Assessing the employment negotiation gender gap from the perspective of early childhood: When does the gender gap first emerge? · ICGS Research Library

Title

Assessing the employment negotiation gender gap from the perspective of early childhood: When does the gender gap first emerge?

Author

ICGS

Year Published

2025

Description

Advocates for the equality of girls and women are well aware of gender gaps in negotiation in the context of employment. Many studies have addressed this very topic, but few have considered how early childhood experiences impact this gender gap. Researchers from New York University and Boston College have explored the experiences and responses of children aged between six and 12 years to consider how this gender gap is occurring in childhood, and what this means for girls. This article provides new insight into the impact of girls’ perceptions of their own abilities when making requests, and why this shows that the employment gender gap may be first emerging during childhood.

With a substantial wage gap existing between men and women in locations such as the United States, this is a challenge that still draws the attention of advocates, many industries, and researchers (Arnold et al., 2025, p. 604). Negotiation has been repeatedly identified as one of the key “drivers of wage inequity”, with women less likely than men to initiate salary negotiations, while also seeking less renumeration and benefits during negotiation processes (Arnold et al., 2025, p. 604). This is even more pronounced when women are required to negotiate with men. While much research has considered this challenge during employment negotiations, researchers have now approached this from the perspective of early childhood due to the growing occurrence of school-aged children demonstrating these same traits of girls asking for less than boys, especially when negotiating with a man (Arnold et al., 2025, p. 605).

This article is based on a project that incorporated three studies involving both hypothetical and actual negotiations for tangible items with adults previously unknown to the children. The authors identified five key perceptions in children that can contribute to this widening gender gap as early as elementary school. Current understandings of adult differences in negotiation often focus on anticipated backlash, however, this study showed that in children, this is less pronounced. Instead, there is more focus on self-perceptions of “how competent children think they are at the activity for which they are negotiating” (Arnold et al., 2025, p. 618). The researchers found that boys and girls have “similar perceptions of hypothetical and actual negotiations” (Arnold et al., 2025, p. 618). Yet girls asked for less than boys during negotiations. This led the authors to ask why this is occurring.

In order to investigate this question, the project was based around five key themes. The first of these were descriptive norms (recognising that girls and boys have different beliefs about what their genders typically do during negotiations) and prescriptive norms (where boys and girls hold different beliefs about what is permissible for each gender to actually do during negotiations). This was followed by anticipated social backlash (where children anticipate a negative reaction from the other negotiating party), expected utility (where children have different perceptions of expected success or gain from negotiation) and competence self-perception. This final theme was significant, because it was apparent in the project that girls may negotiate for less because they have lower optimism about their competence.

The researchers found the impact of gender itself surprising. At this age, gender was not a key influence on girls’ perceptions of negotiation. There was little difference in boys’ and girls’ perceptions of how permissible it was to negotiate, and if these negotiations would be successful. There was also little impact on these perceptions based on whether the children were negotiating with a man or woman. The authors noted it was surprising to observe that there was a substantial disconnect between girls’ behaviour and what they thought other children asked for, if they thought it was permissible to negotiate, if they anticipated backlash, and if they expected the negotiation to be successful. Given these themes do exist in older age groups, further research is needed to understand at what point this aspect of gender begins to influence negotiation experiences. What did emerge from the study as a key influence for girls that contributed to a gender gap in behaviour was their self-perceptions of competence.

Despite similar perceptions of negotiation itself, “the ways in which these perceptions related to how [children] negotiated differed based on their gender” and was most pronounced in practical scenarios (Arnold et al., 2025, p. 619). Girls in the study were more likely to downgrade perceptions of their competence and consequently, negotiated for less than their male counterparts. Ultimately, the researchers felt the data suggested that “girls’ behavior is more closely tied to what they think they deserve, not any perceptions of the negotiation process or the person they are negotiating with” (Arnold et al., 2025, p. 619, emphasis in o