Alyssa is from the woods of Connecticut, lives in New York City's East Village and works in tech PR at a digital agency in Brooklyn. It's safe to assume she's always at least half-joking.

Hate mail, bad PR pitches and offers of riches can be sent to woodlandcreatureblog at gmail.

These opinions are hers alone and do not reflect the views of her employer, clients or mom. Nobody pays her to write about products or gives her free stuff, but it'd be cool if they did.

“An anonymous coworker—to this day, I don’t know who—had left a pencil-written note on a torn piece of paper with some numbers on it. It showed how much more my male coworkers were making, even though they had less education, training and experience.

I’d been at Goodyear almost 20 years, and was still making 20 percent less than the lowest-paid male supervisor in my same position. I’d been praised and promoted by my bosses, but rewarded with much smaller raises than my male coworkers got.

It hit me in the gut like a ton of bricks. I immediately thought of the countless overtime hours that I worked every chance I could, and realized I was paid for them based on an unfair salary. All those good days of work hadn’t earned me the good day’s pay I deserved.

It was about fairness, and it was against the law.”

—Lilly Ledbetter writing in the Charlotte Observer today. Three years ago, President Obama made a fair pay act that bears her name the first bill he signed into law as president.

Ladies, always make sure you know what you’re worth. Ask friends who have left your company what they think you should be making, ask friends who work in your industry at different companies, ask recruiters who reach out to you with job offers (if you want this to happen, make sure you have a detailed LinkedIn profile set up and connect with everyone you know), do research online (Glassdoor is a good resource and here’s a helpful guide I found for the public relations industry).

Then, once you know how much you should be making, state your case to your employer as to why they should give you that much (well, that much plus a few thousand dollars more, in case they bargain you down), based on what you’ve contributed to the company. And if they won’t give it to you, and they don’t offer a good reason why, find a company that will. Sometimes it’s as easy as just working up the courage to ask, which men do all the time.

It’s important to remember that no boss is just going to hand you tons more money. That just doesn’t make business sense. But if you’re great at your job, it’s easier and less expensive for them to give you what you’re worth than to try to replace you. So get it, girl!

Source: barackobama