I have been reading, well listening to, a great book the past week called Women Don't Ask, which takes a no nonsense look at why women are, generally, less successful than men at negotiating for themselves. What has shocked me is that I have always had a problem with this myself, even before I changed gender?

Listening to this excellent book has left me with a dilemma. The book implies that the primary reason is the way women are socialised to be "nice" and to avoid hurting other people's feelings. Then there is the awful problem that if a woman does learn to "negotiate like a man" those qualities which appear positive when displayed by a man are suddenly negative when displayed by a woman.

This results in the Catch 22 that women don't progress in their careers because they are not assertive enough for leadership, and when they change that they don't progress because they are too bossy or aggressive. So today I am going to talk about this book and the challenges facing women, and some thoughts on how to overcome them.

If you want to see more about the book or the audio book, which I can highly recommend - please follow the link below. It is an affiliate link, but it will automatically take you to the book in the amazon store for your region, and I may earn a few pennies if you buy it.

https://geni.us/women-dont-ask

You can find the video edition of this episode here - https://youtu.be/0n1VXJEqQwg