Ask For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want

In their groundbreaking book, Women Don’t Ask, Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever uncovered a startling fact: even women who negotiate brilliantly on behalf of others often falter when it comes to asking for themselves. Now they’ve developed the action plan that women all over the country requested—a guide to negotiation that starts before you get to the bargaining table.

Ask for It explains why it’s essential to ask (men do it all the time) and teaches you how to ask effectively, in ways that feel comfortable to you as a woman. Whether you currently avoid negotiating like the plague or consider yourself hard-charging and fearless, Babcock and Laschever’s compelling stories of real women will help you recognize how much more you deserve—whether it’s a raise, that overdue promotion, an exciting new assignment, or even extra help around the house. Their four-phase program, backed by years of research, will show you how to identify what you’re really worth, maximize your bargaining power, develop the best strategy for your situation, and manage the reactions and emotions that may arise—on both sides. Guided step-by-step, you’ll learn how to draw on the special strengths you bring to the negotiating table to reach agreements that benefit everyone involved.

This collaborative, problem-solving approach will propel you to new places both professionally and personally—and open doors you thought were closed. Because if you never hear no, you’re not asking enough.

Linda Babcock is a James M. Walton Professor of Economics at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has also been a visiting professor at Harvard Business School, The Unicersity of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and the California Institute of Technology. A specialist in negotiation and dispute resolution, her research has appeared in the most prestigious economics, inductrial relations, and law journals.

Sara Laschever's work has been published by the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and Vogue, among other publications. She was also the principal interviewer for Project Access, a landmark Harvard University study on women in science careers funded by the National Science Foundation. She lives in Concord, Mass.