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Hannah Riley Bowles on Gender, Negotiation, and Leadership

It's been a commonly stated perception that women simply need to 'act more like men" to claim power and achieve positions of leadership. But the research of Hannah Riley Bowles suggests that the role gender plays in how people negotiate for resources and opportunities to advance into leadership positions is far from simple. Bowles is associate professor of public policy and faculty director of Women and Power, the Kennedy School's executive program for women leaders from public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Q: Besides the fact that working women are still paid less than men, your research has shown that women may actually be penalized for trying to negotiate for higher pay. How does this happen?

Bowles: Yes, there is evidence that men are more likely to negotiate for higher compensation. And, yes, this tends to lead people to think that women need more training or confidence to act more like men and to be more assertive in salary negotiations. But, our research indicates that that may not be the best advice.

In a series of studies, my colleagues and I showed that when women attempt to negotiate for higher compensation, people are less willing to work with them as compared with women who don't negotiate.

In a job placement interview simulation we asked evaluators questions, such as, 'would you want to work with this candidate?' We manipulated whether the candidate was a man or a woman, and whether or not the candidate attempted to negotiate. What we found was that evaluators were less inclined to work with a woman who had attempted to negotiate than with a woman who let an opportunity to negotiate pass. Men evaluators, in particular, consistently penalized women more than men for attempting to negotiate for higher compensation. Male evaluators generally did not mind if a male candidate attempted to negotiate for higher compensation, but they were significantly less inclined to work with a female candidate who attempted to negotiate for higher compensation.

Then we invited participants into the laboratory and asked them to evaluate under which circumstances they would be inclined to negotiate. What we found was that when anticipating a male evaluator, women were significantly less inclined than men to try to negotiate. When participants were anticipating a female evaluator, both men and women were equally reticent to negotiate.

So what this whole package of studies suggests is that there is a social incentive for women to hold back from negotiating in job situations. What both men and women need to think through in a job negotiation situation is how to balance the potential social costs as well as economic gains of initiating negotiations. If women face a higher social cost than men for initiating salary negotiations with male evaluators, then it is reasonable for them to hold back more than men from initiating salary negotiations with male evaluators.

Q: You describe 'gender triggers' as playing a key role in how men and women are perceived during negotiations. What are 'gender triggers' and how do they affect the negotiations?

Bowles: Gender triggers are situational cues that prompt divergent responses from men and women within specific situations. The activation of stereotypes is one example of this. Descriptive stereotypes can lead to self-fulfilling expectations. For instance, there is the stereotype that men are more effective negotiators than women. When that stereotype is subtly activated, what you tend to see is the gender differences in negotiation performance favoring men being exacerbated. This has been shown in research by Laura Kray and colleagues.

Another gender trigger that we have identified in our research is representation role - that is, whether one is negotiating for oneself or for someone else. In series of studies, we found that it doesn't seem to matter so much to men whether or not they are negotiating for themselves or for somebody else in terms of their performance - for instance in a salary or a job negotiation type of situation - but for women it makes a really big difference. Women do significantly better in a situation in which they are advocating for someone else rather than for themselves.

Q: As more and more women do attain leadership positions, what are the hallmarks of those leaders who successfully overcome gender barriers?

Bowles: I have found some interesting patterns in my research on women who have obtained very senior leadership positions. In one study, I analyzed the career stories of 50 women, half of whom attained their most senior leadership position in a major corporation - for instance, c-level or senior vice president - and half of whom attained their most senior leadership position in an entrepreneurial venture.

A substantial proportion of the women who attained their most senior leadership position in a corporate context told career stories that were very consistent with what one might call the 'traditional model' of accumulating those experiences that are broadly recognized as critical to the attainment of leadership positions. I call these types of stories 'navigating' because the women describe advancing laterally and vertically from one critical point to another through the channels of formal organization.

Another group of women - half corporate and half entrepreneurial - told a different type of story in which they succeeded to senior leadership positions by aligning themselves with a very specific strategic issue within their organization or market place. What they describe doing is not only raising awareness about their strategic issue, but also identifying themselves with it. And, in this way, they become the natural person to assume a leadership position to address that issue. I call these types of stories 'creating' narratives, because they involve fostering collective awareness and action within regard to the strategic issue, which often leads to the formation of new organizational entities or processes.

A third pattern that I have identified in the career stories of women who have obtained very senior leadership positions is what I refer to as 'jolting.' These women describe finding themselves in a work environment in which their talents are not fully recognized or appreciated, and then taking action to alter their environment to escape this trap. Changing their environments allows them to gain a new perspective on themselves and their aspirations, and to relocate themselves within a work situation that better reflects their abilities.

So, I have seen these three patterns in the career stories of very senior women - a traditional navigating pattern of accumulating critical developmental experiences, a creating pattern of identifying oneself with an idea; and a jolting pattern of repositioning and relocating oneself in a more favorable context. These are not mutually exclusive. The same woman might tell different types of stories at different career stages. But, these three do appear to represent distinctive patterns in the career stories of women who achieve very senior leadership positions.

Q: More women are serving prominently as leaders worldwide, from Germany to Liberia, and at every level of the public and private sectors. What are particular challenges for women leaders at the beginning of the 21st century?

Bowles: There is a great deal of evidence now to show that there are no gender differences in leadership performance. So there have been decades of studies looking for gender differences in performance and really what the studies of the studies now show is that there really are not big differences in men's and women's ability to be effective as leaders. That research does actually, though, also show that men and women are likely to be evaluated on somewhat different criteria. So I do think that even though there should be no question in at least women's own minds that they can be as effective as their male peers - if not more - in a leadership position, they do have to be self aware that people do still carry in their minds these expectations or these visions of women as being very nice and agreeable and social and other-oriented. So I do think that there does remain, not uniformly, but in general, a need for women leaders in contemporary society to communicate their social, their warm, their agreeable, their likeable side, as well as their highly competent side when they are attempting to persuade others.

But, as you point out, we are living in an era in which women are rising to the most powerful leadership positions in our society. We have a woman heading Harvard University. We finally have a woman who is a serious contender for the presidency of the United States. If anything is going to break down the barriers to women's achievement of leadership positions it is those types of milestones, because they rewrite our expectations of what is possible - both in terms of what society expects from women and what women expect for themselves.