The global shift toward remote work in 2020 offered the hope of more equitable dealmaking via accessible online negotiations. But recent research and real-life examples suggest that online platforms—and particularly video calls—can introduce new challenges by amplifying gender biases.
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Less Air Time, More Interruptions
Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments via conference calls rather than in person. Chief Justice John Roberts tried to impose order on the process by calling on justices one by one, in order of seniority, and he tried to give them roughly equal speaking time.
Despite his efforts to be evenhanded, over the course of 10 cases, Roberts disproportionately interrupted the three female justices (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor), even when they spoke the same amount or less than their male colleagues, according to an analysis by researcher Tonja Jacobi and colleagues.
Such inequities on the court existed before it (temporarily) switched to phone calls, a study by Jacobi and Dylan Schweers found. Yet this bias may be exacerbated in online negotiations. With body language and other nonverbal cues missing from phone calls and difficult to read in video calls, meeting attendees may be more likely to interrupt one another, with women often losing the battle for speaking time.
If you notice on your phone and video calls that some people seem reluctant to speak or are being interrupted, you’ll want to look for ways to make the environment more hospitable and equitable. For Roberts, this might have meant putting someone else in charge of timekeeping during the Court’s conference calls. Doing so would have allowed him to focus more on the discussion’s substance and foster more equitable turn taking, Jacobi’s study suggests.
Calling on those who may be marginalized during online negotiations and meetings is another obvious fix. As head of diversity and inclusion at Unilever, Mita Mallick told the New York Times that she relied on the chat function and nonverbal cues during Zoom calls to encourage those who were more reticent. During a 25-person online meeting, she said, “I was giving a thumbs up, I was making a heart with my hands, I was smiling” to show someone “nonverbally that I was excited about what they’re saying.”
Gender Differences in “Zoom Fatigue”
One recent study with nearly 10,000 participants finds that women are significantly more likely than men to experience so-called Zoom fatigue—a sense of mental, emotional, and physical depletion or exhaustion after participating in videoconferencing calls.
In fact, women report experiencing severe Zoom fatigue at more than twice the rate of men (13.8% versus 5.5%). In particular, women are disproportionately worn out by what the authors term “mirror anxiety,” or the stress of constantly viewing one’s own reflection. Because their physical appearance and social presentation tend to be scrutinized more than men’s, women are more socially conditioned to monitor their appearance. When one’s computer screen becomes a mirror, constantly monitoring one’s appearance can create cognitive strain and negative emotions.
The researchers advise anyone who might be stressed or distracted on video calls to turn off the mirror function (on Zoom, by right-clicking and selecting “hide self-view”) so they’re still seen by others but don’t see their reflection. In addition, the researchers encourage organizations to establish “camera-optional” norms and make phone calls for routine check-ins.
Text Versus Video Outcomes
Some recent research evidence suggests that gender inequities are more likely in video negotiations than in text-based chat negotiations.
In their research, Wolfram Emanuel Lipp and Alwine Mohnen found no difference in the message length and outcomes of men and women in chat negotiations. But when participants engaged in the same negotiation simulation via video, female participants spoke less than male participants, and the women earned lower individual profits as a result. For organizations, these findings suggest that requiring job candidates or employees to negotiate via video could disadvantage women.
Yet, even when negotiations are conducted online without video, implicit bias can still persist. In a study of 435 human resource professionals, researcher Carolin Schuster and her coauthors found that in a text-based online negotiation with simulated candidates, these experts offered significantly lower salaries to the female candidates than to male candidates with identical qualifications.
However, when the HR professionals received reminders about equal pay before negotiating, such as “Most companies pay equally now” or “Companies are actively changing and trying harder to pay equally,” they offered female candidates more money. The reminder appeared to make the HR professionals feel like they were part of a team effort or larger movement working toward a shared goal of fairness in negotiation. (By contrast, simply reminding the professionals that a gender wage gap exists didn’t boost their offers to women.)
In fact, the reminders about equal pay led to an overcorrection: The professionals now offered female candidates higher compensation than they offered identically qualified male candidates! Thus, such messages need to be tinkered with before they can be considered a panacea for equalizing job negotiations and offers across gender.
What other challenges have you addressed in online negotiations?
Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills
Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
