IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/sofiwp/2007_007.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are Women Asking for Low Wages? Gender Differences in Wage Bargaining Strategies and Ensuing Bargaining Success

Author

Listed:
  • Säve-Söderbergh, Jenny

    (Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University)

Abstract

Men and women’s labor market outcomes differ along pay, promotion and competitiveness. This paper contributes by uncovering results in a related unexplored field using unique data on individual wage bargaining. We find striking gender differences. Women, like men, also bargain, but they submit lower wage bids and are offered lower wages than men. The adjusted gender wage gap is lower with posted-wage jobs than with individual bargaining, although less is ascribable to the term associated with discrimination. Both women and men use self-promoting, or competitive bargaining strategies, but women self-promote at lower levels. Employers reward self-promotion but the larger the self-promotion, the larger is the gender gap in bargaining success. Women therefore lack the incentives to self-promote, which helps to explain the gender disparities.

Suggested Citation

  • Säve-Söderbergh, Jenny, 2007. "Are Women Asking for Low Wages? Gender Differences in Wage Bargaining Strategies and Ensuing Bargaining Success," Working Paper Series 7/2007, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2007_007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sofi.su.se/content/1/c6/03/09/74/WP07no7.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Noemi Peter & Petter Lundborg & Dinand Webbink, 2015. "The Effect of Sibling's Gender on Earnings, Education and Family Formation," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 15-073/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    2. Emily Murphy & Daniel Oesch, 2015. "The Feminization of Occupations and Change in Wages: A Panel Analysis of Britain, Germany and Switzerland," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 731, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    3. Angela Carollo & Anna Oksuzyan & Sven Drefahl & Carlo Giovanni Camarda & Linda Juel Ahrenfeldt & Kaare Christensen & Alyson van Raalte, 2019. "Is the age difference between partners related to women's earnings?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 41(15), pages 425-460.
    4. Iriberri, Nagore & Hernandez-Arenaz, Iñigo, 2022. "Gender Differences in Alternating-Offer Bargaining: An Experimental Study," CEPR Discussion Papers 12561, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Martin Gonzalez-Rozada & Eduardo Levy Yeyati, 2018. "Do women ask for lower salaries? The supply side of the gender pay gap," Department of Economics Working Papers 2018_02, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
    6. Friederike Maier & Oliver Stettes & Monika Queisser, 2013. "Career Opportunities for Women and the Wage Gap: Is the "glass ceiling" Still a Reality or Already History?," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 66(07), pages 03-11, April.
    7. Martin Gonzalez-Rozada & Eduardo Levy Yeyati, 2018. "Do women ask for lower salaries? The supply side of the gender pay gap," Department of Economics Working Papers 2018_02, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
    8. Säve-Söderbergh, Jenny, 2019. "Gender gaps in salary negotiations: Salary requests and starting salaries in the field," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 35-51.
    9. Marta Lachowska, 2017. "Outside options and wages: What can we learn from subjective assessments?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 79-121, February.
    10. Eleonora Matteazzi & Stefani Scherer, 2021. "Gender Wage Gap and the Involvement of Partners in Household Work," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(3), pages 490-508, June.
    11. Eriksson, Stefan & Lagerström, Jonas, 2010. "The Determinants and Consequences of Unemployed Workers’ Wage Demands," Working Paper Series 2010:26, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    12. Hernandez-Arenaz, Iñigo & Iriberri, Nagore, 2018. "Women ask for less (only from men): Evidence from bargaining in the field," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 192-214.
    13. Anna Oksuzyan & Angela Carollo & Sven Drefahl & Carlo G. Camarda & Kaare Christensen & Alyson A. van Raalte, 2017. "Does the age difference between partners influence the career achievements of women?," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2017-008, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Individual Wage Bargaining; Competitiveness; Bargaining strategies; Self-promoting Bargaining Strategies; Gender Wage Gap; and Discrimination.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2007_007. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Daniel Rossetti (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sofsuse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.