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There is growing attention to the importance of factoring men's experience into theorizing around increasing women's advancement in organizations. Past research has documented that women face stronger penalties than men for displaying dominance behaviors (Williams & Tiedens, 2016). Recent research shows that men perceive negotiations and competition, especially against women, as activities that could threaten their masculinity and social status (Mazei et al., 2021), making them particularly sensitive to women's dominance displays. We theorize that men experience anxiety when interacting with women displaying dominance behaviors (e.g., women initiating negotiation or competing in a masculine contest) which decreases their willingness to work with them. We propose and test a self-affirmation intervention to increase men's openness to women displaying dominance behaviors through a reduction in anxiety. In Study 1, we examine negotiations between MBA students to show that women's dominance behaviors are associated with men's heightened anxiety. In Study 2a, we experimentally offer evidence that self-affirmation moderates the effect of women's dominance on men's lower willingness to work with them. In Study 2b, we demonstrate that self-affirmation increases men's openness to women displaying dominance behaviors through a reduction in anxiety. In Study 3, we manipulate men's feelings of anxiety and show that selfaffirmation decreases anxiety and increases men's behavioral collaboration with women displaying dominance behaviors. We discuss the potential implications of these findings for our understanding of gender bias in organizations, in particular for work cultures that induce stress and anxiety in men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a conceptual framework for expanding the scope of future research on the role of gender in career negotiations. Extant research on gender in career negotiations emphasizes women's disadvantages relative to men in compensation negotiations. We present an inductive study of what and how women negotiate for career advancement and the attainment of leadership positions in organizations, drawing on data from diverse samples of negotiation accounts by senior executive, mid-level, and early career professionals from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and six world regions. Integrating insights from six studies, we propose a more comprehensive perspective on what men and women negotiate for career advancement, including their role development and work–family conflicts, as well as compensation. We also identify three distinct negotiating strategies—asking, bending, and shaping—that vary in the extent to which the negotiator conforms to, deviates from, or attempts to redefine organizational norms. Our analyses suggest that the choice of negotiating strategy has implications for men's and women's career progression, particularly for women's navigation of nontraditional career paths and men's and women's leadership claiming. We suggest new directions for research on the role of negotiation in career advancement and in promoting and mitigating gender inequality in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. (Contains 2 tables, 2 figures and 5 notes.)

Four experiments show that gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations may be explained by differential treatment of men and women when they attempt to negotiate. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants evaluated written accounts of candidates who did or did not initiate negotiations for higher compensation. Evaluators penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations. In Experiment 3, participants evaluated videotapes of candidates who accepted compensation offers or initiated negotiations. Male evaluators penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations; female evaluators penalized all candidates for initiating negotiations. Perceptions of niceness and demandingness explained resistance to female negotiators. In Experiment 4, participants adopted the candidate's perspective and assessed whether to initiate negotiations in same scenario used in Experiment 3. With male evaluators, women were less inclined than men to negotiate, and nervousness explained this effect. There was no gender difference when evaluator was female. (Contains 11 tables.)

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. Keywords: gender, negotiation, situation, ambiguity, representation