Strategies Aimed at Reducing Gender Differences in Negotiation Are Perceived by Women as Ineffective

Women often fare worse in negotiations than men. Negotiation researchers, trainers, and policymakers thus aim to find solutions—such as specific strategies for female negotiators—to reduce gender differences in negotiations. However, if using such a specific strategy is not perceived to yield benefits (e.g., better economic outcomes) as well as to include risks (e.g., unfavorable social evaluations), women should naturally be unlikely to use it. Hence, we examined 218 German women’s perceptions of three specific strategies (i.e., using a relational account, feminine charm, and confrontation) and three conventional strategies (i.e., assertiveness, yielding, and neutral behavior) using a hypothetical negotiation vignette. We found that women expected all three specific strategies to be less economically effective than regular assertiveness, which led to their lower likelihood to project using all three specific strategies. Moreover, all three specific strategies were expected to lead to less favorable social evaluations than yielding. This expectation also explained women’s lower likelihood to use feminine charm than to yield. Taken together, the specific strategies were perceived as ineffective. Future negotiation research, thus, needs to ensure that the characteristics of specific strategies do not render them unappealing, and trainers and policymakers need to pay attention to potential implementation gaps resulting from the specific strategies’ perceived ineffectiveness.