Women Don't Ask Read online

  W O M E N D O N ’ T A S K

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  Copyright © 2003 by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever

  Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,

  Princeton, New Jersey 08540

  In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,

  3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY

  All Rights Reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Babcock, Linda, 1961–

  Women don’t ask : negotiation and the gender divide / Linda Babcock

  and Sara Laschever.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 0-691-08940-X

  1. Negotiation in business. 2. Businesswomen.

  I. Laschever, Sara, 1957– II. Title.

  HD58.6.B33

  2003

  650.1′3′082—dc21

  2003049842

  BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  This book has been composed in Berkeley Book

  Printed on acid-free paper.∞

  www.pupress.princeton.edu

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  For our children, Alexandra, Moses, and Adam,

  in the hope that they will grow up in a world more accepting

  of women who ask

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  C O N T E N T S

  PREFACE: Why Negotiation, and Why Now?

  ix

  INTRODUCTION: Women Don’t Ask

  1

  CHAPTER ONE: Opportunity Doesn’t Always Knock

  17

  CHAPTER TWO: A Price Higher than Rubies

  41

  CHAPTER THREE: Nice Girls Don’t Ask

  62

  CHAPTER FOUR: Scaring the Boys

  85

  CHAPTER FIVE: Fear of Asking

  112

  CHAPTER SIX: Low Goals and Safe Targets

  130

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Just So Much and No More

  148

  CHAPTER EIGHT: The Female Advantage

  164

  EPILOGUE: Negotiating at Home

  180

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  187

  NOTES

  189

  REFERENCES

  201

  INDEX

  217

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  P R E FA C E

  Why Negotiation, and Why Now?

  Women don’t ask. They don’t ask for raises and promotions and

  better job opportunities. They don’t ask for recognition for the

  good work they do. They don’t ask for more help at home. In other

  words, women are much less likely than men to use negotiation to get

  what they want. Why does this matter? Although negotiation has always

  been an important workplace skill, it has long been thought to be the

  province of men: a competitive realm in which men excelled and

  women felt less capable. But ideas about what make a successful negoti-

  ation have changed in recent years. Rather than a battle between adver-

  saries, negotiation has increasingly been seen as, ideally, a collaborative

  process aimed at finding the best solutions for everyone involved. This

  not only makes the process of negotiating less combative, it has been

  shown to produce superior agreements: Everyone walks away with

  more of what he or she wants.

  This change in attitudes makes negotiation more attractive to

  women, because many women have disliked the competitive nature of

  much negotiation. In addition, people often react negatively to women

  behaving in competitive ways, making negotiation a less effective strat-

  egy for women to get what they want. The new understanding of negoti-

  ation as a collaborative process has eased this problem.

  But why do women need to negotiate more now than before—and

  why is it good news that women can begin to discover their strength as

  negotiators? Recent changes in workplace culture are making it essential

  for women to exercise far more control over their careers than in the

  past. The rise of Internet-based commerce, especially the boom in on-

  line auction and trading sites, has created a whole new realm for buying,

  selling, and doing business—further changing the landscape in which

  women live and work. At the same time, ongoing changes in the roles

  women play at home force them to manage a clamor of conflicting com-

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  P R E F A C E

  mitments in their lives. In the midst of so much rapid-fire professional

  and personal change, negotiation is no longer optional. It’s become a

  basic survival skill.

  A Brave New World of Work

  In many industries, and in offices of every size, businesses have become

  less bureaucratic, levels of hierarchy have become fewer and flatter, and

  job responsibilities and lines of report have become less formalized.1

  Management styles have become less “top-down,” less “command-and-

  control.” Traditional job ladders have given way to more diffuse organi-

  zational structures and new business models seem to emerge daily. Em-

  ployees, as a result, often find themselves with few hard-and-fast rules

  to follow about how things are run.

  Many organizations are also making increasing use of “idiosyncratic

  deals” (called I-deals). I-deals are customized employment contracts de-

  signed to meet the individual needs of employees. They can allow vary-

  ing degrees of flexibility in travel requirements, hours worked, or rates

  of skill development for different people doing the same job. They make

  more elements of an employee’s work life negotiable.2

  Although the number of mergers and acquisitions has declined from

  its height in the past decade, companies are still being bought, sold,

  and combined at a brisk pace, with a direct impact on thousands of

  workers each year. In most cases, workers whose companies are ac-

  quired by other firms must renegotiate every aspect of their working

  lives, from compensation, hours, and benefits to titles, job responsibili-

  ties, and even office space. In addition, when two firms merge, a vast

  array of large and small issues must be resolved in order to integrate

  two different cultures and ways of doing business.

