Arbitration & Mediation

Why "She Negotiates"

By Victoria Pynchon

There's a new blog on the block called She Negotiates! 

Why she negotiates?

The 'She Negotiates' blog is dedicated to the proposition that 'all [people] are created equal . . . [and that to procure the full benefits of citizenship, including economic opportunity] women must themselves become accountable for a substantial portion of the existing income and wage gap that persists with alarming tenacity two full generations (forty years) after the commencement of the Second Wave Women's Movement.

Although implicit bias continues to dog the retention and promotion of women in society's most powerful economic, political, and professional fields, as we did forty years ago, we must once again raise to consciousness the way we limit ourselves by failing to accurately assess our own market value, name it, and, through the negotiation of the price of our services and salaries for our employment, claim it with the same sense of entitlement as do our male peers.

Although this is a gender challenge, it is a community issue.  Both men and women suffer when women's work is not appropriately valued in the marketplace.  Despite the many and considerable advances in the status of women over the past forty years, men continue to suffer disproportionately the primary economic burden of providing the lion's share of the economic support in American families.  When women know their market value and demand to be recompensed accordingly, this disproportionate burden on men will decline, if not disappear.

Men's required focus on work stymies their development of networks of supportive intimates, networks that women (naturally) develop and that account for significantly longer and healthier lives.  Men's required focus on work also contributes to higher rates of heart disease.  As the Harvard Medical School's Men's Health Watch recently reported:

Work stress and hostility. It's a common explanation for excess male mortality, and there may be something to it. Indeed, the stereotype of the harried, hard-driving, overworked male executive has a basis in fact, and work stress can increase the risk of hypertension, heart attack, and stroke. In fact, karoshi, 'death from overwork,' is a recognized diagnosis in Japan, and it triggers compensatory payments to survivors. Type A behavior, stress, hostility, and anger have all been implicated as heart disease risk factors, and these traits tend to have a higher prevalence in men than women.

To help women help themselves (and the entire male population) [I've] begun teaching women the negotiation skills to become full workplace – and economic – partners with their male peers.  In every Women's Negotiation Seminar and Workshop [I have]  taught – online and in person – women report back that they recouped far more than the cost of the program within thirty days by ascertaining their true marketplace value and negotiating it.

My online month-long coached negotiation for women course ('She Negotiates') begins on June 1 at Craving Balance.  [I] will also be teaching Power Negotiation for Women at the Pasadena City Women's Club on June 10, 2010.  Please bookmark the date for this later in-person, three-hour seminar – web site for the course will be up soon!

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on April 30, 2010 (boomark / email).