Mika Brzezinski - the blond part of the MSNBC show Morning Joe - has a new book out. It's not all that well written. It kind of jumps around, willy-nilly.

It's not cheap.

Still, I bought it. I read it. I'm still thinking about it. And here's why.

A paycheck is a tricky thing when you're a woman. There's a good chance the man next to you might be making more money than you.

And that's putting it nicely.

Of course, today there are more and more exceptions. It is, after all, 2011. I'm sure Bobbi Brown Cosmetics doesn't have too many women on the payroll who are paid far less than men. Oprah is said to pay her female producers quite well.

But overall, in the everyday non-aha! scheme of things, men get paid more than women for the same job, and it's been proven again and again, study after study. The most recent figures were released this year in an Obama White House report on gender equality, and put a woman's earning power at 70 cents for every Man Dollar.

Enter pretty, smart, stoic Mika.

Brzezinski wrote Knowing Your Value, after finding out her co-host and the show's namesake, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough of Florida, was making 14 times as much as she was.

Fourteen times. That's a lot - considering she has better manners, appears to own an iron, and has a name that's way harder to spell.

A lot of us who climbed through the professional mine fields in the '80s and '90s - the Baby Boomers, I guess - launched ourselves without a clue. I certainly didn't realize there was such a thing as gender pay discrepancy when I took my first newspaper job back in 1979.

Then, reality check.

It came one afternoon about a decade into my career, almost 21 years ago. There I was, sitting in the newsroom, eating my little sandwich, when a male colleague walked by with his paycheck. It must have been a Thursday. He opened the envelope and looked at his check.

And here's the beautiful part.

He ripped off the pay-stub portion and dropped it in the trash can, right in front of me, maybe 8 feet away, without hesitating or breaking stride.

Thing is, he was probably clueless, too.

Sure, I had to get up and walk around a bank of desks.

Sure, I had to reach down into someone else's trash can, when no one was looking.

Sure, I was eight months pregnant.

Goodbye, innocence

But what was I gonna do?

Just sit there?

I don't think so.

And so went my days of innocence. My find didn't do anything for me in the short-term, but it opened my eyes for the long-term fight.

In her book, Brzezinski's days of innocence ended during the 2008 presidential election, when she was working hard, traveling a lot and watching the show's ratings climb. It was about then, she says, that she discovered Scarborough's salary.

She reacted viscerally - crying foul and begging for equal treatment. But each time she approached the network brass, she left their offices angry, dissatisfied and without a raise. When that didn't work, she says she decided to write the book (instead of quitting).

Brzezinski has proximity to powerful women, and she began quizzing them in the green room. Have they ever felt like this? How did they deal with it? Why does it happen?

Confidence and a plan

The Brzezinski book is fascinating in that these successful women have both sob and success stories.

Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. Finance whiz Suze Orman. Sen. Claire McCaskill. Magazine editor Tina Brown. The list goes on.

And so does the advice on asking for a raise.

Be confident. No crying. No apologies. Use good timing.

Dress nicely. Have a plan. And put away the Mommy guilt. (Guys check sports scores during the work day, it's perfectly OK for you to make an appointment with the pediatrician.)

And while none of these successful women specifically mention reaching into a trash can while pregnant as a preferred form of research methodology, I'm pretty sure they'd be supportive.

As long as it's done quietly, with very good manners, wearing something that is perfectly pressed.

~emilyjminor@aol.com