Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide / Edition 1

by Linda Babcock, Sara Laschever

Overview

When 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691089409
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	09/22/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Linda Babcock is James M. Walton Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management. Sara Laschever is a writer whose work has been published by the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the Village Voice, Vogue, and other publications.

Read an Excerpt

Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide

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By Linda Babcock Sara Laschever

Princeton University Press

Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-691-08940-X

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Introduction

WOMEN DON'T ASK

A few years ago, when Linda was serving as the director of the Ph.D. program at her school, a delegation of women graduate students came to her office. Many of the male graduate students were teaching courses of their own, the women explained, while most of the female graduate students had been assigned to work as teaching assistants to regular faculty. Linda agreed that this didn't sound fair, and that afternoon she asked the associate dean who handled teaching assignments about the women's complaint. She received a simple answer: "I try to find teaching opportunities for any student who approaches me with a good idea for a course, the ability to teach, and a reasonable offer about what it will cost," he explained. "More men ask. The women just don't ask."

The women just don't ask. This incident and the associate dean's explanation suggested to Linda the existence of a more pervasive problem. Could it be that women don't get more of the things they want in life in part because they don't think to ask for them? Are there external pressures that discourage women from asking as much as men do-and even keep them from realizing that they can ask? Are women really less likely than men to ask for what they want?

To explore this question, Linda conducted a study that looked at the starting salaries of students graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with their master's degrees. When Linda looked exclusively at gender, the difference was fairly large: The starting salaries of the men were 7.6 percent or almost $4,000 higher on average than those of the women. Trying to explain this difference, Linda looked next at who had negotiated his or her salary (who had asked for more money) and who had simply accepted the initial offer he or she had received. It turned out that only 7 percent of the female students had negotiated but 57 percent (eight times as many) of the men had asked for more money. Linda was particularly surprised to find such a dramatic difference between men and women at Carnegie Mellon because graduating students are strongly advised by the school's Career Services department to negotiate their job offers. Nonetheless, hardly any of the women had done so. The most striking finding, however, was that the students who had negotiated (most of them men) were able to increase their starting salaries by 7.4 percent on average, or $4,053-almost exactly the difference between men's and women's average starting pay. This suggests that the salary differences between the men and the women might have been eliminated if the women had negotiated their offers.

Spurred on by this finding, Linda and two colleagues, Deborah Small and Michele Gelfand, designed another study to look at the propensity of men and women to ask for more than they are offered. They recruited students at Carnegie Mellon for an experiment and told them that they would be paid between three and ten dollars for playing Boggle™, a game by Milton Bradley. In Boggle, players shake a cube of tile letters until all the letters fall into a grid at the bottom of the cube. They must then identify words that can be formed from the letters vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Each research subject was asked to play four rounds of the game, and then an experimenter handed him or her three dollars and said, "Here's three dollars. Is three dollars okay?" If a subject asked for more money, the experimenters would pay that participant ten dollars, but they would not give anyone more money if he or she just complained about the compensation (an indirect method of asking). The results were striking-almost nine times as many male as female subjects asked for more money. Both male and female subjects rated how well they'd played the game about equally, meaning that women didn't feel they should be paid less or should accept less because they'd played poorly. There were also no gender differences in how much men and women complained about the compensation (there was plenty of complaining all around). The significant factor seemed to be that for men, unhappiness with what they were offered was more likely to make them try to fix their unhappiness-by asking for more.

In a much larger study, Linda, Michele Gelfand, Deborah Small, and another colleague, Heidi Stayn, conducted a survey of several hundred people with access to the Internet (subjects were paid ten dollars to log on to a website and answer a series of questions). The survey asked respondents about the most recent negotiations they'd attempted or initiated (as opposed to negotiations they'd participated in that had been prompted or initiated by others). For the men, the most recent negotiation they'd initiated themselves had occurred two weeks earlier on average, while for the women the most recent negotiation they'd initiated had occurred a full month before. Averages for the second-most-recent negotiations attempted or initiated were about seven weeks earlier for men and twenty-four weeks earlier for women.

