In a well-intentioned move, Reddit's CEO Ellen Pao, she of the Silicon Valley gender discrimination case, has banned all employees from negotiating salary because women negotiate less and reap fewer benefits than their male peers when they negotiate on their own behalves.

The solution to women's purported "negotiation problem" is not to ban negotiation but to equip women to negotiate.

As we've been saying ever since we founded She Negotiates, negotiation is a skill, not a secondary sexual characteristic. Not only is it a skill, but when women know they can negotiate salary, they do so as often as men and when they are skilled at negotiating, they do so as well as men.

How bad is Pao's executive decision? Let me count the ways.

Negotiation Can Right the Wrongs of Gender Discrimination in the Workplace

The workplace and its mores were established at a time when few women labored there. Until the late 1960s, wage discrimination against women was legal. When I first searched for work in high school, I was faced with "men wanted" and "women wanted" ads. When my mother had to return to work after my father lit out for territories unknown, she was not permitted to sell shoes (where the commissions were) but was only allowed to sell women's hosiery and purses. She made less than the men by the hour and far less in commissions than her male counterparts.

All of that is within my living memory and the effect of treating women as low-paid second class citizens did not vaporize when gender discrimination in the workplace became illegal. Women still have a long history of marginalization to make up for and it cannot be a news flash to anyone that employers do not tend to raise people's salaries or craft compensation packages to make their employees' lives better, accommodate women's caretaking responsibilities, provide facilities where women can pump breast milk for their infants, or combat the effect of implicit bias in subjective reviews of women's performance.

Negotiation, however, has at least a chance of making these changes.

The Difference Between Minimum and Living Wages is Negotiation

Whatever your opinions about unions and the labor movement, it is indisputable that working and middle class men and women make less money, receive fewer benefits and suffer worse working conditions when they do not have the negotiation power that unionization gives them.

Deprive the laboring classes of the power of negotiation and you have despotism. Ellen Pao might like that. Who knows what her real motives are. What she doesn't understand is that women's hesitance to negotiate and the social sanctions that are often imposed on them for doing so (acting outside their gender role) can be resolved by letting them know Reddit expects them to negotiate salary and giving them the skills to do so in a way that benefits both Reddit and its employees. That's what mutual benefit, interest-based negotiation is all about. Finding ways to meet as many interests of the bargaining partners as possible, not to pit them against one another in an adversarial contest in which what the employer gains, the employee loses and vice versa.

What's Good for Men is Good for Women and What's Good for Women is Good for Men

Here's a news flash. Every child has a mother and four in 10 American households with children under age 18 now include a mother who is either the sole or primary earner for her family. And nearly half of all U.S. adults are married.That means that women's economic strength benefits more than one hundred million Americans. And men's economic strength benefits that same number of our citizens.

That means both men and women can and should be negotiating the compensation they receive from their employers so that their compensation packages best meet their unique circumstances.

The Strongest Will Still Negotiate

Hi, Ellen, it's Bob, the CFO. I'm being recruited by SnapChat and I'm sorry but their compensation package is so much better than mine that I just can't turn down the offer.

Bob, that's terrible. I wish you had told me you were unhappy. You're a key employee here. We've got merger plans in the works, as you know, and if we lose you now it could scuttle the whole deal.

I know Ellen. It's a shame. But we can't negotiate compensation now, can we?

Oh, right. Well, I wish you the best of luck at SnapChat.

Yeah, that's gonna happen.

What Pao Should Do

This is not rocket science and anyone in the C-suite should know it. If a company believes its women don't negotiate often enough, all it has to do is encourage them to do so. As I said, studies show that when women know they can negotiate, they do negotiate in numbers similar to their male peers.

And if a company believes its women will be disrespected and rejected when they do negotiate, its up to the employer to stop it. Just stop it. While she's at it, Pao can do away with the emphasis put on subjective reviews, which cause women's evaluations to crater the moment they become pregnant with child and which cause men's evaluations to sky-rocket the moment they begin to pass around cigars on the birth of their new child.

Create a negotiation culture inside the company. Don't eliminate one of the few ways employees have to make their work-life much life-ier. Instruct HR to take steps to eliminate implicit bias in employee evaluations and compensation decisions. All one has to do is: (1) be conscious of the implicit biases we all have as a result of a culture that continues to devalue work done by women; and (2) work against it.

Or, go crazy. Pick up the spread sheet of all employee salaries, do a comparable worth analysis and simply close the gender gap that you know exists at Reddit. Done. Now everyone can go back to negotiating compensation.

C'mon, Ellen. You can do better than that. Your job is to empower, not disempower your work force.

Please. The example you set as a woman CEO in tech will surely be followed and, in many cases, adopted. Learn interest-based negotiation strategies and tactics and teach every one of your employees the benefit to the bargainers of upping their negotiation game. There is no short cut to equality of opportunity nor to rooting out unconscious sexism. It takes work. We women in business and the professions know you can do better. Please don't disappoint us.