Kirkus Reviews: Why did you - and so many other women - settle for less than what you were worth? Mi

Kirkus Reviews: Why did you - and so many other women - settle for less than what you were worth?

Mika Brezinksi: I don’t blame my company for getting the best price they could get for me. I don’t blame MSNBC for what I did, which was sign a contract and take a salary that was far below my value. I just want to be clear that actually, most of what went wrong for me started with me. It could have been fixed if I had been far more knowledgeable, deep in my heart, about what it was that I brought to the table.

None of this happens without addressing the psychology of it, and what it is that we want out of our employers. Far too many times we want to be liked. Loved. And to be considered part of the team more than we want our value. It’s stunning to me how much this happens. I was talking to a good friend of mine who appears in my book, More editor-in-chief Lesley Jane Seymour, who talked about a boss giving her a pair of earrings and saying how much she loved her. It’s just ridiculous. So what? I don’t want earrings. I don’t really care what the emotion is. The question is do you respect my value? The only way you can show it is to pay for it. 

Women in general are not making as much as their male counterparts, even at the second and the third level, and it will take a lot to get us where we should be, but we do need to address our part in this and what we can change in order to change that conversation, and that’s what I think that this book does, is it makes us take a look at the conversations before we have them.