These results suggest that men are asking for things they want and initiating negotiations much more often than women-two to three times as often. Linda and her colleagues wanted to be sure that this discrepancy was not produced simply by memory lapses, however, so the survey also asked people about the next negotiation they planned to initiate. In keeping with the earlier findings, the negotiations planned by the women were much further in the future than those being planned by the men-one month ahead for the women but only one week ahead for the men. This means that men may be initiating four times as many negotiations as women. The sheer magnitude of this difference is dramatic, especially since respondents to the survey included people of all ages, from a wide range of professions, and with varied levels of education. It confirms that men really do take a more active approach than women to getting what they want by asking for it.

The more than 100 interviews we conducted in the process of writing this book-with men and women from a range of professions (including full-time mothers) and from Britain and Europe as well as the United States-supported these findings. When asked to identify the last negotiation in which they had participated, the majority of the women we talked to named an event several months in the past and described a recognized type of structured negotiation, such as buying a car. (The exceptions were women with small children, who uniformly said, "I negotiate with my kids all the time.") The majority of the men described an event that had occurred within the preceding week, and frequently identified more informal transactions, such as negotiating with a spouse over who would take the kids to soccer practice, with a boss to pay for a larger-size rental car because of a strained back, or with a colleague about which parts of a joint project each team member would undertake. Men were also more likely to mention more ambiguous situations-situations that could be construed as negotiations but might not be by many people. For the most part, the men we talked to saw negotiation as a bigger part of their lives and a more common event than the women did.

One particularly striking aspect of our findings was how they broke down by age. The changes brought about by the women's movement over the last 40 years had led us to expect greater differences between older men and women than between their younger counterparts. And indeed when we discussed the ideas in the book with younger women they often suggested that the problems we were studying were "boomer" problems, afflicting older women but not themselves. To our surprise, however, when we looked exclusively at respondents to the web survey who were in their twenties and early thirties, the gender differences in how often they initiated negotiations were similar to or slightly larger than the differences in older cohorts (with men attempting many more negotiations than women). In addition, both the starting salary study and the Boggle study used subjects who were in their twenties. This persuaded us that the tendency among women to accept what they're offered and not ask for more is far from just a "boomer" problem.

The Asking Advantage

But just because women don't ask for things as often as men do, is that necessarily a problem? Perhaps directly negotiating for advantage-asking for what you want-is a male strategy and women simply employ other equally effective strategies to get what they want. This is an important point, but only partly accurate. Women often worry more than men about the impact their actions will have on their relationships. This can prompt them to change their behavior to protect personal connections, sometimes by asking for things indirectly, sometimes by asking for less than they really want, and sometimes simply by trying to be more deserving of what they want (say, by working harder) so they'll be given what they want without asking. Women also frequently take a more collaborative approach to problem-solving than men take, trying to find solutions that benefit both parties or trying to align their own requests with shared goals. In many situations, women's methods can be superior to those typically employed by men (we explore the advantages of women's different approaches and styles in the last chapter of the book). Unfortunately, however, in our largely male-defined work culture, women's strategies can often be misinterpreted and can leave them operating from a position of weakness. And in many cases, the only way to get something is to ask for it directly.

So let's look at the importance of asking.

First, consider the situation of the graduating students at Carnegie Mellon, in which eight times as many men as women negotiated their starting salaries. The women who did not negotiate started out not just behind their male peers, but behind where they could and should have been. With every future raise predicated on this starting point, they could be paying for this error for a long time-perhaps for the rest of their careers.

Liliane, now 46, is an electrical engineer and a successful software designer in New England's competitive high-tech industry. Although she earned excellent grades in college, she was so insecure when she started out in her field that she felt she didn't even deserve to be interviewed for an engineering job-she was only "faking it." Despite her doubts, she quickly received an offer from a highly regarded company. When the company's personnel manager asked her what kind of salary she was looking for, she said, "I don't care what you pay me as long as you give me a job." A big smile spread across the personnel manager's face, she remembers. She later learned that he gave her the absolute bottom of the range for her position, which was 10 to 20 percent less than her peers were earning. It took her ten years to fix this inequity, and she only did so, finally, by changing jobs.

