Free The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life by Uri Gneezy, John List Page A

changes should we bring about to make that happen? What does all this mean for our daughters and yours?
    Uri’s nineteen-year-old daughter, for example, believes that she can be successful in her future career. Her parents have encouraged her to believe that the sky is the limit and that she can achieve whatever she desires. At the same time, she feels that, at least inthe culture of San Diego today, she can’t go out and compete as freely as her male peers. So how can she get to the top without behaving as aggressively they do?
    Meanwhile, John’s South Side Chicago girls likewise notice that boys in their gym class who do not perform to their peak get scolded by coaches who, as we said before, tell them to “stop playing like a girl.” “Should we play like girls or boys?” John’s daughters ask. “Should we be nice, or grab what we can?”
    As we noted at the opening of this chapter, women tend to avoid salary negotiations; laboratory research has shown, for example, that men are nine times more likely than women to ask for more money when applying for a fictitious job. But do such tendencies manifest themselves in the real world? And, if so, why? 3
    To find out, we ran a field experiment that was similar to the Craigslist experiment we described in Chapter 2 . Between November 2011 and February 2012, we placed eighteen online “help wanted” postings for administrative assistants in nine major metropolitan areas in the United States. The jobs were either for a gender-neutral position in fundraising, or for positions in a sports environment, a situation that again prompted more male applicants. One ad said that that the job paid $17.60 and that the salary was negotiable. The other noted that the job paid a flat $17.60. 4
    We received interest from 2,422 people. What happened?
    First, we discovered that when there was no explicit statement that wages were negotiable—the ambiguous case—men were much more likely to negotiate for a higher wage than women. However, when we explicitly mentioned the possibility that wages were negotiable, this difference disappeared, and even tended to reverse—in this case, women bargained slightly more than men.
    In other words, when employers say that salaries are negotiable, women step up to the negotiating plate. But when employers don’t say this, and the rules determining wage are left ambiguous, men are more likely to negotiate for higher salaries.
    And who applies for these positions? We found that by merely adding the information that the wage was “negotiable,” the gender gap in job applications shrank by approximately 45 percent. This was true even for so-called masculine jobs (our sports ad), where one would expect more applicants to be men.
    These results show that women avoid job postings that are not explicit about the rules of the game, whereas men embrace such postings. Clearly, if they want a healthy applicant pool of both men and women, prospective employers should be explicit in the details of the job and the wage/benefit offering. We turn to further ideas in this spirit now.
    What Employers Can Do
    While our “salary negotiable” experiment had to do with responses to job descriptions, it didn’t involve face time between job seekers and employers. Nevertheless, it’s important to realize that when job descriptions are vague about whether salaries are negotiable or not, women should still “go for it.”
    Women shouldn’t simply accept the first offer that’s on the table; they should counteroffer, and not be afraid to simply say, “I want more money,” without explaining why. That’s what men do, after all. 5
    Also, hiring managers should realize that many women have been acculturated to be risk-averse, which can pull them off the corporate ladder. All too often, women fail to ask for raises, or take on new projects—not because they lack talent, but because theircultural worldview has taught them that being assertive is not “ladylike.”