The notion that men have stronger negotiation skills than women has been dealt a major blow by new research out of UC Berkeley Haas and the Cornell University ILR School. The studies found that women and men routinely achieve equivalent economic outcomes in negotiations. At the same time, women negotiators are rated by their adversaries as more trustworthy, better communicators, and more desirable future negotiation partners as compared to men.

These are not just feel-good measures of negotiation success, according to the researchers, who published their findings in a June 2026 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Women’s stronger performance building interpersonal relationships during negotiations can translate into long-term economic value through increased future negotiation opportunities.

New Study Finds Women Excel At Negotiation Skills Linked To Relationship Building

In the first study, the researchers analyzed over 2,000 observations from 231 full-time MBA students who completed negotiation exercises and post-negotiation surveys. Overall, the women and men achieved equivalent economic outcomes in the negotiations. When it came to subjective value assessments, however, the women outperformed the men.

The negotiation participants rated women adversaries significantly higher than men on building trust, fairness, satisfying their partner’s needs, expanding the pie, listening, and communicating. These subjective measures, which are often ignored in negotiation analysis, can produce future economic benefits. The participants reported being more satisfied with the results and more likely to want to negotiate again with women adversaries as compared to men.

The study’s results offer three key findings for organizations when deciding who should negotiate on their behalf.

First, the study debunks the common narrative that men are stronger dealmakers than women.

“Early research from the 1970s and 1980s focused on gender as a stable predictor of negotiation outcomes, suggesting that women performed worse in negotiating, but that has changed over time. Our data shows that women are achieving equivalent economic outcomes,” said Charlotte Townsend, researcher at the Cornell University ILR School and the studies’ coauthor, in a June 2026 interview .

Second, the study challenges the belief that negotiators typically must trade-off economic gains for positive relationship building. Women are succeeding simultaneously at both. “Importantly, women achieve economic outcomes on par with men,” the researchers concluded, “suggesting that greater likability does not come at a performance cost.”

“For fifty years, negotiation scholars have been so focused on who wins the negotiation that we missed who wins the relationship. It turns out, for women, those aren’t competing goals,” said Laura Kray, UC Berkeley Haas professor and the studies’ coauthor, in a June 2026 news release .

Third, the study highlighted the potential economic value of women’s superior performance on subjective assessments. Adversaries reported a significant preference for entering future negotiations with women as compared to men. This finding suggests that women negotiators’ relationship-building skills “may provide women with more opportunities to negotiate, which compound into economic gains,” said the researchers.

“We don’t talk enough about the social consequences in negotiations, and the importance of how your partner makes you feel,” said Townsend. “Economic outcomes are only half the story. The other half is whether people want to work with you again. That is where women appear to have a meaningful advantage.”

People Rate Women’s Negotiation Skills Higher Even When Gender Is Unknown

In the second study, the researchers set out to understand the source of women negotiators’ superior performance on subjective value assessments. Do adversaries enjoy negotiating across the table with women more than men due to gender biases —like the stereotypic perception that women are warmer than men—or due to women’s negotiation skills?

To answer this question, the researchers analyzed 1,030 online negotiation sessions among 846 randomly paired participants. The participants were incentivized to maximize gains through performance-based bonuses. The negotiations took place via online chats in which the participants did not know the gender of their negotiation adversaries. Participants were asked to rate the likeability of their adversaries at the end of each negotiation session.

Overall, women and men achieved similar economic outcomes in the negotiations. And once again, women negotiators were liked significantly more by their negotiating adversaries than men. In this case, women’s advantage in subjective value ratings occurred even though their gender was unknown. Surveys revealed that participants could not accurately identify the gender of their online negotiation adversaries any better than random chance.

This finding suggests that women negotiators’ advantage in building relationships is based on women’s negotiation strategies, rather than gender stereotypes.

“We wanted to understand who people actually want to sit across from,” Townsend said. “What convinced us that this effect is real is that it appears even when negotiators do not know the other person’s gender, which suggests the difference is driven by behavior, not perception.”

Why Women’s Negotiation Skills Are A Business Asset

Negotiation success is often measured by immediate economic gains. But outside of the business school classroom, negotiation outcomes can frequently have significant long-term consequences that rely on relationship building. By recognizing the importance of subjective value measures in negotiation outcomes, the new studies highlight for organizations an overlooked advantage that women bring to the negotiation table.

There are certain types of negotiations in which relationship outcomes matter most for an organization’s long-term economic gains, according to prior research out of the Wharton School and the George Mason University Costello College of Business.

One example is when a deal requires significant performance by a negotiator’s adversary after the negotiation is done, unlike a one-time product purchase. In those situations, the actual economic value of the deal depends on the adversary’s post-negotiation motivation and behavior. So building strong relationships with adversaries during negotiations is critical for maximizing their post-negotiation performance.

Organizations should also care about a negotiator’s relationship-building skills when a negotiator’s reputation matters. This is often the case when future deal opportunities are on the line.

“In personal finance, the value of compounding is extremely powerful in the long-term. The same is true in negotiation: if people enjoy the process of negotiating with you, and want to negotiate with you again in the future, that is like a high interest rate,” said Solène Delecourt, UC Berkeley Haas professor and coauthor of the 2026 studies. “It is likely to lead to more opportunities to negotiate, which can result in long-term gains.”

Repeat negotiation opportunities can often generate more revenue than a single aggressive deal. So when an organization is assessing a negotiator’s skills, leaders should focus not only on immediate economic outcomes but also on longer-term relationship building, at which women tend to excel.

“If you’re deciding who to put across the table in a high-stakes negotiation, this research suggests you may be overlooking one of your strongest assets,” said Townsend. “Women are not only negotiating effectively by traditional measures. They are also building the kind of trust that leads people to want to negotiate with them again in the future.”