Quantifying-in terms of dollars and cents-the loss to Liliane and women like her from not negotiating their salaries produces sobering results. Take the following example. Suppose that at age 22 an equally qualified man and woman receive job offers for $25,000 a year. The man negotiates and gets his offer raised to $30,000. The woman does not negotiate and accepts the job for $25,000. Even if each of them receives identical 3 percent raises every year throughout their careers (which is unlikely, given their different propensity to negotiate and other research showing that women's achievements tend to be undervalued), by the time they reach age 60 the gap between their salaries will have widened to more than $15,000 a year, with the man earning $92,243 and the woman only $76,870. While that may not seem like an enormous spread, remember that the man will have been making more all along, with his extra earnings over the 38 years totaling $361,171. If the man had simply banked the difference every year in a savings account earning 3 percent interest, by age 60 he would have $568,834 more than the woman-enough to underwrite a comfortable retirement nest egg, purchase a second home, or pay for the college education of a few children. This is an enormous "return on investment" for a one-time negotiation. It can mean a higher standard of living throughout one's working years, financial security in old age, or a top-flight education for one's kids.

The impact of neglecting to negotiate in this one instance-when starting a new job-is so substantial and difficult to overcome that some researchers who study the persistence of the wage gap between men and women speculate that much of the disparity can be traced to differences in entering salaries rather than differences in raises.

Another estimate of a woman's potential lost earnings from not negotiating appears in the book Get Paid What You're Worth by two professors of management, Robin L. Pinkley and Gregory B. Northcraft. They estimate that 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. And that figure doesn't include the interest on the extra amount earned. Even in such a small matter as the Boggle experiment, the gains to asking were great. Everyone who asked for more money received ten dollars, more than three times as much as those who didn't ask and received only three dollars.

We all know that few employers will pay us any more than they need to. They're prepared to spend extra to get an applicant they want, but happy to pay less if they can. Assuming applicants will negotiate, they routinely offer less than they're able to pay. But if we fail to ask for more, it's a rare employer who will insist that we're not being paid enough. A recent study shows that this is true even at institutions with a committed policy against discriminating between men and women. This study describes a man and a woman with equivalent credentials who were offered assistant professorships by the same large university. Shortly after the two were hired, a male administrator noticed that the man's salary was significantly higher than the woman's. Looking into it, he learned that both were offered the same starting salary. The man negotiated for more, but the woman accepted what she was offered. Satisfied, the administrator let the matter drop. He didn't try to adjust the discrepancy or alert the female professor to her mistake. The university was saving money and enjoying the benefits of a talented woman's hard work and expertise. He didn't see the long-term damage to his institution and to society from not correcting such inequities (which we explore later in the book), and she didn't know how much she had sacrificed by not negotiating the offer she'd received.

Other new research emphasizes how important asking can be.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide by Linda Babcock Sara Laschever Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

PREFACE: WhyNegotiation, and Why Now? ix

INTRODUCTION: Women Don't Ask 1

CHAPTER ONE: Opportunity Doesn't Always Knock 17

CHAPTER TWO: A Price Higher than Rubies 41

CHAPTER THREE: Nice Girls Don't Ask 62

CHAPTER FOUR: Scaring the Boys 85

CHAPTER FIVE: Fear of Asking 112

CHAPTER SIX: Low Goals and Safe Targets 130

CHAPTER SEVEN: Just So Much and No More 148

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Female Advantage 164

EPILOGUE: Negotiating at Home 180

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 187

NOTES 189

REFERENCES 201

INDEX 217

What People are Saying About This

Bazerman

Women Don't Ask is a compelling and fresh look at the gender-in-negotiation question. Practitioners can act on the advice in the book, and researchers will be asking new questions for decades. This book will fundamentally change how we think.
— Max H. Bazerman, Harvard Business School

Jim Berrien

Women Don't Ask does an amazing job in identifying and providing solutions to a very real issue: the challenges women face in negotiating. Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever have done a superb job not only in highlighting the problem of gender differences in negotiation but also in providing ways to begin fixing it. Example after example of the financial and emotional impacts make this issue extremely compelling. Any senior manager needs to be aware of the significant ramifications both in and out of the workplace. I highly recommend Women Don't Ask as a must read for executives—female and male.
— Jim Berrien, President and Publisher, Forbes Magazine Group

Virginia Valian

Eye-opening and riveting.
— Virginia Valian, Hunter College, City University of New York

