Why European Women Don’t Negotiate

Why don’t women negotiate?

The European Women’s Professional Network has posted a fine summary which is worth reprinting here:

The inability to ask can be traced back to certain internal obstacles and mental attitudes:

Seeing themselves through other people’s eyes: Women’s natural empathy means they are good at seeing the other person’s point of view. This makes them particularly susceptible to how they perceive themselves to be judged and, at the extreme, results in losing sight of their own agenda. Women should not, as Ms Bombelli cautions, put themselves so much into the other person’s shoes that they forget to occupy their own!

Preventive negotiation: A related risk is that of preventive negotiation, in which the woman mentally anticipates the other person’s objections and scales back her demands accordingly. This typically occurs before she even starts to make her case.

Low self-esteem: Women can shy away from negotiation because they do not feel sufficiently worthy or entitled to ask for something, whether it be a pay rise, a promotion, or even the time and attention of a superior.

Doing things for love, not money: As society’s traditional caretakers and child-rearers, women have long been used to doing valuable work for no financial reward. By putting a premium on human relationships over money, women are liable to sacrifice their immediate self-interest in favour of gaining approval or “being liked”. Finally, their sense of empathy can often prompt women to make allowances in the workplace to “help out someone in need”, or out of an unwillingness to “add to somebody’s problems”, relegating their own interests to second place.

The Cinderella fantasy of being “discovered”:

Women tend to be uncomfortable with the game of workplace politics and self-promotion. In a culture that values modesty, not pushiness, in women, they are conditioned to believe that if they quietly labour away, their qualities will eventually be noticed and rewarded. Unfortunately, organisations are not pure meritocracies (sometimes they are not meritocracies at all!) and the appreciative Prince Charming is unlikely to appear.