Women Don’t Negotiate and Other Similar Nonsense | Andrea Schneider | TEDxOshkosh

thank you my first year of law school I took a class in negotiation I loved this class and this class was going to change my life but one day we had an entire session devoted to studying the differences between how men and women negotiate are you kidding me I remember thinking I hated this there is some stereotype that women are supposed to be nicer than men yeah so why did I hate this so much well I had never learned that girls were supposed to be nicer than boys as the oldest of four I had of course learned to take turns and share but I had also learned that it was okay to use my age and my size to get what I want and family stories backed me up here's the example I remember being told my grandparents when they got married his newlyweds went and bought a brand-new set of furniture but when they went to the store to pick up their new set of furniture the store had declared bankruptcy it was the depression after all and when my grandmother went to see the store manager he told her that all of the assets including their set of furniture that she could still see on the showroom floor were being seized to pay creditors my great-grandmother would have none of this she marched herself down to the store and I am told sat on the furniture shooing the store manager creditors and anyone else away until that furniture was loaded into a truck and delivered to her daughter so what did I learn from this don't take no for an answer if you're right it's okay to be a hard line negotiator in short by the time I got to law school I thought I had clearly learned that women could and should negotiate anything I hadn't seen a stereotype and I didn't believe it after graduating law school I was soon hired to teach negotiation and I was so excited to get this job that I accepted the offer immediately let me back up I was hired to teach negotiation and I did not negotiate my offer and there it was what had happened and was this a gender thing after all I started looking at gender and negotiation immediately and have studied it for the last 20 years of my career today we're going to talk about three myths of negotiation the myth that women don't negotiate that women shouldn't negotiate and that women can't negotiate so why do we have these myths if you want to explain why women are still being paid less than men or are not represented in leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies or in law firms these myths conveniently blame the women and therefore no laws need to be changed no company needs to think about fairness these myths maintain the status quo if you think however that the situation is perhaps more nuanced you're correct the first myth is that women don't negotiate and my situation seems to be the classic not negotiating over salary where do these myths come from studies of undergraduate students playing games in social science labs and surveys of recent grads point to the conclusion that women are less likely than men to negotiate over money in competitive situations with limited information and already we should see problems with this paradigm lab studies instead of the reality undergrads instead of mature adults and limited information were in fact more information may be found so let's fill in the picture there are lots of other elements of a job to negotiate other than salary and women not surprisingly are much more likely than men to negotiate over family issues for me pregnant with my first child I negotiated my start date a reduced course load my teaching package my travel budget and maternity leave my guess is my Dean did not perceive me as not negotiating you I immediately accepted the salary offer second we know that training matters the undergraduate students in the study above who did not negotiate started to negotiate in equal rates once they were trained and in my studies of law students who self-select into a field of advocacy and then have three years of teaching about this there is absolutely no difference between the genders in their propensity to negotiate or in the amount of money received when they do finally to whatever extent we think that there might be differences that lead into these stereotypes these differences are evaporating a study of the workplace in Australia conducted in 2013 to 2014 showed absolutely no difference between men and women in the likelihood to ask for a raise furthermore when women did not ask for a raise it wasn't based on some old idea that not asking would harm the relationship which brings us to our second myth that women shouldn't negotiate sometimes when we think about why women might not negotiate we hear the concern that you won't be liked if you're pushy men and women have been socialized to see that women are supposed to get along to make nice and to be a team player movies media and politics all play into the story we don't have to talk about this election let's go back to 2008 where we had Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin you could be liked or you could be competent but you could not be both in early cases of sex discrimination in the workplace show exactly the same likability vs. confidence choice at play in the in these instances women were penalized if they acted too much like men because they were seen as aggressive and therefore unlikable but they were also penalised if they acted too much like women because they were seen as lacking leadership skills and therefore incompetent however we now know that current research is showing this myth the fear of backlash is perhaps overblown and let me give you an example one time over winter break when I was in high school I was hired for a part-time job to hand out flyers for an insurance company