From the Publisher

"An eye-opener, a call to arms, and a plan for action; it is enlightening, unsettling, and, ultimately, inspiring."—Teresa Heinz

"The first book to adequately explain the dramatic differences in how men and women negotiate and why women so often fail to ask for what they want at work (starting with equal pay)."—Fortune

"Enlightening."—Denise Kersten, USA Today

"Provocative. . . . Offers important insights into the persistent economic gap between men and women."—Dolores Kong, Boston Globe

"Should be read by anyone with a fear of negotiating, male or female, and by managers who want a better understanding of how 47 percent of the work force confronts the workplace."—Alan B. Krueger, New York Times

Patricia Schroeder

Women Don't Ask helps women learn how to communicate their desires. This is absolutely essential and basic information since we can't read brainwaves. Speak up or surrender your goals!
— Patricia Schroeder, President & CEO, Association of American Publishers

Shiller

In this brilliant book Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever provide readers with the means not only of navigating the difficulties of negotiation, but also of fully engaging a modern world where traditional roles and norms are receding and business dealing has become more important. By looking at negotiation through the lens of gender, Babcock and Laschever explain why we-men and women alike—develop our skills as negotiators, and in so doing they instruct us on how to become better negotiators. By illuminating negotiation through the real-life experiences of women and men, Babcock and Laschever underscore that most important lesson in all of negotiating: that the best deal is the deal that works best for all parties.
— Robert J. Shiller, author of "Irrational Exuberance" and "The New Financial Order"

Teresa Heinz

This book is an eye opener, a call to arms, and a plan for action; it is enlightening, unsettling, and, ultimately, inspiring. Although women have made great strides in American society, the reality is that, since the 1990s, progress has slowed to almost a standstill. Gracefully and with humor, Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever tell a riveting story about an invisible problem that's been hiding in plain sight: one major reason that women still work for less money and advance less far and less fast than men is that women themselves have accepted the status quo and refrained from asking for more than they're offered and for less than they need or deserve. They make the novel—and important—point that negotiation may be one of feminism's final frontiers. Of all the books about the roadblocks our society erects in women's paths, this one may prove to be the most useful in everyday life.

McGinn

The authors offer advice that is practical and likely to result in desired changes for women who want to be able to accomplish more in multiple spheres of their lives.
— Kathleen L. McGinn, Harvard University

Harriet Rubin

Women don't ask the important questions that will make them successful—but Babcock and Laschever do. This is an important study of how women can become their own best advocates by knowing how to ask for exactly what they want in their public and private lives. The secret is in believing that one can negotiate almost anything. Venus and Mars, bosses and tyros: this is the book you need to bring peace and happiness to every relationship.
— Harriet Rubin, author of "The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women"

Recipe

"Women Don't Ask helps women learn how to communicate their desires. This is absolutely essential and basic information since we can't read brainwaves. Speak up or surrender your goals!"—Patricia Schroeder, President & CEO, Association of American Publishers

"Women Don't Ask does an amazing job in identifying and providing solutions to a very real issue: the challenges women face in negotiating. Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever have done a superb job not only in highlighting the problem of gender differences in negotiation but also in providing ways to begin fixing it. Example after example of the financial and emotional impacts make this issue extremely compelling. Any senior manager needs to be aware of the significant ramifications both in and out of the workplace. I highly recommend Women Don't Ask as a must read for executives—female and male."—Jim Berrien, President and Publisher, Forbes Magazine Group

"In this brilliant book Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever provide readers with the means not only of navigating the difficulties of negotiation, but also of fully engaging a modern world where traditional roles and norms are receding and business dealing has become more important. By looking at negotiation through the lens of gender, Babcock and Laschever explain why we-men and women alike—develop our skills as negotiators, and in so doing they instruct us on how to become better negotiators. By illuminating negotiation through the real-life experiences of women and men, Babcock and Laschever underscore that most important lesson in all of negotiating: that the best deal is the deal that works best for allparties."—Robert J. Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance and The New Financial Order

"Women don't ask the important questions that will make them successful—but Babcock and Laschever do. This is an important study of how women can become their own best advocates by knowing how to ask for exactly what they want in their public and private lives. The secret is in believing that one can negotiate almost anything. Venus and Mars, bosses and tyros: this is the book you need to bring peace and happiness to every relationship."—Harriet Rubin, author of The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women

