Overall, the article explained how women are less likely to negotiate a higher initial salary, as well as raises throughout their career. A Professor at CMU ran several experiments with volunteers and found that men were much more likely in all experiments to ask for money.
They also researched the percentage of graduate students accepting job offers and found that four times as many men as women attempted to negotiate for a higher starting salary. While the difference may only be a few thousand, over a career this small difference can result in several hundred thousand.
But why don't women just negotiate for more? Bowles, the professor at CMU, ran several experiments to find out. One of the most interesting findings is that men were less willing to work with women who attempted to negotiate salaries than with women who just accepted the offer.
As a manager, would you look at potential employees, male or female, differently if they attempted to negotiate their salary?
4 comments:
I find this to be very interesting! I know as I was younger, I felt intimidated to ask and negotiate. Since years have gone by and I have been surrounded with monstly men in my field, I found the confidence to haggle for everything!!!
I was recently at Dicks and negotiated for a pair of sneakers....I got 25% knocked off in addition to the sale price. All you have to do is ask.
In these days, I would think woman may negotiate more for flex time than money. My neighbor tried to negotiate on her new job offer. They didn't budge with salary but agreed to flex time and working virtual on occasion.
I wrote my paper on the glass ceiling. One of my main points revolves around this negotiation topic. Most of my research stated exactly what you found as well. Women are more relational and want to please others whereas men look for opportunities to stand out and point out their differences during negotiations.
I will never think about this. I always thought that everybody have the right of negotiate their salary, and I assumed that most of the people do it. I have not experienced any problem when I have tried to negotiate my salary when I was applying for a new job. Sometimes I have had to accept what they offered me, but other times they have offered me more than I asked them. So, the answer depend of the kind of job you are applying for and how is the demand in that area.
Hi Jessica,
Looking at the topic from a manager’s point of view I would not look at men or women differently when it comes to salary negotiations. My thoughts on this would be everyone should have an equal opportunity to negotiate pay. I mean in this tough economy everyone has to pay bills and stretch money a little farther. I think for women in the workplace it is absolutely fine to negotiate pay and managers should not be biased to this. It seems though the workplace environment has evolved from prior years men still have a bit of an advantage when it comes to pay. Managers may also have been influenced from past years that men negotiate salary more than women and may find it strange if women do try to negotiate for higher wages. There may be more elements behind manager’s viewpoint on pay negotiations. This is a very interesting topic.
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