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Review: Knowing Your Value by Mika Brzezinski

I started to read this book but didn’t finish before my library loan expired. Later, during the library’s Bookapoolza Sale, where they sell hardbacks for a dollar and paperbacks for 50 cents, I snagged the hardback published in 2010.

I was looking for answers, for help.

It is demoralizing to be in a work environment where younger versions of yourself walk in the door with no experience and command a higher base (I’m in sales) than you. To live that is a poison you to your self-worth and to continue to take it is not what I want to model for my daughter.

Pay inequity pushes good people to a breaking point, either it breaks them, or they break out of here.

She details working women who feel lucky, grateful, willing to apologize at the drop of a hat, and more than ready to work hard to be deemed valuable. Yet value is the unreachable brass ring. And that striving creates a destructive cycle of labor for which there is no end.

Brzezinski holds herself accountable for most of the pay inequity she experienced in a career progression that brought her to the MSNBC show Morning Joe. So, this isn't a male bashing book or a blame placing tome. 

She explains the tactics she tried to receive pay increases that didn’t work.

When criticized about her wardrobe or hair, as she sits next to a man who tumbled out of bed and ran his fingers through his mop before the camera started to roll, she doesn’t ask for an expense account, she goes all in trying to keep up the image of a highly paid, successful television personality and goes broke. She shares stories of multiple women and their struggles to find equal footing in the workplace and a few that had someone help them.

She writes like a journalist – balanced reporting, telling a story and anecdotes from both female and male perspectives.

She made everyone else rich.

She made herself angry.

Now she’s getting even – but only if you read the book and take advantage of that she learned.

I finished the book. This time.

Then, I made my own request of the big boss. Still waiting to see how that turns out. In the meantime, I highly recommend Knowing Your Value by Mika Brzezinski.


Source: library sale


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