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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

> Successful people negotiate everything

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I also think you're kind-of side stepping the issue that the paper sought to quantify.

Yes its not just a problem for women, but there's a lot more pressure on women to avoid confrontational negotiation[1] because they'll be branded much more negatively (ie "Bitchiness" or some other term), and if they are, then they risk being taken less seriously.

Men don't have the same problem, as culturally strong/pushy personalities (that might fare better in negotiation or negotiate more) are seen as less of a cultural negative. It's something explicitly expected of one gender and seen as more repulsive in the other, and that becomes a big deal for things like salary negotiation.

[1] See Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553383876/

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> See Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553383876/

For what it's worth, there's what looks to be a strong rebuttal of most of the things this book says here:

http://fdiv.net/2012/01/20/pseudo-science-and-pseudo-feminis...

(I'd tend to think that your point stands anyway as being obviously true, but after reading the rebuttal again along with the link to this article I'm not sure anymore.)

I'm surprised you found that rebuttal strong, I found it exceedingly weak. She complains that the original author used a few of her own unreviewed studies, fair criticism, but doesn't present any evidence that it was wrong. She complains that the original author painted the research as one-sided that men negotiate better, then reviews the research and show that it is in fact pretty one-sided. Then, having done nothing to really dispute the accuracy of the research evidence being presented, she goes into an unsubstantiated rant about privilege and minorities, which is largely unrelated to the book. It's true maybe the original book failed to address some of these issues, but it doesn't make the book wrong as much as incomplete. As she completely fails to hide her overarching political bias going into the rebuttal, her rebuttal made no striking critique on the book's research nor presents much conflicting research, and half the rebuttal was spent rehashing third wave feminism talking points rather than making scientific arguments, only to summarize by saying that book was shoddy science and sexist, I would not consider this a strong rebuttal at all.

I think it's strong in one respect: it alleges somewhat convincingly that the book is based on appallingly scant evidence. On unpublished paper by the author, two maybe-reviewed papers also by the author, and one anecdote (whence the title). And the rebuttal does provide evidence that the author's studies, if not wrong, are probably not applicable to the question. And notes that WDA even ignores half of what her own papers showed. If true, this is pretty damning, in that it reduces the entire book to "I think this is what is going on. Here's a totally-vague plan of action that focuses on this one dimension." If true, we shouldn't be citing the book in conversations about what reality looks like. All in all, I think the part of the rebuttal that said 'the science in the book was shoddy' was relatively strong.

This perhaps-useful rebuttal is, I agree, buried in a largely-unrelated rant about what the rebuttal-author wishes every discussion of feminism (or privilege in general) was about. As you say, third-wave feminism talking points. Whether they're interesting or not, they're not what the book is about. Sorry, jstrecker, you don't get to dictate the content of all conversation.

(To give the ranter eir due, I think ranting about privilege -- the subject of the rant -- is largely correct, and deserves more of us thinking about it more often. I'm not sure the tactics of the crazy-street-preacher are the most effective ones, though.)

Maybe I just have limited experience, but this doesn't make sense to me:

1) Woman asks for higher salary; 2) she must be a bitch. 3) Therefore, she is taken less seriously.

What does that even mean?

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