Knowing Your Value is a wonderful and inspiring book for women executives. It explains how they can communicate their value to their bosses and get the raises that they deserve. Much of our problem with unequal pay, Mika Brzezinski believes, stems from our sociocultural ideal of believing that women are primarily wives and mothers.
Women can be their own worse enemies. We tend to have fears and doubts that never end. We don’t communicate our worth and value to others, and because of this we are not fairly compensated time and time again.
Knowing our value means owning our success. Owning our success means acknowledging our achievements. And acknowledging our achievements builds confidence. Women have to start taking themselves seriously so that others will do so too.
According to Brzezinski, women view their work through the following self-defeating filters. They want to be liked, they take everything personally, they feel lucky to have the job they have (even without the raise that they deserve) and they are afraid of unknown consequences. These filters tend to blur our focus and keep us from our goals.
One of the main reasons for this is that men and women consider men to be more valuable employees. Women tend to take time off for child-bearing and to bring up their kids. They tend to do many others things including doing their job. So, women are undervalued for who they are and their identities.
Men, on the other hand, are employees for the long haul. They don’t usually take time off for familial reasons. So, they seem to be valued more. This biased perception has caused a lot of hardship for women in getting what they deserve and what they are worth.
Brzezinski encourages women to know their value and to communicate it in the next chapter of the women’s rights movement. We have to write it together so that our daughters can have a much better future that we did. In other words, we have to become role models for the next generation of women.
We have to teach our daughters and the next generation of women that it is okay to ask for what we are worth because we do deserve it!
Article comments
1 - Melanie Todd
Mika Brzezinski, is the last person, to be giving any woman advice.
(Speaking of children, Mika says in her book that she always hires enough domestic help, so that her children are always "staffed." Mika Brzezinski, does not have to worry, about childcare.)
Mika got where she is because of her last name.
Mika did not get her raise, from her employer MSNBC.
Mika got her raise, when, Joe Scarborough, put money directly into Mika's bank account.
Mika is hired, and paid millions, to be Joe Scarborough's obsequious co-host.
(And, to hawk Starbuck$ coffee, whose merchandise is scattered all over the desk.)