Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling: Just how much will negotiating for that extra $1000 cost a woman?

August 13, 2007 10:20 PM

Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling: Just how much will negotiating for that extra $1000 cost a woman?"Although it may well be true that women often hurt themselves by not trying to negotiate, this (Carnegie Mellon) study found that women's reluctance was based on an entirely reasonable and accurate view of how they were likely to be treated if they did. Both men and women were more likely to subtly penalize women who asked for more -- the perception was that women who asked for more were 'less nice'." (Washington Post)
posted by anitanita (39 comments total)

That was an awesome article, thanks muchly! Technically nothing we didn't already know, somewhere, but very well laid out nonetheless, and it's always good to have scientific research to back this up.

And yeah, I've always hated female bosses. They're a lot more finicky than males. Unfortunately, they also seem to be a lot more prevalent in the part-time-job sector of the Service Industry.
posted by Phire at 10:50 PM on August 13, 2007

And yeah, I've always hated female bosses. They're a lot more finicky than males.

Well, if you went around the office making statements like this, I'd be finicky enough to fire you too. You do realize that "women you have worked for" =/ "all women bosses" yes?

I mean, I've worked for some redneck, asshole, racist, sexist pigs in my time, all men. Oddly enough, I have never believed that they necessarily represented every other member of their gender.
posted by emjaybee at 10:58 PM on August 13, 2007 [16 favorites]

It's an interesting study, and I think it probably validates "common knowledge set" that most women who've spent a significant amount of time in the workforce already knew.

I think one of the reasons, before I started my own company, that I primarily worked as a consultant, was because there was never any issues tied to my salary demands. Consultants are often viewed as "more valuable" when they ask for an above market rate. (I call it the "Look at her fee structure, she must be a frickin genius!" factor. ) I always asked for at least 20% above market and was willing to be talked down by adding bennies...good parking, a chunk of stock at project completion, whatever.

Did the people who negotiated with me think I was a bitch? Yeah, probably. So what. They weren't the ones I needed to work with, and what I was being paid never came up once the deal was struck.

But, that "see the hill, take the hill" mentality towards compensation doesn't work well when you're a woman who has to report up to the person with whom you've just played hardball. There are a few fields where negotiation is acceptable/expected, but outside of those, the odds are that any woman who plays serious hardball about compensation will be replaced. (At least in the US.)

As a business owner, I wouldn't think any worse of someone who tried to negotiate a higher rate. I'm a tough negotiator, and they probably wouldn't get it, but I certainly wouldn't begrudge anyone the chance to give it a shot.
posted by dejah420 at 10:58 PM on August 13, 2007 [3 favorites]

Emjaybee, make that "I've always grossly disliked the female bosses I've had to work for. Oddly enough, the male bosses were less objectionable on average, as they tended to be less finicky." I didn't mean to insinuate a generalization, being female and quite feminist myself.
posted by Phire at 11:07 PM on August 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Still, if more women negotiated, then men would start to get used to it. I don't think it would be smart for women to expect their gender perception to change when men realize they're being unfair.
posted by Citizen Premier at 11:11 PM on August 13, 2007

Citizen Premier: Yeah, that's true, and I imagine that will happen over time. At the same time, though, if women know that they're likely to be penalized for negotiating (either they know it explicitly, or they just don't 'want to look like a bitch'), then they might decide that it's not worth the risk and let someone else blaze the trail.

This kind of stuff is what really fascinates me about microeconomics; the feedback loops that affect behavior in intuitive yet intricate ways, and how it's possible to identify and model psychic and social costs along with monetary ones.

Someone quoted in the article made it clear that they don't have any kind of solution, and that they're just identifying a trend. I wonder if there is a "solution" for this kind of thing, or if it will just gradually work itself out. Most projections demonstrate that women's incomes are steadily rising as men's incomes fall (in the US, I don't know about other countries).
posted by dismas at 11:25 PM on August 13, 2007

Still, if more women negotiated, then men would start to get used to it. I don't think it would be smart for women to expect their gender perception to change when men realize they're being unfair.

