The female PhD students look tense as they confront the professor.
Why are the male PhD students getting to teach classes, while the women PhD students are all assigned to be teaching assistants?
It was news to Linda Babcock. She learned later what separated the young women from their male colleagues.
"The men had asked the associate dean to teach their own classes. The women were waiting to be notified and offered the opportunity," recalls Babcock, now the James M. Walton Professor of Economics at the Heinz School.
The realization was so striking to Babcock that she began research for a book on the topic of how women negotiate. The result of that effort was Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide (Princeton University Press, 2003), coauthored by Babcock and Sara Laschever.
Favorable reviews followed, including one from The New York Times:
A highly readable book ... Women Don't Ask should be read by anyone with a fear of negotiating.
Earlier this year, the authors released a follow-up book: Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want (Bantam, 2008). It also received excellent reviews.
As a result, Babcock has won this year's Jeffrey Z. Rubin Theory-to-Practice Award, given by the International Association for Conflict Management. The honor is awarded every two years to a person who has made a significant impact on the practice of negotiation.
Babcock has experienced firsthand that impact. She regularly receives fan mail, and when she speaks she often is approached afterward by audience members who say she has empowered them and changed their lives.
—JONATHAN BARNES (HS'93)
