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Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender DivideWhen Linda Babcock asked why so many male graduate students were teaching their own courses and most female students were assigned as assistants, her dean said: “More men ask. The women just don’t ask.” It turns out that whether they want higher salaries or more help at home, women often find it hard to ask. Sometimes they don’t know that change is possible–they don’t know that they can ask. Sometimes they fear that asking may damage a relationship. And sometimes they don’t ask because they’ve learned that society can react badly to women asserting their own needs and desires.By looking at the barriers holding women back and the social forces constraining them, Women Don’t Ask shows women how to reframe their interactions and more accurately evaluate their opportunities. It teaches them how to ask for what they want in ways that feel comfortable and possible, taking into account the impact of asking on their relationships. And it teaches all of us how to recognize the ways in which our institutions, child-rearing practices, and unspoken assumptions perpetuate inequalities–inequalities that are not only fundamentally unfair but also inefficient and economically unsound.With women’s progress toward full economic and social equality stalled, women’s lives becoming increasingly complex, and the structures of businesses changing, the ability to negotiate is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Drawing on research in psychology, sociology, economics, and organizational behavior as well as dozens of interviews with men and women from all walks of life, Women Don’t Ask is the first book to identify the dramatic difference between men and women in their propensity to negotiate for what they want. It tells women how to ask, and why they should.More About Linda and SaraLinda C. Babcock is the James Mellon Walton Professor of Economics at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has also served as director of the Ph.D. Program and Interim Dean at the Heinz School.Dr. Babcock grew up in Altadena, California, and attended public schools there before earning her bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California at Irvine. She subsequently attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she completed a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in economics. She has received numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation as well as several university teaching awards. She has served as a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and the California Institute of Technology.Dr. Babcock specializes in negotiation and dispute resolution. Her research has appeared in the most prestigious economics, industrial relations, and law journals, including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, the Journal of Legal Studies, The New York Times, the Economist, the Harvard Business Review, the International Herald Tribune, the Sunday Times of London and the International Review of Law and Economics. She also consults for public sector, not-for-profit, and private sector organizations.Dr. Babcock is a member of the American Economic Association, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, the Economic Science Association, the International Association for Conflict Management, the American Law and Economics Association, and the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. She is currently serving on the Behavioral Economics Roundtable of the Russell Sage Foundation and as a Review Panel Member at the National Science Foundation.Dr. Babcock lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, Mark Wessel and their daughter.Sara Laschever was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey and rural Connecticut. She attended the Kent School and earned her bachelor’s degree in English Literature (summa cum laude) from Princeton University and a master’s degree in creative writing from Boston University. She has spent her career investigating the obstacles, detours, and special circumstances that shape women’s lives and careers, writing extensively about women in literature and the arts, women in the sciences, women in academia, and women in business. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review, The New York Review of Books, Vogue, Glamour, and many other publications. She has taught writing at Boston University and served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Work-Life Policy (now the Center for Talent Innovation), a nonprofit think tank devoted to exploring the issues that matter most to women at work.Her interest in women’s life and career obstacles led her to work as a research associate and principal interviewer for Project Access, a landmark Harvard University study funded by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and the Bunting Institute. Project Access explored impediments to women’s careers in science — the hindrances, both internal and external, that prevent women from rising to the tops of their fields. Sara’s efforts contributed to the publication of two seminal studies in this field, Gender Differences in Science Careers: The Project Access Study and Who Succeeds in Science? The Gender Dimension, both by G. Sonnert, assisted by G. Holton.Sara lectures and teaches workshops about women and negotiation for corporate audiences, colleges and universities, law firms, government agencies, and women’s leadership conferences in the U.S. and around the world.She lives in Concord, Massachusetts with her husband and two children. She can be contacted at saralaschever.com, or by email at sk*****@gm***.From Publishers WeeklyBabcock and Laschever, contrary to their book’s title, do ask a series of questions: Why do most women see a negotiation as an automatic fight instead of a chance to get what they deserve? Why are women afraid to ask for what they want in the workplace? And perhaps most importantly, why don’t women feel entitled to ask for it? True to their academic backgrounds, Babcock (a Carnegie Mellon economist) and writer Laschever seek their answers in a series of gender psychology and economics studies (some done by them, most done by others). They cite numerous studies indicating that women are socialized to feel pushy and overbearing if they pursue their ideal situation when it spells potential conflict with employers or co-workers. The authors also use anecdotal evidence to support their claim that women are taught to feel like every negotiation is a monumental threat to a personal relationship, rather than a fact of business life (the view held by most men, they say). Their argument has important practical ramifications: the authors cite one study that estimates “a woman who routinely negotiates her salary increases will earn over one million dollars more by the time she retires than a woman who accepts what she’s offered every time without asking for more.” Babcock and Laschever’s work is a great resource for anyone who doubts there is still a great disparity between the salary earnings of men and women in comparable professions. Alas, it isn’t as successful at eloquence as it is at academic rigor.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.Originally uploaded by yonkers