CHAPTER THREE What Can a Matrilineal Society Teach Us About Women and Competition?Read more at location 736
Our visit to the matrilineal society of the Khasi helped to answerRead more at location 742
every square foot of the road was filled with people—women in colorful saris, dark-haired men in cotton shirts, half-naked beggars, children—all pushing and pulsing against one another in the sweltering heat.Read more at location 749
In stead of being greeted by suspicious, red-robed Masai warriors who stood squinting at us, we met warm, welcoming, smiling people. We discovered that life is considerably better for Khasi women than it is for their Masai counterparts.Read more at location 758
as the holders of the economic power they wield a great deal of authority over men.Read more at location 763
Over the following weeks, we conducted ball-throwing experimentsRead more at location 764
The percentage of men and women who chose competition, per society, tells the culture story. In competitive games, Khasi women chose to compete not only more often than US and Masai women, but even more often than Masai warriors.Read more at location 776
54 percent of the Khasi women chose to compete, whereas only 39 percent of the Khasi men did.Read more at location 779
strip away, as much as possible, the cultural influences of a patriarchal society.Read more at location 783
given the right culture, women are as competitively inclined as men,Read more at location 785
we visited an open-air market in Shillong, where Khasi and non-Khasi people live side by side.Read more at location 789
To see how culture affects negotiation style, we gave Khasi and non-Khasi men and women money to buy two kilos of tomatoes in the market. Prices ranged between 20 and 40 rupees per kilo, depending on how well they haggled; our participants earned more if they negotiated a lower price.Read more at location 792
Khasi women, trained from birth to be assertive and self-confident, proved to be successful negotiators;Read more at location 795
The market functioned very differently, depending on whether the pricing rules were set by womenRead more at location 797
When the Khasi women entered a section of the market in which non-Khasi people set the price, men and women sold goods and haggled side by side, and the Khasi women proved themselves to be forces of nature.Read more at location 798
when Shaihun and her peers entered a section of the market in which only the Khasi set the price and only women bought and sold goods, we noticed that there was not much haggling. The shopping prices appeared, as it is in the West, to be more set than negotiated.Read more at location 800
given the option, Khasi women set the incentives in their part of the market differently than men.Read more at location 804
By setting standard prices, they simply made the environment less competitive and aggressive,Read more at location 804
In the article, he described a situation in medieval Europe in which herders shared a common parcel of land on which everyone was allowed to graze cattle. As long as herders didn’t allow too many cattle on the land at once, everything was fine. But if one greedy herder brought additional cows to graze, the damage to the pasture increased, eventually depleting the parcel so much that none of the cattle could graze at all.Read more at location 809
One conventional assumption about women is that they tend to care more about public goods,Read more at location 816
We gave each group the same set of instructions: “In this game, you can choose to invest in the community, or to invest in yourself.” We told some of the participants the following: “Every rupee you invest in yourself will yield you a return of one. Every rupee invested in the group exchange will yield a return of one-half for every member of the group, not just the person who invested it.”Read more at location 819
would a society “ruled” by women be very different than the one we live in today?Read more at location 825
help to explain the gap between men’s and women’s job status and earnings.Read more at location 832
when women have stronger economic influence, the society becomes more consensualRead more at location 835
But do such tendencies manifest themselves in the real world? And, if so, why?Read more at location 848
Between November 2011 and February 2012, we placed eighteen online “help wanted” postings for administrative assistants in nine major metropolitan areas in the United States. The jobs were either for a gender-neutral position in fundraising, or for positions in a sports environment, a situation that again prompted more male applicants. One ad said that that the job paid $17.60 and that the salary was negotiable. The other noted that the job paid a flat $17.60.4 We received interest from 2,422 people. What happened? First, we discovered that when there was no explicit statement that wages were negotiable—the ambiguous case—men were much more likely to negotiate for a higher wage than women. However, when we explicitly mentioned the possibility that wages were negotiable, this difference disappeared, and even tended to reverse—in this case, women bargained slightly more than men.Read more at location 850
when employers don’t say this, and the rules determining wage are left ambiguous, men are more likely to negotiate for higher salaries.Read more at location 858
women avoid job postings that are not explicit about the rules of the game,Read more at location 861
Women shouldn’t simply accept the first offer that’s on the table;Read more at location 866
One example to follow is the consulting firm Deloitte, which tries to ensure that female employees get considered for top assignments, and where at least 23 percent of senior management personnel are female.6 Firms like Deloitte will soon find themselves better off for doing so, because they will be able to uncover the true top talent in their organization, a move that will positively affect their bottom line.Read more at location 872
at Campbell Soup Company (where a woman, Denise Morrison, is CEO), gender diversity is part and parcel of the company’s selling proposition because most of the people who buy its products are women. For that reason, the firm made a conscious decision to make sure that its leadership reflected people who looked like their customers.Read more at location 878
companies like Honda have tried to follow an idea first put forward by General Motors’ Saturn division, making no-haggle pricing part of its sales pitch. Though the Saturn division is gone, during its time its cars became very popular with women, who amounted to 63 percent of Saturn owners.Read more at location 883
we are not sure Title IX, designed to level the playing field for female athletes, is the way to correct imbalances.Read more at location 887
investment in gender equality would probably be better spent on early childhood educationRead more at location 890
investing in the self-confidence of our own girls is a lot like investing in retirement.Read more at location 892
Don’t be shy in encouraging kids, and in particular girls, to be competitive.Read more at location 896
The research shows that boys, after all, still receive more attention from their teachers than girls do.Read more at location 902
Peace isn’t found in what we own or in our titles, but in the life we live as citizens, parents, and neighbors. It is our personal hope, above all, that our girls (and everyone) learn this lesson.Read more at location 904
