Men negotiate harder than women do
Is this because woman are unable to negotiate as hard? Because they are unwilling to? Because they are too stupid to? What is her explanation? Is it hormonal? Does it have to do with having different body mass distribution? Inquiring minds want to know.
If it's to their advantage to negotiate hard and men and women are indistinguishable professionally, women obviously are just as able to negotiate hard (and, given negotiations I've been in, I have no reason to doubt they are not just as capable at this art).
Pao is really insulting women by saying this.
This really opens a Pandora's box. If she thinks women, by virtue of being female, are not as good at this important aspect of professional life, one wonders what other parts of their professional lives women are not as good at. She should give us a complete list - who knows what might be on it.
I wonder what would happen if she ran a purchasing organization or a sales organization. Usually the willingness and capability to negotiate effectively (and, therefore, hard) are basic job requirements for these positions. Would she refuse to hire women because, as she has stated, they are not as good at negotiating hard (ouch, there's a sexual discrimination lawsuit waiting to happen)? Would she refuse to negotiate salary and lose the very people who would negotiate effectively on behalf of her company? In reality, negotiation is always a part of almost any senior job -- you have to negotiate for headcount, resources, approval for projects, even convincing a customer that they don't need something is "negotiating".
Perhaps she has realized that she (the individual, not the gender) is not good at negotiating and this is a convenient way to avoid acknowledging this reality.
Perhaps she doesn't realize that no party to a successful negotiation goes away unhappy - does she lack confidence in herself and her own staff being able to negotiate successfully?
If Reddit has a candidate they really want and offers them $180K and they get an offer from another company for $200K (assuming similar fringe benefits and option valuations), how is it good for the company to walk away from the candidate instead of negotiate? Both $180K and $200K may be "fair" offers. Just because her company didn't happen to guess precisely what the FMV was for the person will she really stubbornly refuse to negotiate and start over from ground zero in trying to fill the position (which will likely cost tens of thousands of dollars in staff time and more tens of thousands of dollars in delay in filling the opening)?
I also assume that if the board offers, unwisely, to keep her on as permanent CEO and she wants a better offer than they gave her, she will understand when she when the board says "sorry, we don't negotiate and since you don't appear happy with our offer and we want a CEO who is happy with their situation, we retract the offer -- don't let the door hit your ass on the way out".