Untapped Potential in the Study of Negotiation and Gender Inequality in Organizations

Hannah Riley Bowles; Kathleen L. McGinn

Article | Academy of Management Annals

Untapped Potential in the Study of Negotiation and Gender Inequality in Organizations

by Hannah Riley Bowles and Kathleen L. McGinn

Abstract

Negotiation is a process that creates, reinforces, and reduces gender inequality in organizations, yet the study of gender in negotiation has little connection to the study of gender in organizations. We review the literature on gender in job negotiations from psychology and organizational behavior, and propose ways in which this literature could speak more directly to gender inequality in organizations by incorporating insights from research on gender in intra-household and collective bargaining. Taken together, these literatures illuminate how negotiations at the individual, household, and collective levels may contribute to the construction and deconstruction of gender inequality in organizations.

Keywords: Gender; Body of Literature; Negotiation Process; Organizational Culture; Research; Behavior; Equality and Inequality;

Format: Print

Citation:

Bowles, Hannah Riley, and Kathleen L. McGinn. "Untapped Potential in the Study of Negotiation and Gender Inequality in Organizations." Academy of Management Annals 2 (2008): 99–132.

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Article | Quarterly Journal of Economics | May 2020

Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment

Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Corinne Low and Kathleen McGinn

Using a randomized control trial, we examine whether offering adolescent girls nonmaterial resources—specifically, negotiation skills—can improve educational outcomes in a low-income country. In so doing, we provide the first evidence on the effects of an intervention that increased noncognitive, interpersonal skills during adolescence. Long-run administrative data shows that negotiation training significantly improved educational outcomes over the next three years. The training had greater effects than two alternative treatments (offering girls a safe physical space with female mentors and offering girls information about the returns to education), suggesting that negotiation skills themselves drive the effect. Further evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment, which simulates parents’ educational investment decisions, and a midline survey suggests that negotiation skills improved girls’ outcomes by moving households’ human capital investments closer to the efficient frontier. This is consistent with an incomplete contracting model, where negotiation allows daughters to strategically cooperate with parents.

Keywords: Negotiation; Competency and Skills; Training; Age; Gender; Education; Investment; Outcome or Result; Developing Countries and Economies;

Citation:

Ashraf, Nava, Natalie Bau, Corinne Low, and Kathleen McGinn. "Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment." Quarterly Journal of Economics 135, no. 2 (May 2020): 1095–1151. View Details

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Untapped Potential in the Study of Negotiation and Gender Inequality in Organizations

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