Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
We are pleased to welcome to The Inkwell, Sara Laschever, co-author of "Ask
For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really
Want."

Sara Laschever has worked as a writer and editor for over 25 years.
 Her work has been published by The New York Review of Books, The New
 York Times, The Harvard Business Review, Vogue, WomensBiz, and many
 other publications. She has written widely about workplace issues, and
 her interest in women's life and career obstacles led her to work as a
 research associate and principal interviewer for Project Access, a
 landmark Harvard University study that explored impediments to women's
 careers in science.   In 2003 she co-wrote "Women Don't Ask:
 Negotiation and the Gender Divide" with Carnegie Mellon economist Linda
 Babcock. Fortune Magazine, in its 75th anniversary issue, listed
 "Women Don't Ask" as one of the "75 smartest books we know." This past
 March, she and Linda Babcock published "Ask For It: How Women Can Use
 the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want." "Ask For It"
 was recently chosen as a finalist for the Thirteenth Annual Books For A
 Better Life Awards.

Welcome Sara.
  

    
Let's start at the beginning, how did you come to write a How-To for women's
negotiating?
  

    
My mother, who had four kids, was a working mother who loved her work
(she was a journalist). Inspired in part by her, I wrote a lot about
women's experiences in our male-dominated business culture during the
first two decades of my career. Then I met Linda Babcock in 1999. She'd
noticed an odd difference between her male and female students (men
asked for things that would promote their careers much more often than
women did) and she thought it might be the basis for a book. But she
knew she needed to work with a writer, and she wanted someone with a
demonstrated interest in women's issues. I loved the idea and I loved
her so we decided to work together on it. In 2003, we published 'Women
Don't Ask.' The book got a lot of attention, both from the press and
from women. Linda and I were both invited to speak about the ideas in
the book to women's groups, corporate diversity programs, universities,
even a Congressional committee exploring the causes of the glass
ceiling. After pretty much every talk, we heard variations of the same
comment: Okay, I know I have this problem, tell me what to do about it.
Or, this is my situation, any tips about how best to negotiate? So we
decided that something additional was needed: A guide to help women
train themselves to be better negotiators, a book that would present
negotiating as a skill-set women can master, and show them how to do
that. And so we wrote 'Ask For It' to answer those questions and that
need.
  

    


How did you come to be here doing this interview on the WELL?  Did you "ask
for it"?
  

    
No, actually, the WELL contacted me last spring and asked if I was
interested. This was the first time we could find that worked.
  

    

I'm really looking forward to this discussion, Sara.  This is something 
I've wanted to learn about for quite some time.
  

    
Sara, I haven't yet seen the book, but I gather that it's a really practical
as well as theoretical approach, with exercises and so on. Can you say
something about that approach, why you chose it, how it's supposed to work?
  

    
The idea behind the book is to help women approach negotiating as a
skill-set that they can master, rather than as a talent some people
have and others don't. We encourage women to look at their lives with a
sense of expanded possibility. The message is that they don't have to
accept the status quo, and there are a lot more things about their
lives—roadblocks, inconveniences, irritants—that can be changed than
they may think. Then we show women how they can bring about a lot of
those changes. We teach them basic negotiation strategy--what
professional negotiators and scholars have identified as the most
effective ways of framing, assessing, and approaching negotiation
situations. We provide resources to help women track down the
information they need when they're preparing for a negotiation. This
includes information about their own market value as well as
information about the financial health of their organizations, new
initiatives or budget changes or outsourcing plans or major strategy
shifts they should know about, and information about the economy that
could impact their situation. We recommend ways for women to increase
their bargaining power if they don't think they're in a strong position
to get what they want. Also, how to figure out the best time and place
to ask, whether or not to make the first offer, and the pros and cons
of bluffing. A special part of the program is what we call our
'negotiation gym,' which walks women through a wide range of
negotiations to help them practice, better understand their strengths
and weaknesses as negotiators, and become more comfortable with the
process. It's a six-week program (although women needn't work through
it in successive weeks), and by the end women will have completed a lot
of different negotiations in different settings, they'll have more
experience, and they'll be ready for the bigger negotiations that
really matter.
  

    

What a interesting approach! 

The information needed is such a key factor that it easy to forget 
about.  I recently watched a friend who is much younger than I am buy a 
car. She totally walked away from the car dealer -- came to where some
friends were partying and hung out with us for a few hours -- and she
also knew exactly what the car had cost the dealer.  So of course she 
got a good price.  I was impressed because it took me years to learn 
both that confident approach and the research angle, and in her family 
both of those things have always been normal -- just what people do.
Sure was a surprise to me.

