Book summary & takeaways “Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the gender divide”

Below are my notes and takeaways from the excellent book “Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the gender divide” by Linda Babcock, Sara Laschever.

Summary

Women don’t engage in negotiations or ask for things they want. Big part of it is enculturation and gender norms in our society. When women do negotiate, both their approach to negotiation and how they are perceived are different. “Women’s way” of negotiating involves understanding the other party’s desires and actually leads to better outcomes for both — if the opponent is willing to engage.

This has significant implications for the workplace — in order to promote true equality, it is not enough to treat requests equally. Since women tend not to ask for the things they want (promotions, accommodations, etc.) there needs to be processes to help them in order to ensure equality.

Practical suggestions (what me, Raya, took away to apply to my workspace)

1. Establish mechanisms by which everyone can request a promotion without having to bring this up with their manager directly.
2. Track data about project assignments/lower level promotions/hiring/attrition to make sure your organization implements behaviors that make it a welcoming environment for all.
3. Mentor women not to accept the status quo: they need to battle both the entitlement limitation (“I deserve less”) and a gender role pressure (“I am expected to want less and not be too forward in asking”)
4. Mentor managers to take a more active approach towards spreading the opportunities to ensure everyone has an equal chance.
5. Because “token” status is really harmful, strive to have multiple women in a group.
6. Develop structured evaluation processes, with clearly understood benchmarks.
7. Mentor managers to notice their response to assertive moves by female employees and co-workers.
8. Mentor leaders to take on advocacy on behalf of women in their organization.
9. Mentor everyone to adopt the more beneficial integrative tactics in negotiations (asking questions, listening, sharing information, and trying to find solutions that satisfy both sides) because these result in better outcomes for all.

Contents

Introduction: Women don’t ask
1: Opportunity does not always knock
2: A price higher than rubies
3: Nice girls don’t ask
4: Scaring the boys
5: Fear of asking
6: Low goals and safe targets
7: Just so much and no more
8: The female advantage
Epilogue: Negotiating at home

Introduction: Women don’t ask

Men ask for things that are not advertised as negotiable. Women just don’t ask. And in the meantime assumptions are made about them — because they don’t ask, it is assumed they don’t care. This can make work environment inhospitable to women — without any clear malice or intent.

Deloitte story: they noted there are very few women leaders and started tracking women’s progress through steps towards leadership. Once they started tracking, they noticed women were getting more key projects, leading to more promotions etc. Starting from tracking, they were able to make large changes in the organization quickly. And these changes benefited all, not just women.

Some research suggests that having ways to initiate requests that don’t require asking directly (filling out a form, for example) are effective.

1: Opportunity does not always knock

Women have “perception that their circumstances are more fixed and absolute — less negotiable — than they really are. It also highlights the assumption made by many women that someone or something else is in control.” (p18)

Turnip vs oyster scale for beliefs about opportunities: turnip = what you see is what you get (you can’t get blood from a turnip); oyster = everything is negotiable (life is my oyster).

Locus of control scale: internal = I am in control of my surroundings and can effect change; external = the world is pushing me in the direction it wants.

Women tend to be external and turnip much more than men, meaning they don’t think they have agency to change the situation — and thus don’t try.

This reflects the power balance in our society and it appears by 6th grade kids learn to associate maleness with opportunity and femaleness with constraint. (p. 30).

In the workplace, this means women more often expect the company to recognize their contribution instead of pushing for what they deserve. “I’m doing my job, I am working hard, so they should recognize this and move me along.” (p. 32)

People who mentor women should encourage them not to accept the status quo and instead ask for what they would like. Often the managers are happy to know what an employee wants — even if they are unable to grant the request in the moment, they are more able to match the employee with the opportunities that come up.

Managers should take a more active approach towards spreading the opportunities to ensure everyone has an equal chance.

2: A price higher than rubies

When women do ask, they often ask for and are satisfied with less.

“Extensive research has documented that pay satisfaction correlates with pay expectations, and not how much may be possible or with that the market will bear.” (p. 43)

Cultural influences: women’s work is valued less, traditionally girls chores are unpaid, girls are taught to value money less than relationships: “boys labor for payment, while girls labor for love” (p. 47). Thus “women have learned to think of their incomes in terms of what they need rather than in terms of what their work is worth” (p. 49)

When thinking about compensation, women often use wrong comparisons (lower level, female, etc) — learning to seek more broad and equitable baselines helps remedy this. Studies show that when given no baselines, women value their work as less but the differences disappear when the same comparison ranges are given to all.

