How Avoiding Negotiation Hurts Women

Sept. 26, 2007 — -- I spent most of Sept. 19 at the campus of Arizona State University, conducting a negotiation study with "Good Morning America" cameras rolling. The study was based on my paper with colleagues Deborah Small, Michele Gelfand and Hillary Gettman.

Study participants signed up for our project, knowing that they would be paid between $5 and $12 for their time. When they arrived, they played a game of Boggle. When they were finished, our graduate student experimenter, Justin, went up to a participant and said, "Here is $5. Is $5 OK?"

We were, of course, watching to see who negotiated for more money. In the ASU study, we found that many more men negotiated than women. In our original paper, this gender difference was extremely large — more than eight times as many men as women negotiated (2.6 percent of women versus 22.9 percent of men).

And not only did men negotiate more often, the cameras revealed another striking difference: The men seemed extremely confident in asking for more money, while the women who did negotiate seemed very tentative. This was reinforced by the interviews that Tory Johnson conducted with the participants after the study.

One man described negotiation as really "fun" and like a game — something he enjoyed a great deal. He went on to say that negotiation was a big part of his life.

The women who negotiated reported being extremely anxious, asking for more money. And for some, the anxiety prevented them from negotiating at all, and, instead, they chose to take the $5 to avoid a negotiation.

Why is this difference between women and men a big deal? First and foremost, it can cause women to earn much less money than men over the course of their careers.

In my book with Sara Laschever, "Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiating and Positive Strategies for Change" (www.womendontask.com), we calculated that, by not negotiating her first job offer — simply accepting what she's offered, rather than negotiating for more — a woman sacrifices more than half a million dollars throughout her career.

This is a massive loss for a one-time avoidance — what is usually no more than five minutes of discomfort. And it's an unnecessary loss, because most employers expect people to negotiate, and, therefore, offer less than they're prepared to pay.

My research finds that far more men than women negotiate their first job offers. Since men also negotiate more than women during their careers — or negotiate more aggressively — the financial losses to women can be truly staggering.