So my question is two part -- are attitudes changing, and are these
behaviors that people tend to learn at home, or in their careers?
  

    
And at what point do I start teaching my daughter so she never has to feel
as Linda's female students do/did?
  

    
Yes, I think attitudes are changing, but not nearly as quickly as you
might think. We as a society still teach young girls that we don't like
it when they seem selfish or greedy or grabby, and this translates
into a reluctance to ask for things for themselves when these girls
reach adulthood.

To answer you second question, women who diverge from the standard
paradigm may learn at home that they need to ask for what they want,
and they may learn the best and most effective ways to do that. But
women can also learn this as adults, either from mentors and role
models in the workplace, or from training programs or sources like our
book. 

As for how soon can you start teaching your daughter, I would say it's
never too soon. It's also important, however, to teach your sons:
That's it's not only okay for girls to ask for what they want and
pursue their goals in a focused and direct way, but it's A GOOD
THING-good for everyone.
  

    
Now you're making it sound too easy, like all it takes is asking. That can't
be right, can it?
  

    
This sounds like a valuable book.  Thanks for writing it.

When I'm teaching Politics of Gender, I always find it a fine balance
to walk between explaining the ways that women contribute to their own
worse status and explaining the ways society relegates women to lower
status in many ways.  Usually at some point I tell the story of when I
was applying for a job as a data analyst, along with a male friend of
mine.  The person offering us the job named a starting pay of $12/hour.
I said, "That sounds great!"  My friend, who was sitting right next to
me, said, "I already make $12/hour, and could easily just work more
hours at my current job.  To make this job worth it, since I have to
travel out here, the pay would have to be substantially greater."  He
and our new boss negotiated back and forth, settling on $17/hour. 
Since I was sitting right there, I got the $17/hour, too.  Otherwise, I
would have never known it was even possible.

I have also noticed that every semester since I became a professor, a
male student (or two) asks if he can be my TA.  Female students don't
ask.  Just this semester I decided to make a point of asking two of my
superb female students if they'd like to TA for me next semester.  They
were both excited.  It just didn't occur to them to ask.

How much do you think the tendency of many women to be less likely to
"just ask" is because women have a rational fear of being seen as
pushy?
  

    

When I was growing up, I was actively discouraged from asking for what I 
want.  In fact, if someone gave me something I had asked for, I had to 
give it back.

Consequently, it's very, very difficult for me to ask for anything.
  

    
My parents were the same way.  I remember one of my sisters asked me
for a music tape for her birthday, and when I gave it to her my parents
yelled at me and told me I was teaching her to be a spoiled brat.
  

    
I'm looking forward to reading this. Everything I know about
negotiating I learned from two books: "Getting to Yes" and "Games
Mother Never Taught You" (which I am *still* giving to young women,
despite its datedness). And maybe a bit of "The Intimate Enemy".

I'm wondering if you'd care to share a summary of the principles of
your program, and how it might relate to earlier works? 
  

    
Is there some kind of aesthetic wrapped up in this?  For example, if I
want to be viewed by others as aloof and self-contained, I may find
asking for something as violating the aesthetic.  I may be able to
finesse this by some stratagem such as hinting or talking about what is
desired a lot.  

We may also be sort of type-cast by those around us and reap some
bitterness if we fail to act according to type.

BTW, males and females may have different areas of interest in which
they have problems asking.  

Good subject for all of us.
  

    
Female domestic workers have real fears about "asking for it" -- they
have a righteous fear then they'll REALLY get it:

Shadow Workforce's Battle for Dignity
Household Employees in India Seek Better Terms

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 3, 2008; A16

CHENNAI, India -- On the day she asked her employer of 16 years for a
raise, Pushpa Alamalai put on her best sari and wove a traditional
string of jasmine flowers into her neatly oiled braid. But Alamalai, a
housekeeper, felt so worried that she had trouble breathing.

"I needed so much confidence to ask for more pay," said Alamalai, 45,
a mother of four who scrubs the floors, washes the dishes and cuts
vegetables for a middle-class family here for the equivalent of $22 a
month. "I was working for so many years to their satisfaction. All
those years I had not asked for anything."

For Alamalai and other household workers in India, asking for a pay
increase was once seen as risky. It often led to confrontations and,
occasionally, firings. Household workers have no government
protections, no minimum-wage guarantees, no health benefits, no paid
holidays and, usually, no days off. Hindered by traditional prejudices
against their low-caste status, many domestic workers say they have
been forced to the sidelines as the middle and upper classes prospered
during the country's decade-long boom.