Because women expect to be recognized for their work, they also often feel like having to ask diminishes their accomplishments.

3: Nice girls don’t ask

In our society women are expected to be oriented more towards the needs of others, while men are expected to be oriented towards their own needs and ambitions. (p. 63)

“Believing that you are good at what you do, assuming that you deserve to be amply rewarded for your good work, and asking for more — having a strong sense of entitlement and showing it — would clearly be displaying self-confidence, and would therefore be a gender norm violation for a girl.” (p. 71)

Women are generally relatively unaware of their status as an oppressed group and often buy into many of the gender stereotypes. “Gender socialization practices” serve to convince women of “legitimacy of their own inferiority” which often manifests as imposter syndrome. “Having advanced far up the rungs of a ladder that women are not supposed to climb, or achieved significant success in an area in which women aren’t supposed to excel, many women secretly harbor the feeling that they’re just “faking it” and that their inadequacy will soon be discovered.” (p. 77)

Stereotypes with negative connotations may influence behavior even when a woman repudiates it or feels herself to be immune.

How to change this?

• Examine your beliefs about gender roles and women’s abilities
• Think explicitly about how to make decisions fairly
• Recognize what support women need — and provide it

4: Scaring the boys

Because we have different expectations of men’s and women’s behavior, there is no expectation for a man in a leadership role to be nice — but there is for a woman. When women speak their mind, they are seen as harsh. Co-workers even find these women scary. Since being assertive is a gender norm violation in the culture, for women who want to influence people being “likable” is critically important — their influence increases the more they are liked. (p. 87)

At the same time, the pressure to be likable can discourage women from asking anything at all. “Women’s achievements are viewed in a way that is consistent with stereotype-based negative performance expectations, and their work is devalued simply because they are women” (p. 91) — and then when she asks about advancement, she may get vague answers that further discourage her from asking in the future. Overall women as a group progress more slowly through the ranks and rarely rise as high.

When women work in predominantly male environments, these perceptions are even more distorted. “Token status” is very detrimental to women’s advancement; adding just one more woman into a group can significantly change dynamics. Real “lifting of sanctions” begins when women make up 15% of the workforce.

Women who are viewed as “infringing”, are subjected to subtle and unsubtle forms of retaliation. Overall, women have learned these norms and adapt their behavior to avoid friction — and don’t ask to be recognized through their actions. There is also evidence that women don’t like competing against men.

Self-promotion (including self-reviews and writing down accomplishments) can be especially hard.

Different nonverbal behavior strategies are effective for women than men: men are most persuasive when using dominant style (constant eye contact, lots of hand gestures, speaking in a loud voice, tightening facial muscles); women are most persuasive when using social style (leaning towards the audience, smile, communicate “friendliness”, use smaller gestures, acting relaxed). Heading into negotiations, women must bring the arsenal of “friendly” social mannerisms to be most effective, be prepared to be cooperative and ask about the needs of others. It does not mean they need to back down or give in — this is just about the style, not content.

Women need to maintain the image of both “nice” and “able” at the same time, making their situation more difficult.

Things that help:

• Well-structured evaluation process with clear benchmarks that is less open to subjective judgements
• Women do better when they are evaluated based on their individual work product rather than for their contribution to the team (when a team performs well, evaluators tend to overlook women’s contribution and attribute success to other team members)
• Managers specifically need to watch out for their reactions to women who assert themselves

5: Fear of asking

Women feel significantly more anxiety about negotiating than men. They hate negotiation to the point of going to great lengths to avoid it because it is so uncomfortable. They also have a harder time overcoming their anxiety during the process because it is so often at the “crippling” level.

There seem to be 2 aspects of this

1. Women tend to define themselves more in terms of their relationship while men tend to define themselves more in terms of their abilities and accomplishments (p 117) this means that when entering a negotiation women worry about the relationship while men focus on the specific issue in play
2. Women worry about and underestimate their competence in negotiating

Women are more likely to view a disagreement about issues as a conflict between negotiators — for them, negotiation==conflict. They also worry more about the damaging effects of conflict to the relationship. This stems both from cultural expectations (girls are steered towards accommodating behaviors) and experience (girls are steered towards play and activities that do not allow them to practice engaging in and dealing with the outcomes of conflict).

