Barriers to Women in the Workplace: The role of negotiations and time allocation at work

Despite significant gains in women’s educational attainment, gender differences in labor market outcomes persist and there are still barriers to the advancement of women in the workplace. In this talk I will discuss two important barriers. First, there are differences between men and women in the propensity to negotiate and the consequences of negotiating. Second, there are differences between men and women in how they spend their time at work. I will discuss research evidence regarding these two barriers and suggest ways that individuals and organizations can work to eliminate them.

Linda Babcock is the James M. Walton Professor of Economics and Chair of the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the founder and faculty director of the Program for Research and Outreach on Gender Equity in Society (PROGRESS) and the CMU Leadership and Negotiation Academy for Women. Babcock's degrees include a BA in Economics from the University of California at Irvine and an MA and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is a member of the Russell Sage Foundation’s Behavioral Economics Roundtable and has served on the economics review panel for the National Science Foundation. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, the Harvard Business School, and the California Institute of Technology.

Babcock’s 2003 book, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide was named by Fortune Magazine as one of the 75 smartest business books of all time. This book also was an Honorable Mention for the Independent Publisher Book Awards and Biz Journal’s top 20 most important business books ever written. In 1991 and 2001 she received the Heinz School's award for teaching excellence. Babcock’s research is conducted at the interface between economics and psychology. Her recent work focuses on barriers to women in the workplace. Her research has appeared in the most prestigious economics, industrial relations, psychology, organizational behavior, and law journals. Her research has been discussed in hundreds of newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and abroad and she has appeared on numerous national television and radio programs discussing her work. She has received numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation. 

"Long before Sheryl Sandberg wrote about leaning in, Linda Babcock awakened the research and practitioner community to a poignant source of the salary disparity between men and women — both in her research and in her co-authored book, Women Don't Ask: the systematic hesitancy of women to initiate negotiations in boardrooms as well as homerooms. In her ongoing research she continues to shine an empirical light on the causes and consequences of choices that men and women make that have far-reaching consequences for their success in the workplace." — Margaret A. Neale, Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

Stanford WISE Ventures, a joint initiative of the Vice Provost for Faculty Development & Diversity and the Vice Provost for Graduate Education sponsors WISE Research Roundtables, featuring discussions with research scientists whose work illuminates ways to advance equity in scientific and technical fields.