Understanding Gendered Negotiations in the Academic Dual-career Hiring Process

Abstract

The current literature on gender and negotiations consists primarily of experimental studies, finding that women are less likely to initiate negotiations than men. Although these studies have been fruitful in building our understanding of gender and negotiations, they fail to examine negotiations in real-world, gendered contexts. This study uses survey data from the 2014 Multi-university Policy Study and binomial logistic regression to examine the hiring negotiation decisions of 232 heterosexual men and women who were in a dual-career couple at their time of hire. I find that women are less likely than men to initiate negotiations regarding their dual-career status. However, considering one’s career as primary or equal to their partner’s career eliminates the gender differences in initiating these negotiations. These findings suggest that contextual factors can diminish gender differences in the choice to negotiate. I discuss the implications of these findings and study limitations.