...But, if women are responding to cues that they will in fact be penalized for negotiating, it's not fair to ask them to take that hit in order to be an example. It's kind of a double bind, you see?
posted by SoftRain at 11:33 PM on August 13, 2007

And SoftRain says it much more articulately than I did.
posted by dismas at 11:55 PM on August 13, 2007

it's not fair

Of course not. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be the best course of action for women to take.
posted by Citizen Premier at 12:16 AM on August 14, 2007

...er, not that I know the best course. But you get what I mean.
posted by Citizen Premier at 12:28 AM on August 14, 2007

it's totally unfair. men who ask for more are perceived as more nice.
posted by bruce at 12:32 AM on August 14, 2007

men who ask for more are perceived as more nice.

Well, the article didn't say that. Maybe nicer than women who ask for more, but not necessarily nicer than men who don't ask for more. Contentedness is considered part of friendliness in both genders, just more so in women.
posted by Citizen Premier at 12:37 AM on August 14, 2007

citizen premier, i agree with you 100%. men who ask for more are nicer than women who ask for more, but not as nice as men who ask for nothing. i'm striving to be the nicest man on here. i also agree with you that contentedness is more important for women. i'm moderately content, but considering the difference between this and optimum contentedness, all i can say is, thank god i'm not a woman.

when vague standards for unquantifiable attributes are used for gender one-upmanship, it invites contrarian voices to essay one-upwomanship. you can see i'm trying to be nice here.
posted by bruce at 12:52 AM on August 14, 2007 [4 favorites]

further elaboration: the question "just how much will negotiating for that extra $1000 cost a woman" struck me as, well, not nice or not nice either. if she declines to negotiate for more, she gets the stated offer. if she does negotiate for more, she will (in my experience) get some more, maybe not the whole $1000. i don't understand how getting more can be described as a "cost". only if she is actually debited, if she faces shrinking offers on account of her demands, can it be said to be a cost, and none of the women i know will continue to participate in a negotiation where that's going on.
posted by bruce at 1:10 AM on August 14, 2007

Are you suggesting it's all a bit... irrational?
posted by Grangousier at 1:13 AM on August 14, 2007

We really need to figure out how equality and difference properly work together. Obviously it is patently ridiculous to say that all of the gains that 20th century feminism achieved for women are bad for society, but it does seem that slotting women into exactly the same interactional roles as men may not always work.

Yes, I made up the word interactional.
posted by blacklite at 1:33 AM on August 14, 2007

Also, re: niceness, yes, asking for more money after a psych study is probably just a matter of niceness. Declining an initial job offer because the pay is too low, however, is just a matter of how things sometimes work.
posted by blacklite at 1:36 AM on August 14, 2007

Yep. There are some jobs, like sniper or fighter pilot, are just better for women. Whereas men are better off with a machine gun or a hatchet.
posted by Citizen Premier at 2:30 AM on August 14, 2007

I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, CP.
posted by liquorice at 2:48 AM on August 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

If I ever met a fighter-piloting sniper woman, I'd marry her in a second. Only if she let me keep my hatchet-flinging machinegun, though.
posted by tehloki at 3:13 AM on August 14, 2007

Oh c'mon tehloki, you have to go at least for a chainsaw attached to that gun.
posted by Phire at 3:26 AM on August 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm tired of chopping wood all day whilst my wife flies around in her fighter jet :-(
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:43 AM on August 14, 2007 [6 favorites]

...men are better off with a machine gun or a hatchet.

I prefer slow poison, myself.
posted by Coventry at 4:03 AM on August 14, 2007

I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union used female fighter pilots and called them "witches" or something. And I've heard they're better snipers, too. But I'm also very tired.
posted by Citizen Premier at 4:49 AM on August 14, 2007

The connection the article didn't make for me was whether being perceived as nice was in fact an advantage for a woman (or man) in the workforce. Basically they posited two scenarios: a) I am offered a job and accept the opening offer, and I am perceived as nice; and b) I am offered the job and negotiate for 2k more per annum, and I am perceived as a bitch. (There is also c) I try to negotiate and am rebuffed and take the job anyway or d) I try to negotiate and don't get my salary and don't take the job. But for the sake of discussion I am sticking to a and b.)

Once I start the job, what are the true consequences of the perception that I am either nice or a bitch? Will my immediate supervisor, with whom I presumably negotiated, somehow penalize me for my higher salary? How long will the perception of my bitchitude linger after I actually start the job and the person gets to know me? Will I be actually more effective if I am perceived as a hard-hitter, even if I am less liked?

In the studies of the women who didn't ask for $8 when they were offered a sliding scale of $3 to 8, what do they care whether the grad assistants offering the cash think they're nice or not?

