One supposed reason for the gender pay gap is that women are worse negotiators than men, and therefore when it comes time to push for a higher salary, they tend to lag behind their male peers. It’s a stereotype that is put to the test in research from the University of Southern California, which finds that, generally speaking, men and women are just as bad as each other at negotiating.
What’s more, the researchers argue that if women do perform worse in real-world negotiations, it’s likely to be due to systemic biases among recruiters.
Barriers to equality
To better understand the barriers to equitable wages in STEM-related jobs, the researchers used a virtual agent to help them test our negotiation skills. The virtual agent, which was programmed not to recognize the gender of the participants, unveiled that most people were poor at negotiations.
The researchers highlight the possible benefits of using such virtual agents during negotiations, as they aren’t going to judge people according to their gender, race, age, or other factors that may introduce bias into the equation.
The agent was designed in such a way as to overcome the various bias-related issues that have afflicted other bots. During the negotiations, the volunteers were asked to specify beforehand the salary they would accept as a minimum and also what they valued most in terms of salary, bonuses, or stock options.
“This study highlights the potential for using virtual agents to study social issues related to how and why different groups make decisions and the impact of those decisions,” the researchers say.
Negotiation prowess
The study found that nearly half of the volunteers didn’t really negotiate at all, with the typical participant leaving around 20% of value on the table.
“People aren’t good at negotiating in general. There’s a need for this kind of training in STEM especially. The 20% on the table — that’s true across genders; there is no difference,” the researchers say.
While the overall performance in the negotiations was pretty dismal, perhaps the most important takeaway is that there was no noticeable difference between men and women, either in the negotiating behaviors deployed or the outcomes.
“For example, women have been found to perform just as well as men when negotiating on behalf of others. It is only when they negotiate for themselves that women perform worse than men,” the researchers say. “This suggests that such differences may be due to the fear of social stigma against women seeking to benefit themselves too much — a stigma that women typically find difficult to navigate around on their own.”
The importance of negotiating
The results did illustrate the importance of negotiating, with those who did so able to secure around $13,000 extra compared to those who didn’t negotiate at all. The environment, however, did appear to play a role in how people behaved.
“When we asked women their bottom line going into the negotiation, they were willing to settle for less if they thought the environment is hostile to a woman, suggesting they did expect unfair treatment,” the researchers explain. “Yet this expectation didn’t impact their final outcome when the interviewer ignored their gender, as our AI was programmed to do. This is consistent with the story that the problem is with the men that are interviewing the women, not the women themselves.”
The study provides some interesting insights if we want salary negotiations to be that much fairer than they currently are.