"This book is an eye opener, a call to arms, and a plan for action; it is enlightening, unsettling, and, ultimately, inspiring. Although women have made great strides in American society, the reality is that, since the 1990s, progress has slowed to almost a standstill. Gracefully and with humor, Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever tell a riveting story about an invisible problem that's been hiding in plain sight: one major reason that women still work for less money and advance less far and less fast than men is that women themselves have accepted the status quo and refrained from asking for more than they're offered and for less than they need or deserve. They make the novel—and important—point that negotiation may be one of feminism's final frontiers. Of all the books about the roadblocks our society erects in women's paths, this one may prove to be the most useful in everyday life."—Teresa Heinz

"Women Don't Ask is a compelling and fresh look at the gender-in-negotiation question. Practitioners can act on the advice in the book, and researchers will be asking new questions for decades. This book will fundamentally change how we think."—Max H. Bazerman, Harvard Business School

"Eye-opening and riveting."—Virginia Valian, Hunter College, City University of New York

"The authors offer advice that is practical and likely to result in desired changes for women who want to be able to accomplish more in multiple spheres of their lives."—Kathleen L. McGinn, Harvard University

Editorial Reviews

"The first book to adequately explain the dramatic differences in how men and women negotiate and why women so often fail to ask for what they want at work (starting with equal pay). Every male manager in America should read it."

Fortune

Runner-Up for the IPPY Best Book Award for Women's Issues

From the Publisher

"This thoughtful analysis could both benefit managers across industry lines and help women learn the importance of developing negotiating skills."

Booklist

"This thoughtful analysis could both benefit managers across industry lines and help women learn the importance of developing negotiating skills."

Booklist

Clear, useful, and sensibly organized. . . . Women Don't Ask crisply describes the results of one study after another, fitting the puzzle pieces together to show how and why women are held back—and hold themselves back—from advancing both financially and in every other way.

Women's Review of Books - E.J. Graff

Women Don't Ask offers important insights into the persistent economic gap between men and women.

Boston Globe - Dolores Kong

Women Don't Ask is not a straight recitation of findings—nor is it simply a "rant." It goes beyond well-known facts and offers concrete tips on how women can remedy the underlying problems and actually move ahead. The authors prescribe refreshingly specific methods of negotiation that they've seen work for even the most confrontationally-challenged women.

ForeWord Magazine - Allison Nazarian

A highly readable book. . . . Women Don't Ask should be read by anyone with a fear of negotiating, male or female, and by managers who want a better understanding of how 47 percent of the work force confronts the workplace.

The New York Times - Alan B. Krueger

Clear, useful, and sensibly organized. . . . Women Don't Ask crisply describes the results of one study after another, fitting the puzzle pieces together to show how and why women are held back—and hold themselves back—from advancing both financially and in every other way.
— E.J. Graff

Women's Review of Books

Women Don't Ask offers important insights into the persistent economic gap between men and women.
— Dolores Kong

Boston Globe

Women Don't Ask is not a straight recitation of findings—nor is it simply a "rant." It goes beyond well-known facts and offers concrete tips on how women can remedy the underlying problems and actually move ahead. The authors prescribe refreshingly specific methods of negotiation that they've seen work for even the most confrontationally-challenged women.
— Allison Nazarian

ForeWord Magazine

A highly readable book. . . . Women Don't Ask should be read by anyone with a fear of negotiating, male or female, and by managers who want a better understanding of how 47 percent of the work force confronts the workplace.
— Alan B. Krueger

