Social Incentives For Gender Differences in The Propensity to Initiate Negotiations

Bowles, H. R., Babcock, L., Lai, L. (2007). Social incentives for gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 103, 84-103.
Gender differences tend to impede the progress of various processes as shown by this study, which focuses on negotiations for higher compensations. This study illustrates that men evaluators are more prejudiced against women than female evaluators, who treat all individuals in a similar fashion. Previous research clearly indicates that women, unlike men, are less likely to initiate negotiations; yet, Bowles, Babcock, and Lai (2007) displayed a different scenario where more women than men were penalized because of initiating negotiations. These results indicate that gender differences result in poor peer relationships as men treat their female counterparts unfairly when they act in ways that do not conform to normative patriarchal ideologies. This phenomenon is mainly evident when women tend to become authoritative; instead, they ought to relate with their male counterparts with feminine niceness.
This study used the concept of negotiation to indicate the masculine, authoritative trait of women opposed by men. Therefore, when a man is in charge, he is likely to consider initiation of negotiation by women to be against the norms and penalize the woman. Apparently, this has been the highly-held notion for a long time such that women evaluators would penalize women for initiating negotiation in a similar fashion as men evaluators.

This occurrence merely indicates that women hold a low social position in society that exempts them from freely expressing themselves. The women have to be mindful of her language and manner of relaying her information because it is unexpected of her to get involved in some matters. Therefore, in the workplace, based on the results of Bowles et al. (2007) experiments, the society expects a woman to behave in a friendly and soft manner when relating with others. Otherwise, during a recruitment process, a woman may not be considered for a job position, and if already employed, she would incur huge social costs.