Negotiating Stereotypes

Here's an interesting bit in the Washington Post: "Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling". It begins with what at first seems a clear case of bias on the job:

About 10 years ago, a group of graduate students lodged a complaint with Linda C. Babcock, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University: All their male counterparts in the university's PhD program were teaching courses on their own, whereas the women were working only as teaching assistants.

Gasp! But wait--why didn't the women get their own classes? They didn't ask.

When Babcock took the complaint to her boss, she learned there was a very simple explanation: "The dean said each of the guys had come to him and said, 'I want to teach a course,' and none of the women had done that," she said. "The female students had expected someone to send around an e-mail saying, 'Who wants to teach?'"

The article goes on to claim that this is a general behavior trend: in the workplace, men tend to negotiate for better positions and higher pay, while women tend to take what they're given without haggling for more. Not that no women negotiate for more, but the article says that this also has its own negative repercussions:

Both men and women were more likely to subtly penalize women who asked for more--the perception was that women who asked for more were "less nice".

At this point, my take on the situation diverges from the article's. The article implies that it is unfair to think of women who ask for more as "less nice"; men do the same thing and, while perceived negatively (according to the study cited), are not penalized as severely. However, I don't think this is indicative necessarily of misogyny. Instead, I think it reflects a broader view in our culture : namely, that aggressive and driven business people are ruthless, a bit frightening, and certainly "not nice". The "A-type personality" business person is a character archetype readily recognized in TV and movies, often as a foil or else as a tragic protagonist. Moreover, this behavior is often gendered as male, in contrast to the nurturing and empathetic female: recall the last elections when Nancy Pelosi appealed to her status as a grandmother as an indicator that a Democrat-controlled congress, with her as Speaker of the House, would be "nicer" than a corporate-friendly Republican one.

In short, where is the sexism located? In the people who see a negotiating woman as "less nice"? Or in the broader culture that views business men as cutthroat brigands, to the extent that it doesn't penalize them as much for the behavior because it expects it? Not that I'm defending those corporate types who are unscrupulous jerks, but how is it okay for our culture at large to assume that corporate types are unscrupulous jerks by default, and not even notice our own prejudice? That's freakin' Marxist, that is!