EVERYTHING A WOMAN NEEDS TO KNOW TO GET PAID WHAT SHE'S WORTH

Ms. Bird's pragmatic, sensible guide for women longing to escape from that low-pay, dead-end job in the secretarial ghetto assumes a certain amount of liberation up front. She tells you flat out that the quickest, surest way to make money and move up is to get ""a man's job."" Like Bernice Gera, the baseball ump; or Janie Cotrell, the welder; or Janet P. Bonnema, engineering technician for Boeing. And if you're snickering -- don't. Laughing at sexism signifies tacit acceptance of the kind of thinking that still prevails in banks, insurance companies, advertising, Wall Street and, well, just about everywhere despite the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act. But it is changing and Ms. Bird is full of sound advice on how best to parlay your resources. Many jobs can be fashionably ""feminized"" she notes, and employers are like sheep -- if one hires a woman V.P. the rest will follow along. She discusses the various discriminatory tricks and traps which are sometimes used to keep women down or out: setting ""qualifications"" higher for her than for him, bestowing fancy titles but small paychecks, bypassing women for promotions -- and ways to get around such ploys. Perhaps some rigorous professional training -- an M.B.A. would help; or maybe a call to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission; or perhaps you should just quit and start somewhere else -- don't settle for ""security"" and sell yourself short. The format is efficiently question-and-answer but there's nothing slapdash about her canny tactics and suggestions.