Hannah Riley Bowles

Constraints and Triggers: Situational Mechanics of Gender in Negotiation

The authors propose 2 categories of situational moderators of gender in negotiation: situational ambiguity and gender triggers. Reducing the degree of situational ambiguity constrains the influence of gender on negotiation. Gender triggers prompt divergent behavioral responses as a function of gender. Field and lab studies (1 and 2) demonstrated that decreased ambiguity in the economic structure of a negotiation (structural ambiguity) reduces gender effects on negotiation performance. Study 3 showed that representation role (negotiating for self or other) functions as a gender trigger by producing a greater effect on female than male negotiation performance. Study 4 showed that decreased structural ambiguity constrains gender effects of representation role, suggesting that situational ambiguity and gender triggers work in interaction to moderate gender effects on negotiation performance.

Gender Differences in Research Grant Applications and Funding Outcomes for Medical School Faculty

PURPOSE To evaluate whether there were differences in acquisition of research grant support between male and female faculty at eight Harvard Medical School-affiliated institutions. METHODS Data were obtained from the participating institutions on all research grant applications submitted by full-time faculty from 2001 through 2003. Data were analyzed by gender and faculty rank of applicant, source of support (federal or nonfederal), funding outcome, amount of funding requested, and amount of funding awarded. RESULTS Data on 6319 grant applications submitted by 2480 faculty applicants were analyzed. Women represented 29% of investigators and submitted 26% of all grant requests. There were significant gender differences in the mean number of submissions per applicant (women 2.3, men 2.7), success rate (women 41%, men 45%), number of years requested (women 3.1, men 3.4), median annual amount requested (women

How Can Women Escape the Compensation Negotiation Dilemma? Relational Accounts Are One Answer

115,325, men

Status and the Evaluation of Workplace Deviance

150,000), mean number of years awarded (women 2.9, men 3.2), and median annual amount awarded (women

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

98,094, men

Claiming Authority: How Women Explain Their Ascent to Top Business Leadership Positions

125,000). After controlling for academic rank, grant success rates were not significantly different between women and men, although submission rates by women were significantly lower at the lowest faculty rank. Although there was no difference in the proportion of money awarded to money requested, women were awarded significantly less money than men at the ranks of instructor and associate professor. More men than women applied to the National Institutes of Health, which awarded higher dollar amounts than other funding sources. CONCLUSIONS Gender disparity in grant funding is largely explained by gender disparities in academic rank. Controlling for rank, women and men were equally successful in acquiring grants. However, gender differences in grant application behavior at lower academic ranks also contribute to gender disparity in grant funding for medical science.

It Depends Who is Asking and Who You Ask: Social Incentives for Sex Differences in the Propensity to Initiate Negotiation

Policy makers, academics, and media reports suggest that women could shrink the gender pay gap by negotiating more effectively for higher compensation. Yet women entering compensation negotiations face a dilemma: They have to weigh the benefits of negotiating against the social consequences of having negotiated. Research shows that women are penalized socially more than men for negotiating for higher pay. To address this dilemma, the authors test strategies to help women improve both their negotiation and social outcomes in compensation negotiations. In Study 1, communicating concern for organizational relationships improved female negotiators’ social outcomes, and offering a legitimate account for compensation requests improved negotiation outcomes. However, neither strategy—alone or in combination—improved both women’s social and negotiation outcomes. Study 2 tested two strategies devised to improve female negotiators’ social and negotiation outcomes by explaining why a compensation request is legitimate in relational terms. Results showed that, although adherence to the feminine stereotype is insufficient, using these “relational accounts” can improve women’s social and negotiation outcomes at the same time. Normative implications of conformity to gender stereotypes to reduce gender pay disparities are discussed.

When Doesn't it Hurt Her to Ask? Framing and Justification Reduce the Social Risks of Initiating Compensation

Bias in the evaluation of workplace misbehavior is hotly debated in courts and corporations, but it has received little empirical attention. Classic sociological literature suggests that deviance by lower-status actors will be evaluated more harshly than deviance by higher-status actors. However, more recent psychological literature suggests that discrimination in the evaluation of misbehavior may be moderated by the relative status of the evaluator because status influences both rule observance and attitudes toward social hierarchy. In Study 1, the psychological experience of higher status decreased rule observance and increased preferences for social hierarchy, as we theorized. In three subsequent experiments, we tested the hypothesis that higher-status evaluators would be more discriminating in their evaluations of workplace misbehavior, evaluating fellow higher-status deviants more leniently than lower-status deviants. Results supported the hypothesized interactive effect of evaluator status and target status on the evaluation of workplace deviance, when both achieved status characteristics (Studies 2a and 2b) and ascribed status characteristics (i.e., race and gender in Study 3) were manipulated.

Status Reinforcement in Emerging Economies: The Psychological Experience of Local Candidates Striving for Global Employment

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.

Using Research to Generate Advice for Women: Examples from Negotiation Research

Career stories of 50 female executives from major corporations and high-growth entrepreneurial ventures suggest two alternative accounts of how women legitimize their claims to top leadership positions: navigating and pioneering. In navigating accounts, the women legitimized their claims to top authority positions by following well institutionalized paths of career advancement (e.g., high performance in line jobs) and self-advocating with the gatekeepers of the social hierarchy (e.g., bosses, investors). In pioneering accounts, the women articulated a strategic vision and cultivated a community of support and followership around their strategic ideas and leadership. The career stories suggested that, when the women’s authority claims were not validated, they engaged in narrative identity work to revise their aspirations and legitimization strategies. Sometimes narrative identity work motivated women to shift from one type of account to another, particularly from navigating to pioneering. Based on inductive analyses of these 50 career stories, I propose a process model of how women legitimize their claims to top leadership positions by recursively resetting career accounts as authority claims succeed or fail. Claiming Authority 3