A growing body of evidence suggests that women and men behave differently in negotiation situations and are treated differently both before and during negotiations. Taken at face value, these findings tend to suggest that women are at a disadvantage when they negotiate simply because they are women. This disadvantage may manifest itself in several elements of the negotiation process: aspirations, opening offers, aggressiveness of interaction, concessions, and outcomes, among others. Yet having noted these potential disadvantages, it is important to keep in mind that the broad-brush differences that researchers have uncovered between male and female negotiators are quite small in statistical magnitude.

The more important findings are those that speak to the underlying theoretical basis for gender differences in negotiation. Several arose over the course of this chapter, including differences in emphasis on relationships in negotiation, views of the embeddedness of negotiation in broader social contexts, beliefs about ability and worth, notions of how to use power, and ways of framing negotiations. The empirical research on gender differences in negotiation suggests a number of important principles: men and women conceive of negotiations in different ways, communicate differently in negotiation, and are treated differently in negotiation; the tactics used by men versus those used by women have very different effects; and perceptual stereotypes have important effects on how men and women negotiate.

Many of the gender differences that we have discussed are open to various alternative explanations. Recent trends in research on gender in negotiation are promising because of the renewed interest in the subject and rejuvenated attention to theoretical explanations. Our understanding of gender differences will continue to benefit from studies that go beyond simple empirical documentation of differences to explore the underlying social and psychological mechanisms that account for how men and women experience negotiation differently.

A final point: we began this chapter by distinguishing between the terms sex and gender, and we observed that negotiation research has emphasized gender rather than sex in describing both existing research findings and in discussing conceptual underpinnings and implications. This research has, however, relied exclusively on the use of biological sex (i.e., males versus females) to test and measure differences, rather than assessing gender roles (e.g., masculine or feminine sex role identity) as a predictor variable. We are not aware of studies in the negotiation literature that directly compare individuals by sex roles. This is a weakness in the field to the extent one believes that sex role identity is a theoretically important factor in understanding individual differences in negotiation.

Gender is, of course, just one of many possible individual differences with a role in negotiation processes and outcomes. In the next chapter we discuss several others.