Dare to ask in front of others? Women initiating salary negotiations

Abstract

Previous research has shown that gender pay differences in the labor market may be caused by women’s reluctance to initiate salary negotiations, which is often influenced by gender-related social norms and self-perceived gender identity. In the real world, others in work environments can know “who has asked.” In a laboratory experiment, we manipulated whether the decision to initiate salary negotiations was publicly observable. We found that in a context in which negotiation is not costly, women and men showed no difference in initiating salary negotiations. When asked to publicly express their willingness to negotiate salaries, a moderately lower number of women stepped up, an effect that was not significant for men. Furthermore, women tend to tie salary negotiation decisions to their self-perceived performance even when pay raises are not bound to performance. In contrast, men were not impacted by this factor.