The point is, women may be rationally assessing individual's responses to their negotiation, but they may not be rationally assessing the true consequences of those responses.

This study doesn't really speak to this issue, so I think it's really not correct for the press to describe the result as a discovery that women's refusal to negotiate in various situations is rational. The 'social cost' piece is totally lacking.

(I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these conclusions come from the journalist, not the scientists.)

Anyway, in my personal experience it's not really an advantage to be perceived as 'nice,' as it also implies pushover, and your staff try to get away with everything they can. Being seen as a hard-hitter can be an advantage in a lot of ways. (Personally I like to think I am both a nice person and a hard-hitter. I am always polite etc. but if people don't comply with deadlines and such I make a big deal. So they do what I ask.)
posted by miss tea at 5:10 AM on August 14, 2007

I wonder if there is a "solution" for this kind of thing, or if it will just gradually work itself out. posted by dismas at 2:25 AM on August 14 [+] [!]

One solution is lock-step pay scales, like they have in the legal field for the first few years out of law school.
posted by footnote at 5:53 AM on August 14, 2007

Or publicly available salary information, like at many public universities.
posted by transona5 at 6:12 AM on August 14, 2007

In my corporate experience, this study rings somewhat true, and extends beyond the pre-job negotiations. Women often have a double bind. Aggressiveness is a desired trait for getting ahead, yet assertive and powerful women are often perceived negatively and labeled as bitches. But since it's often a damned if you do and damned if you don't bind, you might as well go for the brass ring.

The points miss tea raises are good ones. What is the real price being paid? And is the price as steep or as pervasive in its negative consequences as is the price for being short-changed over the years?

I've always negotiated for better deals on being hired, asked for promotions, and asked for better raises, but it hasn't always been easy. But somewhere along the line, someone helped me to understand that being treated fairly and equitably generally just wouldn't happen unless I took an active role in making it happen. While it wasn't always comfortable for me to be assertive in this area, it was always distinctly less comfortable to see myself as an underpaid patsy. The age-old role of women as people pleasers is hard to break, but the more women do this, the less negatively it will be perceived over time.

While I can't say that I personally experienced any lingering repercussions for my efforts, I can say that I frequently see assertive women being criticized or punished in some ways that assertive men are not.

Part of the negative perception surrounding the pay issue may sometimes lie in women being less comfortable in stating their needs and therefore more awkward in their negotiations. The good news is that it is a skill that can be learned and improved upon with coaching and role playing. Mentoring is a firmly engrained tradition among men, but less established among women who - in many industries - are still under-represented in management. In most of the jobs I've held, this was the case. So part of the solution might be in better informal mentoring and networking among women. As a woman manager, I've always viewed it as my responsibility to help blaze a trail - both in the example I set, in the influence I wield, and in actively mentoring and coaching other women. I ascribe to the "rising tide" theory and hope that over time, sex-based work inequities may be much less of an issue. I've certainly seen huge improvements over my lifetime, but I'm not satisfied we're there yet.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:28 AM on August 14, 2007 [3 favorites]

I mean, I've worked for some redneck, asshole, racist, sexist pigs in my time, all men. Oddly enough, I have never believed that they necessarily represented every other member of their gender.

Boy are you wrong about that. Give any man enough time and he'll eventually exhibit at least two of the above mentioned traits. My boss is a woman and I really like her but it makes me cringe when she immediately backs down and tries to be Mrs. Nicey Nice to her, jackass, bosses (all male). It's almost like someone flips a switch and she goes from confident professional woman to...I don't know how to describe it. I don't know what the hell I'm trying to say here but it really bugs me.
posted by MikeMc at 6:31 AM on August 14, 2007

I have no idea what you're trying to say either, MikeMC.
posted by agregoli at 7:56 AM on August 14, 2007

Female Soviet night-bombers were called Night Witches, by both the Soviets and their Nazi targets.

That's the only thing I have to add: I've liked all of my female bosses.

Though I can certainly picture some of them sneaking up on the Wermacht in the middle of the night and bombing the beejezus out of them
posted by anvilcity at 9:03 AM on August 14, 2007

Once I start the job, what are the true consequences of the perception that I am either nice or a bitch? Will my immediate supervisor, with whom I presumably negotiated, somehow penalize me for my higher salary?