But that appears to be slowly changing. The rising expectations of
India's legions of working poor have sparked an unprecedented movement
to organize household workers and push for their rights. The effort
comes as the supply-demand ratio for domestic workers shifts in their
favor: India's economic rise has spurred more and more families to hire
more and more servants. Increasingly, household help is seen as a
necessity for India's busy families, as well as a sign of status in
this class-conscious country.

There are at least 100 million domestic workers in India -- 50 times
the number of people working in the software industry. Domestic labor
constitutes one of the country's largest job categories, behind farming
and construction....

[but--]

Alamalai and her employer spoke for the first time about how they
could be better partners. Alamalai could come on time, dress better and
call in on sick days, the employer said. For her part, Alamalai told
her boss she needed more money to feed her family.

Her employer declined to be interviewed, saying only that she felt
that Alamalai's work ethic had since improved and that she deserved a
raise. Alamalai's pay was recently doubled. Then again, her employer
also doubled her workload.

Still, Alamalai said she feels she has gained dignity....
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/02/AR200811020220
3.html>
  

    
I don't mean to suggest that this is an easy fix, that all you have to
do is ask for what you want and you'll get it. Women don't get what
they want and deserve for plenty of other reasons besides not asking.
But if you never ask at all, the answer will always be no. You'll get a
lot more if you start asking more--and asking for more when you do
ask.

Regarding gender studies and how much women contribute to their own
unequal treatment, I'd like to stress that I do not blame women for
this problem. Although women often do not ask for things that they
could get if they did ask (as in your story of the salary negotiation
conducted by your friend), women don't ask because they're taught from
the time they're very young that it's not okay to ask, as Linda
Castellani and Maria Rosales describe in their own lives.   

This leads into whether the fear of being seen as pushy is rational
and well-founded, and I think it absolutely is. Research shows that
neither men nor women like other women whom they perceive to be too
aggressive. And we have ways of punishing women who behave in ways that
seem pushy: We don't give them what they ask for, we devalue their
work based on their personal style, and we stigmatize them with ugly
names...overbearing, high maintenance, difficult, not a team player,
bitch. 

Women are often straitjacketed by society's expectations for how they
should behave and what they should be like. And while I agree that men
and women often do want different things, I think women must struggle
harder to ask for the things they do want.

The Alamalai story from the Washington Post illustrates one approach
that works very well for women--approaching the other negotiator as a
partner in problem-solving rather than as a source of power who can
give or withhold what you want.
  

    
A friend of mine who has been involved in union organizing calls 
something like that approach "interest-based bargaining," I believe.

I find one thing that causes some stress in asking for what I want 
is not knowing whether the context is to cooperate and problem solve, 
ask big and haggle like in a Mexican marketplace, or to perfectly
hit the nail on the head to get it.  I want things to be iterative, 
whether cooperative or haggle-down. I fear that I'll get to make one 
pitch of whatever I'm negotiating for, and get that rejected with 
no further discussion.  When one does a big Mexican marketplace ask 
one doesn't want to telegraph that it is a haggle starting point, 
because it may in fact be acceptable.  So there can be confusion.

How can you establish the context, and figure out what game you 
are playing? And what can you do to change the game?
  

    

And how do you *start* a negotiation when it's not expected, and you may 
not be coming from a position that's as powerful as you would need it to 
be to be completely confident in your approach?
  

    
When I got the job I currently have, my advisor advised me to
negotiate over email, so I wouldn't back down too easily.  It was very
good advice.  (Plus that way I could run every offer pass my advisor
before responding.)

But I know that often isn't an option.
  

    

I am not quick on my feet in person, so e-mail works well for me, too.
  

    
(And a reminder to those following along who are not yet members of the
Well: you can contribute to the conversation with questions or comments by
e-mailing inkwell@well.com and we can post for you.)
  

    
Meanwhile, a lot of the action and distracton has been in political
discussions inside The WELL -- in places like <politics.> <current.>
<media.> and the like, as well as getting out the vote and otehrwise being
involved through yesterday's historic election.  I think now we can all take
a deep breath and look back at your book again, Sara, and at our 
own experiences too.

Thinking of Obama's themes in his election, "Yes we can" and the "audacity
of hope" are in keeping with the goal of being comfortable asking for it.
I'd seen some parents and teeachers tallking about how good this moment is
for children, and then I saw this Topic title and realized it is good for a
lot of adults, too.

Palin and Clinton were both very interesting to watch in terms of modeling
leadership and confidence at different times, in different contexts (no, I'm
not saying they are alike beyond that, and certainly not in ability or
ideology), but Obama set a very good example for anyone, seems to me.

Anybody else feel flat-out inspired by that?
  

    

(I have been totally distracted by the election so apologize for lack of
participation.  I'll see if I can catch up asap.)