Yes, I am aware of that and thank you for saying that so clearly.
Savvy was perhaps not the best word choice, but I was attempting to be succinct and trying to avoid writing multiple paragraphs. Perhaps
disadvantaged would be a better term here, given that we do not know the exact cause. But I do suspect one factor is that women have less access to important information via having a beer and shooting the breeze with the guys type acticities. I have seen online discussions that suggest to me women have less savvy -- which comes from the French
savior meaning essentially
know how -- because they have less access to group knowledge of such things.
One of the problems is that when women lack such knowledge, they come across as less confident because, in the statistical sense of the word, they literally are less confident. In other words, in an absence of hard information, you cannot be sure if the figure you are asking for is too high, too low or just right. But when they evince this lack of confidence, people usually try to give them pep talks rather than hard data. It gets treated like a lack of self esteem rather than a lack of information.
I do think you are correct that women simply cannot afford to negotiate as aggressively and this is a factor. But I also think they lack access to knowledge that a lot of men are exposed to casually simply because they are male and this makes it easier for them to hang with the right crowd and get anecdotes, etc. And that piece is what I was trying to capture with the word savvy.
I am a woman. I know a lot about negotiating. I remain poorly equipped to negotiate on salary because I lack information. Having general savvy about negotiating technique is insufficient. You cannot play hard ball if you do not have hard information particular to the problem space in question.