Negotiation Strategies for Women

Abstract: Research has developed specific strategies for women to improve their negotiation performance, yet women perceive them as ineffective and indicated that they are unlikely to use them (Mazei et al. 2020). We examine whether providing women with the rationales underlying these strategies results in a higher willingness to use them. N = 504 women evaluated four specific (e.g., highlighting the relationship) and two conventional negotiation strategies (assertiveness and yielding). Providing the theoretical rationales did not increase women’s willingness to use the specific strategies. Regardless of whether the rationale was provided, women expected all specific strategies to be less economically effective and most of them to lead to a greater perpetuation of gender roles than assertiveness. These expectations decreased women’s willingness to use them. Moreover, women expected most of the specific strategies to lead to less favorable social evaluations than yielding, which again led to their lower willingness to use them.

Keywords: Sex Roles, Gender Gap, Negotiation, Implementation Gap