Two of the most important books I’ve read in my entire life are Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever’s “Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation – and Positive Strategies for Change” and the follow-up “Ask For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want“.
They’ve inspired me to make significant changes in my life – negotiating the salary for my first “real job”, challenging contracts and business practices that I didn’t think were fair, and generally making my life way more awesome by asking for – and nearly always getting – what I want.
Yesterday, for example, I sent a note about the MOO cards I ordered to their support desk asking for a replacement set of cards because they had misprinted mine. It was a small issue, and they offered me a half-off coupon, but I insisted that they send me a whole deck – and guess what, they did. Kudos to them for solving the issue, and to me for asking, and then asking again.
I’ve created a Twitter account called @askdaily, inspired by these books and this particular incident, to share this kind of “happy negotiation moments” – mine was little, but I’d love to retweet people’s (particularly womens’) successes with job negotiations and promitions, contracts, car repairs, sales negotiations, housework splitting, whatever the happy moments that people get from asking for what they want out of life.
-Leigh
hypatia dot ca 
that’s really interesting, i will put those books on my list!
Nice. Definitely good things to learn!
And obviously it’s not only women who have trouble with asking for what they really want, or realizing what they deserve. I think it depends a lot on how you were raised.
I remember back in first year university and earlier, I’ve never asked for a remark, I never questioned my professors, etc. Once I learned that they’re only human and that a lot of TAs are stupid and lazy, and that I deserved remarks, I started asking for them and my GPA really skyrocketted (I also started trying harder because I felt more accountable for my marks).
I also remember this going back to before highschool, where my friend’s mom would come down to school and yell at all the teachers and raise all sorts of hell whenever his marks weren’t “good enough”. He always got better marks than me.
But marks aside, it’s super important knowing what you deserve! Good job on going out and getting it!
Came across this old post.
Just found ordered them online and have em delivered as a present.
“Two of the most important books” is a good recommendation…