Never Accept a First Offer
-- By
SamanthaWishman - 17 May 2012
The basis for the comparison is a little casual. With respect to
sexual bargaining, it's true that the social expectations that shape
our behavior are gender-specific: in heterosexual sex, men advance,
women select. Perhaps this runs a trifle deeper, even, than social
construction. Female sexual selection, after all, is the real
subject of Darwin's Descent of Man, because—as Darwin tries
to establish in his painstaking consilient fashion—female
sexual selection is the primary form of natural selection that
created Homo Sapiens.
There's no evolutionary significance to salary bargaining, however,
and I don't generally take my sociology from Sheryl Sandberg, thank
you very much. I think the reason women are still occupying a small
sliver of the world's most powerful positions is that men stop them.
I don't think the problem is that women aren't aggressive enough. Or
that they don't have some other kind of necessary character. Male
control of all the public levers of power was simply presumed
throughout human society until one generation ago, when the Pill gave
women practical control over fertility for the first time in human
history. Men have not simply surrendered their control. Two
generations from now, however, the most widespread social revolution
in our history will have completed itself, from this rather narrow point of view.
In the meantime, you are arguing, I think, that women in our society
should be given negotiation training. So should men. If we
redesigned high school, which is always a good idea and which never
happens, we would be well advised to try to get adolescents to learn
some rudimentary negotiation skills. Of course, they would be poor
learners. Adolescents are biologically and psychically in a poor
position to learn skilful negotiation. The best time to teach people
how to negotiate is, in fact, when they're young adults.
Unfortunately, as you say, that's long after they've started having
sex. But that's what negotiation training in high school is for.
You think school boards in Texas, Kansas, and Iowa will sign right
up?