Why do women ask for less?

Women are often less likely to negotiate or ask for less when they do negotiate compared to men. In this study, we send out a survey to a large sample of recent college graduates in Sweden. We ask respondents whether they made an explicit salary request and what the outcome was. We include several questions on beliefs and attitudes towards negotiations. While women are more likely to state a salary request, we find that they on average ask for less than men. This gender gap is reduced when we control for beliefs and attitudes. However, neither perceived social costs nor confidence appear to matter for the gender gap. Instead, while men and women consider themselves relatively similar to an ideal candidate applying for the same job, they differ on average in their beliefs about what constitutes a reasonable request amount for the ideal candidate. This variable is the only statistically significant mediating variable of the gender gap in salary requests, and suggests that information interventions affecting beliefs could potentially reduce the gender gap in negotiations. As our results are correlational they should however be interpreted with caution.