In the United States, the gender wage gap for full-time workers amounts to women earning about 80 cents on the dollar as compared to men; similar or greater disparities can be found across the globe. Hannah Riley Bowles, the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School, and a leading researcher on gender and negotiation, explains in an interview that taking a broader view of career negotiations may help close the gap.
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Discover how to refine your negotiation skills with this free special report, Salary Negotiations: How to Negotiate Salary: Learn the Best Techniques to Help You Manage the Most Difficult Salary Negotiations and What You Need to Know When Asking for a Raise, from Harvard Law School.
Program on Negotiation: What changes can help close the gender wage gap?
Hannah Riley Bowles: Economic studies show that the gender wage gap is explained more by differences in men’s and women’s career trajectories than by how men and women are paid for the same work. I encourage women to think about negotiation as a tool not only for increasing their pay in a particular role but also for advancing their careers—whether that means navigating their way into better jobs or remaining employed during periods of work-family conflict. Women—really, everyone—should take a broader view of what they negotiate to advance their careers beyond pay bargaining.
PON: What should we be negotiating?
HRB: Negotiating for resources and opportunities that support your professional growth may be most important. In our research, Bobbi Thomason from Pepperdine’s Graziadio Business School, Julia Bear from Stony Brook University, and I asked hundreds of midcareer professionals and senior executives to describe a recent career negotiation they had initiated. Again and again, they shared stories about negotiating their roles—leadership opportunities, expanded scope of authority, professional development, etc. Only a small percentage of the examples related primarily to negotiating pay.
PON: But what about research showing a backlash against women who ask for more?
HRB: In studies of what managers and executives negotiate to advance their careers, we observed no evidence of gender differences in the propensity to negotiate roles, but men reported more pay negotiations than women, and women reported more workload negotiations than men, particularly to manage work-family conflicts.
The clearest evidence of greater resistance to female than to male negotiators (“backlash”) comes from studies of pay bargaining. There is also evidence that men sometimes face more backlash than women when negotiating flexible work arrangements or paid leave. This suggests that it’s hard for both men and women to self-advocate in a counter-stereotypical way.
What men and women negotiate is important to the story of the gender wage gap. Let’s say you have a young professional couple that aims to have a 50-50 relationship. However, at work, she has more potential to negotiate for family leave or flexible work, and he has more potential to negotiate for higher pay. With the birth of their first child, they might find themselves slipping into a more traditional relationship than they had planned.
PON: What differences have you observed in men’s and women’s career negotiations?
HRB: To our surprise, we found that, across studies in different types of work contexts, women were more likely than men to recount initiating what we refer to as “bending” negotiations—requests for personal exceptions or nonstandard work arrangements, such as a special opportunity for professional development or an unusually flexible work situation. Digging deeper, we realized that women may be trying to reconcile their “lack of fit” with traditionally male-dominated career paths.
It was inspiring to see how women had negotiated to remain professionally employed during times of work-family conflict or to carve out counter-stereotypical career paths. For example, in a firm where most senior managers are also engineers, a woman who is not an engineer might argue, “You need a leader with my experience building cross-functional teams. Give me six months to see if I can make a difference.”
PON: Adopting this wider view, what can organizational leaders do to enhance gender equity in career negotiations?
HRB: For practical and ethical reasons, it isn’t right to imagine that women will close the gender pay gap simply by negotiating harder. Social change requires top-down leadership as well as pressure from the bottom up. Organizational leaders should look critically at how work norms and culture shape career advancement and whether some current practices might contribute to gender inequality.
For example, it is well documented that lack of transparency about what is potentially negotiable increases the potential for gender differences in negotiation outcomes. Organizational leaders should make sure that all employees have the same quality of information and advice about what is negotiable—for instance, by increasing transparency about potential resources and opportunities for career advancement, and ensuring that everyone has colleagues to go to for professional support.
How have you navigated career negotiations that went against typical gender expectations?
Claim your FREE copy: Salary Negotiations
Discover how to refine your negotiation skills with this free special report, Salary Negotiations: How to Negotiate Salary: Learn the Best Techniques to Help You Manage the Most Difficult Salary Negotiations and What You Need to Know When Asking for a Raise, from Harvard Law School.
