Walking The Tightrope: How Women Manage To Achieve Good Economic Negotiation Outcomes Without Jeopardizing The Relationship With Their Counterpart

Women often face the risk of being evaluated negatively when they negotiate assertively and, thus, often achieve lower economic outcomes than men. Although researchers developed specific strategies to help women navigate this dilemma, research found that women are not particularly eager to use most of these strategies, as they perceive them as rather ineffective. Hence, in two qualitative studies, we employed a bottom-up approach to uncover new potential strategies for women. We asked 183 experienced women how they negotiate and identified two promising strategies: (a) asking for a performance appraisal prior to making requests and (b) legitimizing requests with a concrete description of future engagement at work. Women expressed a willingness to use both newly identified strategies and expected them to be effective. As these novel strategies make use of norms of meritocracy or reciprocity, they could help women to improve their negotiation outcomes without perpetuating the female gender role.