ABSTRACT
If “location, location, location” is the single most important consideration in real estate, the likely parallel motto for career success in academe is “Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.” Negotiation is the use of information and power to affect behavior; more specifically, it is an endeavor that focuses on gaining the favor of people from whom we want things (Cohen 1980). For women faculty, the idea of developing their negotiation skills may run counter to a well-ingrained belief that academe is a meritocracy in which rewards presumably are given to those possessing the greatest talent. In reality, few are recognized based on their expertise alone; success usually requires both job competence and the ability to negotiate. In other words, in academe as in business, “you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate” (Karrass 1992). Knowledge about how to negotiate has been shown to have a significant
impact on one’s likelihood of success. Those who know that negotiation requires tactical skill, as well as distinct types of information such as knowing deadlines and the other party’s reputation, are generally more successful at bargaining than those who have little awareness of the task-specific components of negotiating (Stevens et al. 1993; Weingart et al. 1996). Elements of the task environment also play a role in negotiating, including the behavior of the other party, the success of attempted strategies, and the content of the task itself (Weingart et al. 1996). The other negotiator’s possible gender bias has been identified as an aspect of the task environment that may significantly affect women’s success as well (e.g., Gerhart and Rynes 1991). Nevertheless, actively preparing oneself for the negotiating process may help women achieve better outcomes even when the task environment is uncontrollable or unfavorable. One of the most crucial negotiations from the standpoint of academic careers
is the salary negotiation. In general, women faculty fare less well than men in this process. Research indicates that women faculty are paid lower salaries than are men – about 20 percent less, on average. Translated into dollars, colleges and universities pay women nearly $10,000 a year less than men. Gender differences remain greatest at the full professor rank, where women earn 80 percent of men’s salary, but are still present at the associate and assistant professor levels, where women earn 93 percent of men’s earnings. The salary
gap persists across academic disciplines and types of institutions (NCES 1993, 1996; Sax et al. 1996). Despite the importance of negotiating salary and other conditions of
employment in academe, how to proceed is seldom discussed. For example, Career Guide for Women Scholars (Rose 1986), The Academic Job Search Handbook (Heiberger and Vick 1996), Lifting a Ton of Feathers: A Woman’s Guide to Surviving in the Academic World (Caplan 1993), Promotion and Tenure: Community and Socialization in Academe (Tierney and Bensimon 1996), Rhythms of Academic Life (Frost and Taylor 1996), and Black Women in the Academy (Benjamin 1997) contain much information pertinent to the academic job search and how to establish and maintain a successful career, but mention little about salary or contract negotiations. The graduate school experience is similarly lacking in instruction concerning negotiation for most, although informal networks may convey relevant information from senior to junior men (e.g., Dreher and Cox 1996). As a result, new women PhDs may enter the job market with little experience or knowledge about how to position themselves for the first job. In addition, subsequent opportunities for significant salary negotiations may be infrequent in an academic career. Thus, women could be quite senior, and the wage gap with senior men quite large, before they could benefit from trial-and-error learning. In the present chapter, our intent is to illustrate why women faculty should
acquire the art of negotiating, as well as to provide practical advice concerning how to negotiate. Although faculty jobs involve numerous types of bargaining, the primary focus will be on negotiating the academic contract, with a particular emphasis on salary negotiation.
