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Originally Posted by Rasczak  Following your logic leads to a dark, mysoginistic place.
I'll answer your "why" question anyway. Women who choose not to negotiate their salary most likely make that choice for the same range of reasons as men, who make the same choice, choose not to. I don't think you can boil it down to one thing that fits every last woman in the category. Do you?
Your turn. Now you enlighten us. Why are women less likely to negotiate salary? |
If I can be accused of one or the other I think misanthropy is a far more likely and fitting tag then misogyny. But if you mean I paint a picture of a misogynistic world we live in, then yes, that is absolutely correct.
'Boiling down' the cause does not come down easily to a single factor (obviously - we are talking about millions and millions of individuals here). And I have neither the time or inclination to instantly come up with an exhaustive list or study of causal factors. However, all is not lost - I think we can broadly say that in most cases, the most common factor for not negotiating would be the expected outcome of negotiating. It's not just an internal response, it's an internal response to external (environmental) factors.
I found an interesting Washington Post article that provides some evidence supporting this idea (I know how attached you are to evidence). Here is a key excerpt:
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In this study, Bowles and her colleagues divided 119 volunteers at random into different groups and provided them with descriptions of male or female candidates who tried to negotiate a higher starting salary for a hypothetical job, along with descriptions of applicants who accepted the offered salary. The volunteers were asked to decide whether they would hire the candidates -- who were all described as exceptionally talented and qualified. While both men and women were penalized for negotiating, Bowles found that the negative effect for women was more than twice as large as that for men.
Subsequent studies used actors who recorded videos of themselves asking for more money or accepting salaries they had been offered. A new group of 285 volunteers were again asked whether they would be willing to work with the candidates after viewing the videos. Men tended to rule against women who negotiated but were less likely to penalize men; women tended to penalize both men and women who negotiated, and preferred applicants who did not ask for more.
In a final set of studies, Bowles's team had 367 volunteers play the role of job candidates and left it up to them to decide whether to ask for more money than they were offered. Women were less likely than men to negotiate when they believed they would be dealing with a man, but there was no significant difference between men and women when they thought a woman would be making the decision. The applicants, in other words, were accurately reading how males and females were likely to perceive them.
"This isn't about fixing the women," Bowles said. "It isn't about telling women, 'You need self-confidence or training.' They are responding to incentives within the social environment."
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I would also agree with that last statement - "fixing the women" isn't a final solution (e.g. Hilary's course proposal), but it's a start, and a positive, concrete step (again, 'Affirmative Action') that can help while society does continue to grow out of it's past years of extreme sexism. I do believe that huge advances have been made towards gender equality, but we can't be complacent and figure the job is now done - it isn't, and complacency carries with it the danger of regression.
Link to the article quoted:
Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling - washingtonpost.com