Salary Negotiations

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The Washington Post ran an interesting article this past week about salary negotiation differences between men and women. There is a pay gap of about 10% between men and women in similar fields and with similar backgrounds. This article reviews how that gap may have its roots in initial starting salaries, whose effect is magnified over the years by the effect of annual percentage increases.

The researchers found that women bargained for higher starting salaries much less frequently than men, but only when the hiring manager was a man. The researchers found that this is not a problem of socialization with women (i.e., that women need to be more aggressive negotiators) but rather an accurate reading by the women of the effects of negotiation on male hirers. When women negotiate salary with male hirers, the male hirers consider them to be more difficult and are more likely to not want to work with them. This did not happen when male hirers interviewed male candidates, and it did not occur with female hirers at all.

Here is the article in its entirety:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/29/AR2007072900827.html
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