Reconceptualizing What and How Women Negotiate for Career Advancement

We propose a conceptual framework for expanding the scope of future research on the role of gender in career negotiations. Extant research on gender in career negotiations emphasizes women’s disadvantages relative to men in compensation negotiations. We present an inductive study of what and how women negotiate for career advancement and the attainment of leadership positions in organizations, drawing on data from diverse samples of negotiation accounts by senior-executive, mid-level, and early-career professionals from the public, private, and non-profits sectors and six world regions. Integrating insights from six studies, we propose a more comprehensive perspective on what men and women negotiate for career advancement, including their role development and work-family conflicts, as well as compensation. We also identify three distinct negotiating strategies—asking, bending, and shaping—that vary in the extent to which the negotiator conforms to, deviates from, or attempts to redefine organization norms...