The New York Times

Babcock 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.(Oct.) Forecast: Academics and feminists will eat this up, while casual readers may be less motivated to get through the dry text. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In this well-documented study, Babcock (economics, Carnegie Mellon Univ.) and Laschever report that the feminist movement has not made the strides that many of us would like. The work asks why women in the workplace have such difficulty negotiating for themselves (as opposed to others). The reasons they see for this cultural timidity are many and varied: women are socialized to put others first and to devalue their own work; they are seen as negatively aggressive if they look out for their own interests; and they expect to be rewarded fairly for their efforts. The aim of their research is not to show women how to negotiate like men but rather to describe how the gender divide is still deeply entrenched in our culture. They have determined that women can achieve more if they would recognize their needs and ask for them. After an extensive discussion of these situations, the authors examine those instances of women's uniquely successful negotiating skills and their overall benefits to organizations and society, such as the abilities to see past two options and to create value through collaboration. The final chapter almost appears as an afterthought, though the points are well taken. They discuss women's negotiating skills in terms of home life, stress, heart disease, and AIDS in just a few pages. Neither a dry academic treatise nor a self-help book, this work puts forth a model for a society that respects women's communication strengths. Strongly recommended for public and all academic libraries.-Margaret Cardwell, Christian Brothers Univ. Lib., Memphis Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Negotiation and the Gender Divide
While examining the discrepancies between the pay and jobs received by men and women in academia, economics professor Linda Babcock and writer Sara Laschever discovered that much of the problem of unequal pay and fewer opportunities for advancement comes from the fact that women do not negotiate as often as men. After conducting several studies of the phenomenon, they realized that the higher salaries of men can often be attributed to men asking for them and women often settling for the first salary offered. In Women Don't Ask, the authors describe the problem of inequality and offer several solutions to help women gain ground lost to fundamental differences in the ways women and men negotiate.

According to a study conducted by Babcock of students graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with master's degrees, the starting salaries of the men were 7.6 percent or almost $4,000 higher on average than those of the women. According to the authors, only 7 percent of the female students had negotiated their salaries and asked for more money, but 57 percent (8 times as many) of the men had asked for more money. The students who had negotiated were able to increase their starting salaries by 7.4 percent on average, or $4,053 - almost exactly the difference between men's and women's average starting pay. The authors write that this suggests that the salary differences between the men and women might have been eliminated if the women had negotiated their offers.

Shared Assumptions
Throughout Women Don't Ask?, the authors explore the causes of the difference between men's and women's use of negotiation. They also examine why women often don't realize that change is possible and why they don't know that they can ask. By studying the social forces that shape women and cause them to focus on the needs of others rather than their own needs, the authors show how society's shared assumptions about what constitutes appropriate female behavior can limit a woman when she wants to assert her own wishes and desires. The authors write that they want to help women promote their own interests by exposing the social forces that constrain them.

Women Don't Ask also serves as an examination of how modern Western culture strongly discourages women from asking for what they want. By focusing at the culture in general instead of how women need to "fix" themselves, the authors attempt to provoke social change and inspire everyone in the work force and at home to think differently about how women can and should behave. In addition, they use statistics and case studies to show how preventing women from pursuing their dreams and ambitions in straightforward ways involves substantial social and economic costs for everyone.

Deloitte and Touche
The authors cite the international accounting and consulting firm of Deloitte and Touche, which employs about 29,000 people in the United States and 95,000 people worldwide, as an example of how an organization can create a large-scale change. In 1991, the firm decided it had a problem keeping women long enough to qualify for partner. The firm's average annual turnover rate among female managers was 33 percent. A task force calculated that every percentage point in turnover translated into an estimated $13 million for costs such as recruitment, training, hiring and bonuses. When polled, women cited the firm's male-dominated culture as a big reason for leaving.

Once Deloitte and Touche started looking at their assumptions about men and women, and began to see the implications of those assumptions, they made changes. By changing the way assignments were made and evaluations were determined, the firm started networking events and career-planning programs especially for women. By 2000, the number of female partners at the firm tripled from 5 to 14 percent, and the company saved close to $250 million in hiring and training costs.

The authors write that the experiences of this company provide a great example for how the rest of us, with a little commitment and persistent focus, can change our world. By shining a spotlight on the barriers that prevent women from asking for what they want, and suggesting ways for those barriers to be removed, the authors provide a vision of what is possible. They explain that helping women learn to negotiate both at work and at home - and teaching society to accept women's need and right to negotiate - will make our world a better, healthier place.

Why We Like This Book
Women Don't Ask provides a compelling look at society's stereotypes and assumptions about women and how the genders negotiate differently. By focusing on insightful studies of the problem and providing examples of how many companies were able to change the ways they do business and benefit from their changes, the authors offer hope for women and better ideas for success to the companies that take their concerns and advice to heart. Copyright © 2004 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

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