Research shows that women value the relationship even in situations where they are never going to interact with the other party again. Women’s sense of is often negatively impacted by an adversarial situation (regardless of the outcome).

“Women need to acknowledge that they almost always have dual goals in a negotiation — issue-related goals and relationship goals — and that they need to find ways to achieve both.” (p 123)

Fortunately, negotiation research shows that reframing the interaction from a “zero sum” expectation to a collaborative search for best outcome is the most effective way to approach it. Techniques for doing this include

• Asking diagnostic questions
• Sharing information about your own interests
• Unbundling the issues or adding issues
• Brainstorming about possible solutions rather than defending established positions

Some additional strategies for women

• Trust the other side to take care of their interests (and avoid trying to argue with yourself on behalf of the opponent)
• There is no need to bar all emotion from negotiation — but the best thing to do is focus on the positive, warm emotions that help both parties engage
• Humor is another effective way to influence the tone of negotiation
• Get help — when it’s appropriate to have an agent negotiate for you, it’s ok to do so

Disarming the tough guys: the classic negotiation technique of stepping to the opponent’s side and understanding their needs with empathy seems to work for women, building on their style to entice the opponent to join.

6: Low goals and safe targets

Women often get less when they negotiate. They ask for too little and concede too much or too soon.

Negotiation targets have been shown by research to make a critical difference. In addition to uncertainty about their worth and hesitancy to engage in negotiation, women are also less optimistic about what is possible. They routinely underestimate the opportunity or options relative to men. The more optimistic outlook gives males an advantage at the negotiating table — they ask for and push for more because they believe it’s possible to achieve more ambitious goals.

Research into risk assessment shows that non-white males as well as women perceive more risk, suggesting that there is a social cause for the lower goals. “Perhaps white males see less risk in the world because they create, manage, control and benefit from many of the major technologies and activities. Perhaps women and non-white men see the world as more dangerous because in many ways they are more vulnerable, because they benefit less from many of it’s technologies and institutions, and because they have less power and control over what happens in their communities and their lives” (p 136)

The dark side to men’s optimism is that they can aim too high — and are unable to reach agreement.

Women can counter the tendency to aim low by doing more research — choosing benchmarks that allow setting of aggressive but potentially attainable goals.

Since women perceive negotiations with a social lens, negotiations also carry a social risk. Men and women approach activities that involve social risk differently, with men viewing them as a challenge that invites participation while women view them as threatening and avoid.

“Part of the everyday gender role of being male… involves the expectation that you will act aggressively and exercise personal power” (p 158)

Women lack self-confidence in negotiation and so they not only start out with lower targets, but also concede much faster, trying only once or twice before giving up.

“Management” experiment: participants were told to supervise others in performing a task. Men provided a lot more guidance and felt more confident about their managerial ability (31% more confident).

However gender differences in self-confidence seem to be dependent on the context: women’s feelings of self-confidence fluctuate significantly more than men’s.

Changing the women’s feeling of control during negotiation eliminated the gap in performance. Training in the 5 self-management principles accomplished that in experiments and in real life:

1. Anticipate performance obstacles by identifying situations likely to cause anxiety and stress
2. Develop strategies for dealing with anxiety-producing situations
3. Practice responses with a partner
4. Set performance goals by identifying all potential outcomes; ranking their priorities, identifying the “giveaways” as well as reserves.
5. Monitor progress by tracking the goals they attained and rewarding themselves for achievements

Sometimes, women set a lower goal because different things are important to them — perhaps not just salary, but flexibility. Recognizing these goals and including them in your framework of thinking helps achieve better outcomes. However women often don’t need to sacrifice as much as they think they do to achieve non-monetary goals.

7: Just so much and no more

Both the context (where) and the subject (what) as well as roles in the relationship affect the negotiation. In certain situations, people consistently take a tougher stand against a woman than they do against a man. Both men and women not only expect women to accept less, they also expect them to concede more during the negotiation.

At work, men tend to network with other men and women with other women. However access to men’s networks proves to be extremely important for advancement — and this gender segregation leaves women without access to information and influence.

