"In particular, the degree to which incoming employees feel comfortable assertively negotiating their starting salary may depend on their gender. When women negotiate for higher salaries, they must behave contrary to deeply ingrained societal gender roles of women as passive, helpful, and accommodating. As a result, their requests often face a backlash: relative to men who ask for more, women are penalized financially, are considered less hirable and less likable, and are less likely to be promoted, research by Hannah Riley Bowles of the Harvard Kennedy School and others shows. Men, by contrast, generally can negotiate for higher pay without fearing a backlash because such behavior is consistent with the stereotype of men as assertive, bold, and self-interested.
To reduce the insidious impact of racial and gender negotiation biases in hiring, compensation, and promotion negotiations, broader organizational and societal changes are needed. Because negotiation biases spring from faulty intuition, reducing the role of snap judgments in the decision-making process is an important step toward promoting more equitable job negotiations."
