Something to readCompensation
Ask for It
A book on how women can negotiate for what they want, from raises to help at home
Why it’s worth your time
Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever wrote this follow-up to Women Don't Ask as a practical negotiation program for women. It sets out to walk you, step by step, from recognizing what you deserve to handling the reactions on both sides of the conversation. The result can be a specific, well-argued ask instead of a vague sense of being underpaid.
Making the ask you've been putting off
The book · About 6 hours of reading · Buy or borrow
How to get it
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- Read the program a phase at a time.
The four phases cover recognizing how much more you deserve, building bargaining power, choosing a strategy, and handling reactions and emotions on both sides.
- Write down one ask, and why it's fair.
Pick one thing at work you'd like and haven't asked for: a raise, a title, a project, some flexibility. Write two lines on why it's reasonable from your manager's side, then raise it in your next 1:1.
Good moments for this: before a reviewwhen an offer arrivesafter you've taken on more
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Babcock and Laschever's starting point is that the ask often never happens, and from the other side of the desk, a manager can't act on a wish nobody said out loud.
What might make this harder
The publisher pitches Babcock and Laschever's program for negotiating anything, and the same phases can apply to an offer. Do the bargaining-power work before the call, since an offer can be a moment with room to ask.
Questions people ask
What is Ask for It by Babcock and Laschever about?
A 2008 follow-up to the authors' research book Women Don't Ask, in which economist Linda Babcock and writer Sara Laschever offer women a four-phase negotiation program for raises, promotions, assignments and more.
Is Ask for It only for women?
It's written for women: the publisher describes strategies meant to feel comfortable for women. If you're not a woman but hesitate to ask, the habit of working out what you want before you ask may still be worth borrowing.
How do I ask for a raise without sounding demanding?
Name the specific number or change, give the reasons it fits what the team needs, and leave room for your manager's constraints. If the answer is not yet, agree on when to revisit it.
What it says, and how it holds up
One question to ask of any negotiation advice is what happens to the person who takes it, and research Babcock co-authored has looked at that. In studies led by Hannah Riley Bowles with Babcock and Lei Lai (2007), evaluators were less inclined to work with a woman who negotiated for higher pay than with one who let the chance pass, and this social cost fell more heavily on women than on men, consistently across the studies. That research suggests asking can carry a higher social cost for some people than for others.
The book is the practical follow-up to Babcock and Laschever's 2003 research book, Women Don't Ask, which began when women in Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School PhD program told Babcock, who chaired it, that the men got to teach their own classes while they worked as teaching assistants; the associate dean's explanation was that more men asked. Ask for It turns that research into a four-phase program, guided step by step, for asks that range from a raise or a new assignment to more help at home, with an emphasis on collaborative, problem-solving agreements.
Some of its examples and data come from the 2000s, and rules on what employers must disclose about pay vary by place and have changed since. A 2018 tribute to Babcock by four colleagues also describes research finding that gender gaps in negotiation depend on the situation more than on personality.
A pay system with no room to move, like a fixed union scale or published bands with automatic steps, calls for a different first question, about the system itself: when pay is reviewed, what moves someone up, and who decides.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.