A new study led by Charlotte Townsend, postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, has found that people prefer to negotiate with women, even when gender is unknown and economic outcomes are identical to negotiations with men.
Along with co-authors Laura Kay and Solène Delecourt of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Townsend conducted a series of studies with more than 2,000 participants to examine gender differences in the subjective outcomes of negotiation, such as trust, rapport, and willingness to negotiate again.
“Economic outcomes are only half the story,” said Dr. Townsend. “The other half is whether people want to work with you again. That is where women appear to have a meaningful advantage.”
Across all five studies, women negotiators achieved equivalent economic outcomes compared to male negotiators. However, people consistently reported better subjective outcomes when negotiating with women. This finding held true even in fully anonymous online negotiations where negotiator gender was unknown. According to the authors’ analysis of the negotiating experiments’ transcripts, the subjective gap favoring women is largely driven by women’s greater likelihood to say yes and accept offers, which can generate goodwill with their negotiating partners by making them feel heard and treated fairly.
“If you’re deciding who to put across the table in a high-stakes negotiation, this research suggests you may be overlooking one of your strongest assets,” said Dr. Townsend. “Women are not only negotiating effectively by traditional measures. They are also building the kind of trust that leads people to want to negotiate with them again in the future.”
Dr. Townsend is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where she double-majored in economics and psychology. She earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley. Beginning in the Fall 2026 semester, Dr. Townsend will join the faculty of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management in Germany as an assistant professor of organizational behavior.