Instrumental vs friendship networks

• Instrumental networks are based on exchanges of advice and information
• Friendship networks have a social function

Men’s instrumental and friendship networks are mostly male

Women’s instrumental networks are mixed, while their friendship networks are mostly female

As a result, women’s ties to the men in their network — often the most powerful members of the group — are weaker. Further, research shows that women and minorities derive less benefit from weak ties than men. Research shows that men feel like promoting a woman or minority is significantly more risky and will not do it without a strong tie.

Another way women may be cut off from power is a position called “structural hole” — this person maintains a connection to multiple people in the organization who are not connected to one another. This position turns out to be very beneficial for a man, but not a woman. For women it is important to have a strong advocate in a position of power. In other words, women thrive when there is someone powerful to do their asking for them. One theory for why that is so is that it is more acceptable for men to directly advocate for themselves than women. For women it’s a gender role violation to take advantage of their structural role.

For this reason research finds that advocacy for others is an area where women can assert themselves freely.

Women also find freedom from gender roles in positions that are themselves a source of power, Leaning on the position to assert power is an effective way for women to navigate the gender expectations.

Fundamental attribution error makes us think that peoples’ positions and behaviors are immutable. In fact we know that both can change significantly due to circumstances. That is why it is important to try to change the context to achieve progress.

We know that when women achieve positions of power, they often take a fresh approach to problems that have persisted for years, look at problems from new angles and change the situation for the better for all.

One interesting difference stems from women’s response to stress: at times of stress hormone oxytocin is released into the bloodstream. This hormone promotes care-taking and social bonding behaviors. However testosterone reduces this effect, while estrogen magnifies it. This means that for men the primary response to stress is “fight or flight” — aggression or withdrawal. In women, stress often causes “tend and befriend” reaction, causing them to focus on others and work to strengthen social bonds. In one lab, they noticed that during a stressful time men holed up in their offices, while women came in to clean and socialize.

This effect may in part be responsible for women’s longer time spans. Physical contact (such as hugging) also releases oxytocin, making the women’s reaction a more adaptive strategy to stress.

8: The female advantage

Research shows that men view negotiation as a competition and a zero-sum game while women tend to approach it with a more collaborative expectation. They often work to understand all parties interests and try to achieve outcomes not only acceptable, but beneficial for all.

“A multitude of negotiation studies in the past two decades have shown that a cooperative approach, aimed at finding good outcomes for all parties rather than just trying to “win”, actually produces solutions that are objectively superior to those produced by more competitive tactics.” (p 163)

That is because very few negotiations involve resolution of a single issue (“distributive negotiation”). When multiple issues are involved (an “integrative negotiation”) understanding the positions of all parties allows participants to trade various issues in play, giving up on less important to them aspects to gain what they value more (practice called “logrolling”). Integrative tactics (asking questions, listening, sharing information, and trying to find solutions that satisfy both sides) differ dramatically from the competitive tactics (staking out extreme positions, bluffing, resisting concessions). Integrative tactics involve behaviors at which women often excel.

Research shows that men tend not to volunteer or solicit personal information and reasons behind the stated preferences in the situation, but this information turns out to be critical to getting best outcomes for both sides.

Additionally, because women consider relationship aspects of negotiation more than men, they can sacrifice short term gain for future advantage, resulting in better long-term outcomes.

Unfortunately seeking best resolution for all can also leave women vulnerable — if the other party refuses to engage in collaboration.

Research also shows that women underestimate the advantes of their approach to negotiation and tend to gloss over the resutls achieved, continuting to view their negotiation skills as lesser.

Epilogue: Negotiating at home

All of these difference in approach to negotiaion come to a head in a family environment. Here the relationship is vital and women’s focus on it means they tend to ask for significantly less and give up more quickly, resulting in well documented inequity in the ammount of housework and child rearing responcibilities women take on.

Women who are raising children and working tend to exhibit higher levels of stress hormone after work — but men do not. This reflects the fact that women take on the “second shift” of household responcibility but men do not. This translates to real health risks of heart desease, obesity, dibetes, depression and anxiety. And women’s professional advancement is slower since they have less time and energy for work.

However, studies also show that working outside the home correlates with lower levels of depression for both men and women. So building skills and confidence to negotiate at home is critical for women’s health and wellbeing.