I work at an agency dealing almost daily with both women and men who work on a contract basis. With every booking, we offer a rate, and some people ask for more (based on talent, skill, experience, etc.) The (subconscious?) perception by my boss (and sometimes by myself, when I feel that asking for the additional pay is unwarranted) is that the person asking for more money thinks he/she is worth more than other people, and that makes him/her appear unfavorable to us. As a result, the people who are more flexible on pay are offered more jobs, which means they earn more anyway.*

On the other hand, I am a female, I do not work on a contract basis and I have never asked for a raise, even though I think I deserve one. I already have self-esteem issues (I think most women do, to some extent - I hate the fashion industry), and maybe those issues affect how I imagine my boss will respond if I ask for a raise. I know it damn near killed me to ask for sick days after 5 years of working with her. When I finally did approach my boss regarding sick days, she debated with me over the course of two days and eventually relented, but came down harder on me than ever, as though sick days are unreasonable. Perhaps they are, by her way of thinking.

I wonder, though - if I ask for a raise, regardless of whether I get it or not, will my workload increase and be even more annoying and stressful? I think so. Will it actually happen? Who knows? I'll probably just wait it out until my boss decides to give me a raise again, when she feels generous.


*I don't tend to think in terms of "nice" or "bitchy" when it comes to employees, unless their actions truly warrant it. I do tend to think in terms of "understanding" and "unrealistic" or even "greedy". If I'm wrong for thinking that, then so be it.
posted by mitzyjalapeno at 9:33 AM on August 14, 2007

emjaybee: I've worked for some redneck, asshole, racist, sexist pigs in my time, all men. Oddly enough, I have never believed that they necessarily represented every other member of their gender.

Phire didn't make the leap, from "bosses of a particular gender I have had" to "all members of a particular gender," that you propose.

If you were to say that most men are redneck, asshole, racist, sexist, etc. I could argue. If you were to say that male bosses disproportionately exhibit such tendencies, I don't know if I could argue. I certainly couldn't point to my own experience as a counterexample. And I'm male.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:39 AM on August 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

When being offered my current job, I took my husband's advice on salary negotiation. He seemed to think that it is perfectly reasonable and expected to ask for more than the starting salary. I was horrified at the thought. I liked my old job so I decided to give it a shot since I had nothing to lose. I didn't get what I asked for, but I did get more than the original offer. I also think I gained respect from having done so.
posted by haunted by Leonard Cohen at 10:12 AM on August 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yep. There are some jobs, like sniper or fighter pilot, are just better for women. Whereas men are better off with a machine gun or a hatchet.

Too bad that women can't actually be snipers or combat pilots (at least, not in the US). But hey, I'm sure the exciting world of Watercraft Operation or Small Arms Repair is just as good. Yes, ma'am, your new MOS as a Special Band Member or Field Artillery Meteorological Crewmember is the fast track to command for sure!

Seriously, though, go here and put in something like "infantry" (where snipers are) or "air" (ditto for pilots). Then click the "only jobs open to women" box and search again. It's pretty depressing -- the latter looks more like the curriculum at Local Trade U. than the military. I sort of expected to see TV/VCR Repair in there. And the best part is, Armament Repairers and Avionic Mechanics aren't combat roles, but sometimes they get killed in Iraq just the same!
posted by vorfeed at 12:10 PM on August 14, 2007

Also, for ladies (and anybody else) who have trouble with directly asking for more, the Noel Smith-Wenkle Salary Negotiation Method is something my boss at college taught me: a "soft" strategy you can use during new-salary negotiation. Basically, the idea is to decide on a minimum salary, and then not tell them what it is. This forces the company to make all the offers, so they won't be able to get you to undervalue yourself. The page lists some non-aggressive phrases you can use to put the ball back in the employer's court.

I got a $5000 salary increase in my last job thanks to this!
posted by vorfeed at 12:20 PM on August 14, 2007 [5 favorites]

interesting when juxtaposed with this study: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070811.RCOACH11/TPStory/Business
posted by mano at 6:40 PM on August 14, 2007

Isn't that the Peter Principle in action?
posted by Grangousier at 11:13 PM on August 14, 2007

Another factor in all this, I think, is the way hard-bargaining women are portrayed in pop culture. The cold, nasty, demanding businesswoman is a stock character in movies and TV, and the story usually ends with her getting some sort of well-deserved humiliation.

I wonder if there would still be such a salary gap if we were more accustomed to rooting for women who stand up and ask for what they need.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:08 AM on August 15, 2007