  Most workers’ career experiences have also changed radically. Up

  until the middle of the twentieth century, many workers spent their

  entire careers at one organization. In today’s economy, this is extremely

  rare. In the year 2000, about 25 percent of all workers in the United

  States had been with their employers for 12 months or less. The average

  amount of time all workers had been with their employers that same

  year was a meager 3.5 years.3 Between May 2001 and May 2002, 52.9

  million workers in the United States were laid off, fired, or quit—mean-

  ing that 39 percent of the American work force changed jobs during

  that one twelve-month period.4 Every time a worker changes jobs, he

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  or she must be on the alert f
or new opportunities—and must negotiate

  a new employment contract.

  The percentage of workers in the United States who are union mem-

  bers has also dropped precipitously. Whereas 20.1 percent of U.S.

  workers were unionized in 1983, this figure had fallen to 13.5 percent

  by 2001—a drop of 33 percent.5 Since unionized workers do not need

  to negotiate most aspects of their employment, such as wages, benefits,

  job assignments, and vacation time, the implications of this reduction

  in union membership are staggering. Thousands, perhaps millions, of

  people, many of them women, who have not been accustomed to nego-

  tiating on their own behalf must now do so.

  More women are also participating in the work force than at any time

  in recent memory. In the year 2000 in the United States, 76.8 percent

  of women aged 25 to 54 worked outside the home compared to 64

  percent of women in that age group in 1980, a 20 percent increase in

  20 years.6 Women’s share of self-employment also increased from 22

  percent in 1976 to 38 percent in 2000, with a total of 3.8 million

  women in the United States self-employed in the year 2000.7 Women

  who run their own businesses must negotiate everything from con-

  sulting fees, real estate contracts, and rates for subcontractors to their

  own benefit arrangements from insurance companies.

  Multiple Roles and Conflicting Commitments

  As more and more women work outside the home, millions of them

  must play more roles in their lives than ever before (boss, coworker,

  employee, daughter, wife, mother, friend). On top of the demands of

  working and raising their own children, many adults—especially

  women—bear increasing responsibility for the care of their elderly par-

  ents. This frequently requires negotiating with doctors’ offices, nursing

  homes, supplemental caregivers, insurance companies, government

  programs, their own employers, and their parents themselves.

  Between 40 and 50 percent of marriages now end in divorce as well,

  making women more likely than in the past to find themselves self-

  supporting or supporting a family by themselves.8 In the United States

  alone, almost 20 million people have been divorced.9 Half of them are

  women, and for most of them, in addition to the other dislocations and

  adjustments they must endure, divorce means a sudden drop in their

  standard of living.10 In The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and xi

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  Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America, Lenore J.

  Weitzman estimates that women’s standard of living falls by 73 percent

  on average after a divorce while men’s rises by 42 percent on average.

  Census data also show that about 85 percent of all divorced women

  receive no alimony. The percentage of births to single mothers (out of

  all mothers) has risen steeply as well, from 10 percent in 1970 to 33

  percent today.11 For both divorced women and single mothers who have

  never been married, shouldering the burden of child rearing without a

  partner to share the work and decision making means finding other

  forms of support and assistance—sometimes from friends and relatives,

  often from local, state, or federal government programs. Whatever the

  source, women must be prepared to actively pursue what they need to

  care for themselves and their children.

  Miles to Go

  Over the past 35 years, affirmative action, changes in social norms,

  reduced gender discrimination, a decline in occupational segregation,

  and an increase in access to higher education for women all contributed

  to a dramatic improvement in women’s economic status. But our as-

  sumptions about women’s progress often far outstrip reality. Much of

  that progress slowed almost to a standstill in the 1990s. For full-time

  workers, the ratio of women’s to men’s annual earnings increased from

  60.2 percent in 1980 to 71.6 percent in 1990, but between 1990 and

  2000 that ratio increased only 1.6 percentage points, from 71.6 percent

  to 73.2.12

  Women’s progress into positions of leadership in professions that

  were previously closed to them has also been far from complete. In

  Linda’s field,* economics, the percentage of female full professors dou-

  bled between 1981 and 1991 (from 3 percent to 6 percent) but still

  remains shockingly low and has remained flat ever since. (In 2001,

  women still made up only 6 percent of all full professors in economics.)