and department store so as customers would come in to the department store I would hand them a flier and the perfume women would offer a sample spritz after a day of talking to the perfume ladies I discovered that they were being paid about three times as much as me and there did not seem to be a real difference in the skill set required so so after one whole day of work I marched myself to my boss's office and in front of everyone demanded a raise well guess what I was fired on the spot gender bias at work I don't think so I was obnoxious unaware of what others were making around me put the boss in a terrible position and frankly expendable I was just a bad negotiator and in closer looks at studies that had suggested that women faced a backlash we know that actually negotiation expectations and rewards are the same both men and women are rewarded for amiable firm Pleasant and assertive demeanors while both men and women are punished for obnoxious aggressive and overly competitive demands had I thought about that in my negotiation in the department store I bet my dad wouldn't have fired me which brings us to our third myth that women can't negotiate this myth is based on the idea that women are inherently less assertive than men and that assertiveness is the only skill needed for negotiation effectiveness in fact there are many skills that contribute to negotiation effectiveness and in my teaching and studying this for the last 20 years I now group them into five categories assertiveness empathy flexibility social intuition and ethicality in order to be an effective negotiator you need all of these skills so let's review them in reverse order ethicality refers to both your reputation and trustworthiness in a negotiation and women's higher interest in social capital and building relationships can be seen as an advantage here social intuition is building rapport with your counterpart in the negotiation reading verbal and nonverbal cues like body language and eye contact and then mirroring these cues in order to smooth the social interaction of the negotiation again women are seen as having an advantage here flexibility refers to both outcome and process flexibility in a negotiation can you find different ways of getting what you need and there does not appear to be any difference between the genders in this particular skill empathy is your understanding of the other side in the negotiation the cognitive ability to see where they are coming from even when you don't agree with them and to understand their emotional state as well again women are seen as having an advantage here the last skill is assertiveness and this is the only skill where women are seen as lacking assertiveness is the ability to make strong arguments for your point of view understanding how to frame those arguments in order to make them more persuasive and then having the verbal ability to stand up and make those arguments and here is where women might be lacking so why do we think that women might sometimes be less assertive than men likely socialization and fear of backlash and here's how we know this in studies of lawyers where certain asan behalf of clients is both socially expected and rewarded there is no difference in perceived negotiation effectiveness similarly in law school classes negotiation professors have found no difference between the genders in terms of their skill set so we know that we need to socialize both men and women to reward and expect negotiation in all contexts we also need to start the socialization earlier and this is exactly what the Girl Scouts are doing with a new badge called win-win in order to get this badge a young girl needs to complete 10 negotiation exercises furthermore when there is an imbalance in the workplace like a science department or a law firm women are less likely to negotiate so we need to protect negotiation in the workplace while not punishing anyone for early lack of assertiveness Massachusetts in fact has just passed a law doing this it is now illegal in Massachusetts for an employer to ask about your previous salary in other words if you like me did not negotiate early on over numbers that should not impact what is fair pay today my first raise was when my Dean gave me one the next year in order to keep me up with a new hire he was committed to structural fairness and we should insist that that be the case everywhere furthermore when women are viewed as both breadwinners and caregivers it makes it more likely that this equal treatment will occur finally we know that women are just as likely as men to negotiate when they have full knowledge of the situation increased transparency within companies about salaries and benefits make it more likely that women will ask for and receive that equal treatment so I have five negotiation skills there is only one where women in some instances and in some studies are lacking and yet we don't worry that men comparatively lacking social intuition and empathy can't negotiate we know that the best negotiators bring all of these skills to play the most effective leaders bring all of these skills and utilize them as needed the picture that I have painted for you today shows that the myth that women don't shouldn't and can't negotiate being successfully shattered everyday I like other women have learned the importance of asking and while I usually don't need to sit on the furniture in order to get what I want I am more willing and more able to do so if needed thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 23,375

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Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Humanities, Gender, Law, Women, Women in business

Id: jFX1wAOv724

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2017