Claire Wasserman On Book 'Ladies Get Paid': 'Before You Can Advocate For Yourself, You Have To Believe You Are Worthy'
(CBS Local)-- Money has been and continues to be a taboo subject for couples, families and friends and Claire Wasserman wants to change that. The author and founder of Ladies Get Paid, a global community that champions the financial advancement of women, has been traveling the country for years to ask women very simple questions about money.
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Wasserman's new book from Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, is called "Ladies Get Paid" and tackles several important topics like professional advancement, negotiating a salary and developing a plan to achieve all of your financial goals.
"All of this comes from real women and I followed the lives of nine real women in the book," said Wasserman, in an interview with CBS Local's DJ Sixsmith. "Everyone is going through a different professional challenge like who am I, why am I here and what should I be doing. It's everything in the life cycle of your career, minus the retirement part. It took almost two years to write this. I never considered myself a feminist and had a complete misunderstanding of what feminism is. It was about five and a half years ago when I had a sexist experience that woke me up. It was enough to startle me out of naivete, but also awkward gender power dynamics. I knew nothing about systemic inequality and the wage gap and the leadership gap."
The author's explorations of all these topics allowed her to learn about things like microaggressions and the statistics about women in the workplace. Wasserman's curiosity led her to the start of the Ladies Get Paid business, which featured offline events with women around the country talking about money.
"I got women in a room and said what does money mean to you," said Wasserman. "I knew it would really be a conversation about power and that is what I wanted women to get. You first have to understand what might be holding us back. That's how we're socialized. Before you can advocate for yourself, you have to deeply believe that you are worthy. I have a sense of what women want and need in their lives and what the universals are. The book is all of those learnings condensed. No matter where you live, what you do or how old you are, a lot of this stuff is universal. Women recognize that if they are going through something similar, they can speak up and band together."
"Ladies Get Paid" is available wherever books are sold on Tuesday, January 12 and watch all of DJ Sixsmith's interviews from "The Sit-Down" series here.