  This is true even though 25 percent of all Ph.D.s in economics for the

  past two decades were awarded to women, meaning that there have

  been plenty of women in the “pipeline” who were not allowed to ad-

  vance.13 The number of women hired as college presidents has also

  * Because we wrote this book together, when we describe incidents from our own lives we refer to ourselves by our first names, as Linda and Sara.

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  P R E F A C E

  slowed. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the percentage of col-

  lege presidents who were women more than doubled, from 9.5 percent

  to 21.1 percent. But between 1998 and 2001, this percentage increased

  by only 1.8 percentage points.14

  These stagnating figures suggest that we may have gotten as much

  mileage as possible out of the changes we’ve already made—and that

  new solutions need to be found if women’s progress is to continue. One

  of these solutions must be a change in society’s attitudes toward women

  who assert themselves. Another, we’re convinced, will come from en-

  couraging women to speak up for what they deserve—to recognize

  more opportunities in their circumstances, appreciate the value of their

  work, and ask for what they want.

  xiii

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  W O M E N D O N ’ T A S K

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  I N T R O D U C T I O N

  Women Don’t Ask

  Afewyearsago,whenLindawasservingasthedirectorofthePh.D.

  program at her school, a delegation of women graduate students

  came to her office. Many of the male graduate students were teaching

  courses of their own, the women explained, while most of the female

  graduate students had been assigned to work as teaching assistants to

  regular faculty. Linda agreed that this didn’t sound fair, and that after-

  noon she asked the associate dean who handled teaching assignments

  about the women’s complaint. She received a simple answer: “I try to

  find teaching opportunities for any student who approaches me with

  a good idea for a course, the ability to teach, and a reasonable offer

  about what it will cost,” he explained. “More men ask. The women just

  don’t ask.”

  The women just don’t ask. This incident and the associate dean’s explanation suggested to Linda the existence of a more pervasive problem.

  Could it be that women don’t get more of the things they want in life

  in part because they don’t think to ask for them? Are there external

  pressures that discourage women from asking as much as men do—

  and even keep them from realizing that they can ask? Are women really

  less likel
y than men to ask for what they want?

  To explore this question, Linda conducted a study that looked at the

  starting salaries of students graduating from Carnegie Mellon University

  with their master’s degrees.1 When Linda looked exclusively at gender,

  the difference was fairly large: The starting salaries of the men were 7.6

  percent or almost $4,000 higher on average than those of the women.

  Trying to explain this difference, Linda looked next at who had negoti-

  ated his or her salary (who had asked for more money) and who had

  simply accepted the initial offer he or she had received. It turned out

  that only 7 percent of the female students had negotiated but 57 percent

  (eight times as many) of the men had asked for more money. Linda was

  particularly surprised to find such a dramatic difference between men

  and women at Carnegie Mellon because graduating students are

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  I N T R O D U C T I O N

  strongly advised by the school’s Career Services department to negotiate

  their job offers. Nonetheless, hardly any of the women had done so.

  The most striking finding, however, was that the students who had

  negotiated (most of them men) were able to increase their starting sala-

  ries by 7.4 percent on average, or $4,053—almost exactly the difference

  between men’s and women’s average starting pay. This suggests that the

  salary differences between the men and the women might have been

  eliminated if the women had negotiated their offers.

  Spurred on by this finding, Linda and two colleagues, Deborah Small

  and Michele Gelfand, designed another study to look at the propensity

  of men and women to ask for more than they are offered.2 They re-

  cruited students at Carnegie Mellon for an experiment and told them

  that they would be paid between three and ten dollars for playing

  Boggle™, a game by Milton Bradley. In Boggle, players shake a cube of tile letters until all the letters fall into a grid at the bottom of the cube.

  They must then identify words that can be formed from the letters verti-

  cally, horizontally, or diagonally. Each research subject was asked to

  play four rounds of the game, and then an experimenter handed him or

  her three dollars and said, “Here’s three dollars. Is three dollars okay?” If

  a subject asked for more money, the experimenters would pay that

  participant ten dollars, but they would not give anyone more money if