\u201d W wrote. \u201cI just thought there was no harm in asking.\u201d (It\u2019s entirely possible that there were factors at play not covered in the leaked correspondence\u2014a Nazareth representative told me that the college was unable to comment on a personnel issue.)<\/p>\n
In a \u00a0survey\u00a0of graduating professional students, Linda Babcock, of Carnegie Mellon University, found that only seven per cent of women attempted to negotiate their initial offers, while fifty-seven per cent of the men did so. We see those dire statistics and think that women are, in a sense, self-sabotaging. They don\u2019t ask for the same compensation and benefits as men, so they can\u2019t rightly be expected to receive them. But is it really the case that the disadvantage stems from not asking? Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, acknowledges the difficulties of negotiation, but nonetheless urges \u00a0women to push forward (\u201cI negotiated hard,\u201d she writes) and to do what they would do if they weren\u2019t afraid. But, had W spoken to psychologists who study the role of gender in negotiation alongside more popularly rendered edicts from women at the top of their fields, she might have been less surprised at the outcome.<\/p>\n
Hannah Riley Bowles, a senior lecturer at Harvard\u2019s Kennedy School of Government and the director of the Women and Power\u00a0program, has been studying gender effects on negotiation through laboratory studies, case studies, and extensive interviews with executives and employees in diverse fields. She\u2019s repeatedly found evidence that our implicit gender perceptions mean that the advice that women stand up for themselves and assert their position strongly in negotiations may not have the intended effect. It may even backfire.<\/p>\n
Bowles and collaborators from Carnegie Mellon found that people penalized women who initiated negotiations for higher compensation more than they did men. The effect held whether they saw the negotiation on video or read about it on paper, whether they viewed it from a disinterested third-party perspective or imagined themselves as senior managers in a corporation evaluating an internal candidate. Even women<\/i> penalized the women who initiated the conversation, though they also penalized the men who did so. They just didn\u2019t seem to like seeing someone ask for more money. \u00a0In a follow-up study, Bowles asked participants whether they themselves would negotiate in the given scenario\u2014that is, they were now the job candidate and not the evaluating manager. The women, for the most part, said no. They were nervous that the conversation would turn against them. \u201cWomen are more reticent to negotiate than men, for good reason,\u201d Bowles says.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maria Konnikova writes: \u00a0This spring, an aspiring professor\u2014W, as she\u2019s chosen to call herself \u2014attempted to negotiate her tenure-track job offer with the Nazareth College philosophy department. She wanted a\u00a0slightly higher salary than the starting offer, paid maternity leave … Continue reading ![\"Negotiating\"](\"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Negotiating-300x208.jpg\")
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