Women achieve the same economic outcomes as men during negotiations — but their partners leave more satisfied, trust them more, and want to negotiate with them again. A series of five studies involving more than 2,000 participants, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates this systematic relational advantage.
What you will learn
- Why partners prefer negotiating with women — even when they don’t know the gender of their counterpart
- What distinguishes relational outcomes from economic outcomes in a negotiation
- How this preference could eventually yield cumulative economic advantages for women
Same Economic Outcomes, Better Relationship
For decades, early negotiation research — conducted in the 1970s and 1980s — suggested that women performed worse than men. Charlotte Townsend, a researcher at the ILR School of Cornell University, documents a radical shift in this picture.
In five studies conducted with more than 2,000 participants and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, women achieve economic results equivalent to those of men. But they systematically generate better relational outcomes: their partners leave more satisfied, trust them more, and want to negotiate with them again in the future.
Five Studies, Five Confirmations
The first study drew on an archive of over 2,000 observations from an MBA negotiation course. After each face-to-face exercise, participants evaluated their partners. Women consistently received higher marks on trust established, perceived fairness, listening quality, and communication.
The second study is particularly revealing: it involved anonymous online negotiations, where the participants’ gender was unknown. Even in these conditions, the female counterparts were more appreciated — and this appreciation predicted greater satisfaction regardless of the economic outcomes obtained.
A third study aimed to distinguish the effect of actual gender from perceived gender. Striking result: it is the actual gender, not the gender ascribed by the participant, that predicts the subjective value placed on the negotiation. Something in the effective communication style of women — not in their gender label — explains the observed advantage.
An Advantage That Could Accumulate Economically
Townsend highlights a practical consequence often overlooked: if people prefer negotiating with women, these women will receive more negotiation opportunities. And more opportunities mean, in the long run, better cumulatively economic outcomes — not because they negotiate better in the moment, but because they are more frequently sought after.
Relational popularity is therefore not merely a social bonus — it could constitute a real economic lever, self-reinforcing over time.
