One Badge Away from a Tipping Point

If you think it’s hard to resist buying Girl Scout cookies now, just wait.


Professor Linda Babcock, the James Walton Professor of Economics in the Heinz School, is working with the Girl Scouts on a pilot program to help girls learn negotiation. Babcock is the author (with Sara Laschever) of “Women Don’t Ask,” the highly regarded book that investigates why most women don’t negotiate.

“The ‘Reader’s Digest’ version is that women aren’t socialized to negotiate. Our society sees men who negotiate as ambitious and assertive, but women as pushy and aggressive,” says Babcock. “Women see the feedback and come to believe that negotiation involves more cost than gain.”

That matters. On the personal side, negotiation can positively affect everything from shared housework to the cost of a car (women pay up to $1,353 extra when they don’t negotiate). Professionally, a woman can lose more than $500,000 by age 60 if she doesn’t negotiate her first salary—and most women don’t.

Published in 2003, the book is still selling well, and Linda Babcock often speaks at conferences of professional women. “But,” she says, “I realized that the problem has its roots in childhood—so I wanted a way to reach young girls.”

She approached the Girl Scouts, because of their size (more than 6 million members), centralized organization, and emphasis on developing career skills. The Scouts loved the idea of helping girls learn to negotiate—and now Babcock and the Scouts are developing a “win-win badge” for Junior Girl Scouts ages 8-11.

The organization’s Trillium Council, which serves Western Pennsylvania and parts of West Virginia and Maryland, will pilot the badge for a year starting this fall. If the pilot succeeds, the badge will be offered nationally.

Marcia Barber, CEO of the Trillium Council, says, “This is a natural ‘fit’ in every way. Negotiation is a valuable lifelong skill, professionally and personally, and it’s far better to learn it early. Our girls are excited about the new badge, and so are we.”

To earn the badge, Girl Scouts will learn why and how negotiation can be useful. They’ll observe adults in their communities negotiating—for example, at flea markets or car dealerships, or in office situations. And they’ll practice negotiation in their own lives (yes, cookie sales are one way they can do that).

“We’ll teach the kind of negotiating that’s taught in professional schools,” says Linda Babcock. “It’s not the stereotypical macho I-win-you-lose approach, but the cooperative style that’s more productive for both men and women.”

“Some people say parents won’t like it,” Babcock says, “But I think they will. We worked with some Scouts at a summer camp, and one parent said her daughter developed a different and more constructive attitude, and a better way of interacting with her parents during disagreements. Isn’t that better than storming off and slamming doors?”

For the pilot, Babcock and her colleagues are developing a Web site, a video, and an online negotiating game. Ultimately, all those resources will be available at no cost to any nonprofit organization that serves girls.

The upshot? “I’m hoping we can ‘grow’ a large number of girls who will recognize more opportunities to negotiate and who will be able to constructively engage others in negotiations,” says Babcock. “If that happens, we can change society’s expectations about women and negotiation. We may even be able to get to one of Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘tipping points,’ and actually change the norms.

“Wouldn’t that be great?”

Linda Babcock is working on a second book, a step-by-step guide for women who want to negotiate more effectively. It will be published in 2007.


Related Links:
Women Don’t Ask
U.S. News & World Report