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Pushback
Book

Pushback

How Smart Women Ask – and Stand Up – for What They Want

Selena Rezvani
Jossey-Bass, 2012
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Editorial Rating

9

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  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

The Bible says to ask and you will receive, yet many women are reticent about asking. Women now earn more advanced degrees than men, outnumber men in the workforce and control more than half the world’s wealth. But when it comes to workplace negotiations, instead of “pushing back,” many women accept less than ideal working conditions. Women’s leadership policy consultant Selena Rezvani offers a four-step formula that women can follow to improve their negotiation skills. While Rezvani’s practical advice is just as useful for men as it is for women, her analysis of many women’s attitudes toward negotiation is superbly accurate, and a lot of female readers will identify with her hypothesis. getAbstract recommends Rezvani’s self-advocacy skills, which women at all career levels can use to boost their negotiating confidence.

Summary

What It Means to “Push Back”

Although they may constantly negotiate in their personal lives, many businesswomen don’t know how to ask for what they want in the workplace, for example, a higher salary, a more flexible schedule, better assignments, and the like. Women need to learn and know how to push back – that is, “to articulate, advocate for and hold out for” what they desire and deserve.

Twenty female executives who responded to a survey estimated that 60% of their career success came from simply asking for what they wanted. These women agreed that technical skills, academic degrees and work experience matter, but that their ability to push back contributed the most to their advancement.

How Women Approach Negotiation

Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, authors of Women Don’t Ask, discovered that men compared negotiations to going to a ballgame but that women likened them to “going to the dentist.”

On average, women tend to apply for jobs only when they meet all of the stated criteria, while men apply for jobs when they meet just 60% of the criteria.

While health education firm LLuminari reports that men most value salary...

About the Author

Selena Rezvani, co-owner of leadership policy consulting firm, Women’s Roadmap, writes for The Washington Post and Forbes and appears on NPR’s 51 Percent: The Women’s Perspective.

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