A Female Slant on Negotiation
Women Scientists Learn Tips on How to Navigate Career Pathways

Ioana Patringenaru | May 12, 2008

Get training. Build a network of mentors and peers. Do the research. And, above all, believe in yourself. This was the advice that a standing-room-only audience of women scientists got Friday during a panel discussion about negotiation in academia, in particular, and life in general.

A standing-room only audience listened to a panel devoted to negotiating skills Friday at the Women's Center.

Though the talk was titled “Women Don’t Ask,” audience members did seek plenty of advice from panelists, who included the campus’ new Chief Diversity Officer, Sandra Daley. The goal of the panel discussion was to give women advice on how to negotiate your way through life, said Mariana Cherner, a researcher in the department of psychiatry, who organized the event.

The discussion was sponsored by the campus’ Women in Science and Engineering Group, better known as WISE. Panelists, who also included two faculty members and a staff member, gave plenty of tips. They also sought to reassure the young women in the audience.

“If you really want something bad enough and you’re really passionate about it, you’ll find a way,” said Jean Y. Wang, the associate director of basic research at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center.

Early experiences

Asked about her first stab at negotiation, Wang talked about coming from MIT to UCSD in 1983 as a young researcher and about the difficulties she encountered. She came to an empty room and had to figure out how to set up her lab. Finding office space for her graduate students also turned out to be a challenge.

“The only reason I made it,” she said, looking back on her career, “is because I was crazy about science. If I didn’t do experiments, if I didn’t do science, I would die.”

Wang, who at some point was nicknamed “dragon lady,” encouraged audience members to toughen themselves up and speak their mind. She also told them to be ready to take “no” for an answer. Only then will you be ready to conduct an effective negotiation, she said.

Chief Diversity Officer Sandra Daley.

Deborah Wingard, a professor of epidemiology in the department of family and preventive medicine.

Heather Bentley, assistant center manager for the UCSD HIV Neurobehavioral Research Center.

Jean Y. Wang, associate director of basic research at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center.

Recalling some of her early experiences, Chief Diversity Officer Daley encouraged young women to learn the skills they need to negotiate effectively. “You can train yourself to do this,” she said. “This isn’t going to take you a quarter to learn. It’s going to take you three hours.”

Daley said she honed her skills as a participant in the Kellogg Leadership Fellowship Program. She learned to find mentors and peers in different career tracks, with whom she kept in touch over the years. Later on, they wrote her letters of recommendation as she went through the promotions process at UCSD. By talking to them, she learned to not say “yes” right away and to compromise. Asking for money is perhaps the most difficult step for women, she conceded.

“As a woman, I tend not to place a monetary value on my skills,” she said.

Different styles

That highlights one of the differences between the way women and men communicate and negotiate in the workforce, said Heather Bentley, assistant center manager for the UCSD HIV Neurobehavioral Research Center. Women tend to care more about relationships and the way people experience negotiations, she said. They should demand respect for these differences, she said.

“We should be able to ask for work-life balance,” added Bentley, who has a 2-year-old daughter. “We should be able to ask for child care, to ask for better maternity benefits.”

As a woman, she added later that she doesn’t want to succeed in a man’s world, but rather in a woman’s world. “We should ask for what we want and not feel bad about it,” she said.

Some women have adopted a male leadership style to succeed, said panelist Deborah Wingard, the UCSD director for epidemiology for the Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health that the university runs with San Diego State University.

Promoting change

Wingard now serves on several committees that monitor equity in the faculty and said she still sees women who don’t ask for start-up packages and don’t ask to skip steps when it comes to salary increases. She also said many women consider it unethical to go look for better-paying jobs as mere bargaining chips in salary negotiations, unlike some of their male counterparts. 

Wingard was hired in the 1980s and said she has seen UCSD adopt more and more family-friendly policies. The upcoming generation will contribute even more, she said. Wang urged women to fight for a career built on their own timetable, not men’s.

“We proved that women can do science as well as men,” she said. “Now it’s your turn to show that you can do it your way.”

After the talk, graduate student Erica Stone said the panelists’ advice was useful. “It was good training, and good practice,” she said.