To the extent that women negotiate less due to biology, it's almost definitely not purely down to biology.

That means there's likely some kind of societal pressure keeping them from negotiating as much. There have been plenty of studies that show assertive women are seen as just being bitchy while assertive men are seen as strong leaders.

That societal difference is sexism. Individuals don't have to be consciously sexist for implicit bias to affect women.

It's absolutely sexism that salary negotiations favor behaviors that men are comfortable with and women are not.

No, it isn't. The world doesn't need to be designed to produce equality of outcome. Just equality of opportunity. Women may choose to negotiate less, and that's fine. They'll get paid less. If women want to choose to negotiate more, they can do that too, and be paid more.

If you want to argue that it's sexist that we socialize women to negotiate less, i'm all for that, though.

> If you want to argue that it's sexist that we socialize women to negotiate less, i'm all for that, though.

If that's the road you feel comfortable walking down, I think it's fine to compromise at that point. Regardless of how it happened, the result - women not negotiating - is still the same.

Yes, but how you get there matters. If society is socializing women to negotiate less, that's society's fault and society should try to correct that. If women are simply biologically predisposed to negotiate less, that's nobody's fault and women can try to correct it if they want, or not. But it's not a social, collective problem.

To me this is moot. At this point you're fighting against the natural inclinations of the human mind. I'd pick my battles more carefully. There are other issues related to sex that are much easier to attack, with much greater potential impact.

It's not individual sexism, but it _is_ systematic sexism.

Women generally don't handle negotiating the same as men. But negotiation skills aren't relevant to most jobs. So if that's a factor in how people get paid, it's _systematically_ sexist.

I disagree. Women have the same opportunity to negotiate that men do. The fact that they choose to negotiate less is on them.

Do you agree that negotiation skills don't matter for most jobs? And do you agree that people should be compensated based on the value they bring to a job?

Because sexism or no, I think it's a tremendous problem when people get ahead for completely tangential reasons to their job performance and skills.

I agree it's a problem. But it's women's problem. If they want to get ahead - start negotiating. It's not incumbent upon society to bend over backwards to facilitate every subgroup's predilections. Salary negotiation is a necessary part of the job market. It performs a useful and important function - price discovery. It is not sexist if women are maladapted to it.

How is it sexism is sex is not a factor?

It is a factor.

In that case I'm missing your point. If everyone has equal opportunity to negotiate salary regardless of sex, then how does it matter whether or not salary negotiation skills should be awarded, from a gender equality perspective? Isn't that a separate issue then, not related to sexism?

Unless your point is that the sexism is at a larger cultural level that fosters the average woman to be less effective at salary negotiations. In that case I completely agree.

Studies have demonstrated that women who negotiate are less likely to get what they are want and are more likely to be punished for it.

How so?