Categorical Distinctions and Claims-Making: Opportunity, Agency, and Returns from Wage Negotiations

Abstract

In this article, we examine wage negotiations as a specific instance of claims-making, predicting that the capacity to make a claim is first a function of the position, rather than the person, and that lower-status actors—women, migrants, fixed-term, part-time, and unskilled workers—are all more likely to be in positions where negotiation is not possible. At the same time, subordinate-status actors may be less likely to make claims even where negotiation is possible, and when they do make wage claims they may receive lower or no returns to negotiation. Analyses of wage negotiations by more than 2,400 German employees largely confirm these theoretical expectations, although the patterns of opportunity, agency, and economic returns vary by categorical status. All low-status actors are more likely to be in jobs where negotiation is not possible. Women, people in lower-class jobs, and people with temporary contracts are less likely to negotiate even when given the opportunity. Regarding returns, agency in wage claims does not seem to improve the wages of women, migrants, or working-class individuals. The advice to “lean-in” will not substantially lower wage inequalities for everyone, although men who lean in do benefit relative to men who do not.

Disappointed Expectations: Downward Mobility and Electoral Change

“…The decades since World War II have seen a rise in women’s college attendance at similar if not higher rates than men, which has helped to boost their prospects in white-collar and professional occupations (Breen and Müller 2020; DiPrete and Buchmann 2013). Although women continue to face numerous barriers in the labor market (Goldin 1990; 2021; Sauer et al 2021), women’s occupational experiences in recent decades relative to their historical exclusion from the labor market, we expect, makes them less vulnerable to the political effects of status loss (Gingrich and Kuo 2021).…”

Gender and Gender-Role Attitudes in Wage Negotiations: Evidence from an Online Experiment

“…This inequality in earnings-which has remained relatively stable since 2005-has sparked a large body of social science research on the topic. One can easily find studies on the gender pay gap in disciplines such as administrative science (Blevins et al 2019;Leibbrandt and List 2015), economics (Card et al 2016;Dittrich et al 2014), psychology (Amanatullah and Morris 2010;Amanatullah and Tinsley 2013;Small et al 2007), and sociology (Auspurg et al 2017;Cha and Weeden 2014;Sauer et al 2021). One popular social psychological account for the persistence of gender differences in earnings is that men promote themselves more aggressively and effectively than women (Babcock and Laschever 2003).…”

“…Recent observational (Sauer et al 2021) and experimental (Exley et al 2020) research, however, has raised serious doubts about the efficacy of this prescribed solution. With survey data on wage negotiations of more than 2,400 German employees, Sauer et al (2021) find that women are less likely to negotiate than men, and wage negotiations do not appear to improve the 17 Table 3 models that were restricted to the Choice treatment support this assertion: the negative effect of the bonus does not vary by gender (Female × Bonus), GRAs (i.e., Bonus × Traditionalism), or all three (Female × Bonus × Traditionalism). Workers who select into negotiations, regardless of their gender or GRAs, witness similar decreases in profits as the bonus increases.…”

“…Indeed, interest in the idea that "leaning in" will substantially lower wage inequalities for women has motivated a large literature on what factors influence men's and women's negotiation decisions. This literature includes recent observational research (Artz et al 2018;Card et al 2016;Sauer et al 2021), laboratory experiments (Dittrich et al 2014;Exley et al 2020), and field experiments (Leibbrandt and List 2015).…”

The Norm of Wage Negotiations in the United States

“…Although norms went unobserved in Sauer et al (2021), Exley et al (2020) showed that they do exist for female workers but yield unintended consequences for women. In two lab experiments, Exley et al (2020) showed that the counterfactual condition of always negotiating does not benefit women and that forcing women to negotiate serves “as a caution against the recommendation that women should negotiate more” (p. 845).…”