Women beat men in negotiating some 'money matters'

A new study has found that when it comes money matters, women are better than men in negotiating in certain circumstances.

According to a new meta-analysis, contrary to conventional wisdom that men drive a harder bargain in financial affairs, women may be more effective than men when discussing financial issues.

Lead author Jens Mazei, at Germany's University of Munster said that one reason men earn higher salaries than women could be women's apparent disadvantage vis-a-vis men in some types of negotiations. But they discovered that this disadvantage is not inevitable; rather, it very much depends on the context of the negotiation.

Researchers examined 51 studies from several countries, including the U.S., The Netherlands, Germany, India and China, with a total of 10,888 participants, of whom 4,656 were women and 6,232 were men. The samples included business people as well as graduate and undergraduate students. The researchers found that negotiation results depended on the situation and the person involved. When women negotiated on behalf of another person, when they knew about the bargaining range in the negotiations and when they had experience in negotiating, they were better at negotiating than men.

Society's beliefs about gender roles may be at the root of men's advantage in some negotiations, the authors wrote. Previous research had found that gender roles reflect certain expectations of men's and women's behavior. Male gender role characteristics include behaving in competitive, assertive or profit-oriented ways, whereas the traditional female gender role has communal characteristics, such as being relationship-oriented, accommodating and concerned with the welfare of others.

The analysis looked exclusively at research that had compared and reported final economic negotiation outcomes achieved by women and men in actual negotiations.

Examples included negotiating for an increase in one's own salary and negotiating a financial interest on behalf of a client, friend or on behalf of an organization or company. While women performed better when negotiating on behalf of another individual, such was not the case when they negotiated on behalf of themselves or on behalf of a large organization, according to the study.

It remained to be seen if the effect would hold when negotiating for smaller social entities, such as a team, workgroup or family, the authors wrote.

The study is published in APA's Psychological Bulletin.