asking for (& then getting) what you want..

I wanted to write today about the contradiction that women often have in their personal relationships.  The contradiction is that women often can be great relaters but often find themselves not receiving what they want from others in relationships.  At my other blog EZebis, I have been interviewing venture capitalists & women founders about the shortfall in venture for women.  Some have pointed out that often women hesitate to ask for what they want & also may often tolerate difficult relationships & people in their personal & work lives despite often having strong ability in relating & understanding people.

Thought you might like this light relief graph about relationships:

There’s even a book ‘Women Don’t Ask’ by Linda Babcock & Sara Laschever who did a study on this issue as regards the workplace.  From their website I pulled some interesting stats:

Women Don’t Like to Negotiate
In surveys, 2.5 times more women than men said they feel “a great deal of apprehension” about negotiating.
Men initiate negotiations about four times as often as women.
When asked to pick metaphors for the process of negotiating, men picked “winning a ballgame” and a “wrestling match,” while women picked “going to the dentist.”
Women will pay as much as $1,353 to avoid negotiating the price of a car, which may help explain why 63 percent of Saturn car buyers are women.
Women are more pessimistic about the how much is available when they do negotiate and so they typically ask for and get less when they do negotiate—on average, 30 percent less than men.
20 percent of adult women (22 million people) say they never negotiate at all, even though they often recognize negotiation as appropriate and even necessary.
Women Suffer When They Don’t Negotiate
By not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60—and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate a first salary.
In one study, eight times as many men as women graduating with master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon negotiated their salaries. The men who negotiated were able to increase their starting salaries by an average of 7.4 percent, or about $4,000. In the same study, men’s starting salaries were about $4,000 higher than the women’s on average, suggesting that the gender gap between men and women might have been closed if more of the women had negotiated their starting salaries.
Another study calculated that women who consistently negotiate their salary increases earn at least $1 million more during their careers than women who don’t.
In 2001 in the U.S. women held only 2.5 percent of the top jobs at American companies and only 10.9 percent of the board of directors’ seats at Fortune 1000 companies.
Women own about 40 percent of all businesses in the U.S. but receive only 2.3 percent of the available equity capital needed for growth. Male-owned companies receive the other 97.7. percent.
Women Have Lower Expectations and Lack Knowledge of their Worth
Many women are so grateful to be offered a job that they accept what they are offered and don’t negotiate their salaries.
Women often don’t know the market value of their work: Women report salary expectations between 3 and 32 percent lower than those of men for the same jobs; men expect to earn 13 percent more than women during their first year of full-time work and 32 percent more at their career peaks.

I guess its easier to identify in the workplace but I am sure the issue is present in personal relationships too.  Its still a habit that men tend to ask women out & that women who ask men out on a date can be considered pushy or dominant????  I’m not sure that women don’t like to negotiate but obviously for some of us old habits (patterns) die hard & some women don’t think that they can negotiate about some of the most important things in their lives.  The thing is if you don’t ask, you don’t get what you truly want in life/relationships.  It’s not rocket science, so we need to give ourselves permission to ask for what we want.  Of course we may not get it even then, but we have already increased our chances by asking…

AskMen has an interesting article Why Don’t Women Make The First Move? By Heidi Muller and she definitely takes a positive position in this area:

This is where I have to give props to the ladies. They know that he who reveals his feelings too early in a relationship or shows interest becomes vulnerable, while he who is on the receiving end can make or break the initiator’s efforts. The receiver of affection gets the upper hand by default; now this is a very important thing to remember in the game of love and war.
Women, whether it be on purpose or not, are expected to be on the receiving end rather than the initiators, and thus claim their stake as the ones with the upper hand.

The bottom line is that these are skills that can be learnt.  Gosh even I can teach you assertiveness & communication skills.

Now I’ll leave you with a very funny standup comedian Iliza Schlesinger on CSI Dating.  Enjoy..

Related articles

• Coaching Women: Pitch Like A Girl (zestnzen.wordpress.com)
• Women Entrepreneurs: Does Your Business Need a Man? (blogs.forbes.com)
• The right way to ask for a raise (theglobeandmail.com)
• How to Maximize Your Salary (getrichslowly.org)
• The Green Corporate Ladder and Closing the Salary Gap: Four Tips for Women (triplepundit.com)
• Kathryn Kolbert: Power, Ambition, Money, Failure: The 21st Century Taboos (huffingtonpost.com)
• 2 reviews of Negotiate salary too soon (rateitall.com)
• Science of Salary Negotiation (nextbigfuture.com)
• Negotiate A Great Salary In Tough Times (forbes.com)
• Ladies, Want a Career in Science? Want to Have a Family? Pick One (politicsdaily.com)
• Relationships: How to Get to The First Date (socyberty.com)
• Why Being Single Can Be Great for You — And Your Future Relationships (alternet.org)
• BDSM And Feminism: “Stop Telling Me What I’m Supposed To Like, D*mn It.” [Fucking While Feminist] (jezebel.com)
• Pick the Right Investor Type for Your Startup (startupprofessionals.com)
• What Education Is Needed to Become a Venture Capitalist? (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
• Desperation with a Difference (psychologytoday.com)
• How a Relationship Should be (socyberty.com)
• Why There Are so few Women in Tech (businessweek.com)