Women and Negotiation
“Sex differences in negotiation outcomes basically disappear when people negotiate on behalf of others.”
It was this finding that really got me thinking last week after Iris Bohnet, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government, gave a talk at PON last Thursday about gender and negotiation. According to the well-supported research Professor Bohnet discussed, women have an overwhelming tendency to be less self-confident and more risk averse than men, which often results in less favorable outcomes for them in a negotiation situation. Sad as it is, I wasn’t completely shocked by this.
What did surprise me, though, was that when women negotiate on behalf of others (women or men), there is virtually no difference in outcomes between women and men. Part of this observation is somewhat encouraging; it suggests that women are just as likely to be confident negotiators in the position of a lawyer or advocate as a man. But beneath this interpretation might lay a much more troubling implication. If women are “successful” negotiating when they are representing someone else, what does this say about a woman’s willingness to advocate on her own behalf? [As a sidenote, these constant generalizations about women and men bother me – exceptions to these rules surely exist!!] Perhaps this finding suggests that women are not unconfident about their ability to negotiate; if they were, they would display the same low expectations when they negotiate on behalf of others. Instead, women may have very little confidence when it comes to their own “case,” the strength of their interests compared to those of their opponent. And the complex twist to all of this is that women seem to like negotiation more than men; they view more things as negotiable and show a preference for it as a decisionmaking mechanism in many areas.
It was interesting to hear about this research working at a place like PON, which has a huge number of strong and assertive women on the staff. I wonder how much of this research is based on a business setting, as opposed to other types of career disputes or opportunities for negotiation outside of a woman’s career. It seems as though the role that a woman is occupying in a negotiation – as a wife, a mother, an individual – may have a profound effect on her attitude towards the outcome.