The irony is not lost on me as I sit in my car listening to this ep while getting ready for the gig job for which I left my corporate career when I had kids… only to open up my new eye shadow pallet and “girl boss” is the first color I go to apply. 💀
Great episode! It made me also think about Ivanka Trump’s “women who work,” which I was reminded of this week when Ivanka was in the news again. I even listened to some of it on Spotify out of curiosity. Spoiler alert- it’s nonsense and much less coherent than Lean In.
Katie, this is a true fucking banger. Thank you for sharing your very extensive research with the class!! Caro nails what I've always felt is the answer about big, systemic change with a (coincidentally) Ariana Grande joint when she says, "yes, and". It's going to take all of this. It's going to take some of every single approach. And that is nuanced and slow and does NOT feed well into cultural take-pieces or protest signs. But we've all just got to keep chipping away at the monoliths of sexism and misogyny in whatever way we can.
I have been a real nerd for politics and feminism since I was a child (I am 35 now) and it's jarring to see the way women around me have swung in big directions on the topic in the last 10-15 years. I am most terrified of this anti-ambition, anti-work moment. I recognize that much of it is jokes and memes. This is not a time when we can afford to give up power, responsibility, or financial independence, and I find joking about it to be short-sighted. The right wants us without credit cards, bank accounts, birth control, bodily autonomy, or our own ballots, and bowing out of the work force BY CHOICE is the first step on that slippery slope.
also amazing that you've been into feminism and politics since childhood when i was mostly into competitive cheerleading and finding new ways to manipulate teenage boys
Amazing episode as always! The thesis was explored really effectively in terms of “Lean In” as a case study of the misogynistic cultural reception and narrative around a female-authored project of this kind and it was completely persuasive in all of its nuances. At the same time, I’m going to sleep relatively easy at night knowing that my critiques of Sandberg are fully based in her predatory business decisions at Google and Facebook (The Facebook Dilemma by Frontline, oldie but a goodie, does a great job laying out her role at these companies without relying on any gender stereotyping aka “woman-ing” of her), using her platform to spread Israeli propaganda (see: Free Press interview w/ bari weiss), and accounts like the one given in Sarah Wynn Williams’ book Careless People (this one ofc includes *some reasoning that relies on the crutch of criticizing the hypocrisy of Sandberg’s lean-in persona, but it’s also a personal, first-hand account of how Williams as a working mother was meaningfully thwarted in the workplace multiple times, directly by Sandberg herself). Do these things make Lean In an inherently bad book/worthy of the specific, specious criticisms it received? No! But her professional life encompasses much more than this book.
Holy moly. I was regretting having been so judgy about Sheryl Sandberg, but Careless People was so careful about deconstructing the myth it feels obvious now. We were just feeling without necessarily seeing the disconnect between what she wrote and her professional career and behavior.
I’m so glad yall talked about Elizabeth Holmes. I was obsessed with her downfall & while I was listening to an audiobook about her & the scandal it dawned on me that she was just doing what every other tech CEO was doing & I had the real ick with the coverage after that.
I also read Lean In as a baby corporate girlie & thought it was really helpful at the time. I did demand to be in more meetings & make my work visible after that. I think it was a step, not a solution. & I totally understand the backlash. I love the return to the actual text & all the caveats. As always *chefs kiss*
Do men not review books by women ... or do men not review books that contain pro-progressive women ideas?
See: all of India Frey's blurbs.
I know you said they're not participating in the trad wife conversation but I'm curious if conservative female authors are getting positively (or otherwise) reviewed by men.
Also, does it apply the other way? Are women reviewing Scott Galloway?
update since I didn't finish listening before I wrote this 🥲 They mention that Jessica went for a critical review of Scott Galloway's book in the New Yorker. A brief Google search also shows that Katie Couric had a conversation with him on Substack, though it is paywalled. Google snippets at least show she is aware of criticisms leveled at him.
I’ve been listening to your free eps for a while but this is the one that made me subscribe. Thank you for your thoughtful and well-researched take.
I was in my first year of my first full-time job when this book came out, and I remember the immediate backlash so clearly. I got to go see her speak and while few things in the book seemed groundbreaking, there were a few aspects that really stuck with me in terms of knowing my worth at work and asking for appropriate compensation. And yet someone close to me was already telling me not to read it because she supposedly hated women who chose to focus on their families… not to to mention th critiques you outlined here from all my leftists friend.
Loved this one SO MUCH. I have been ping-ponging between #girlboss and #restisresistance my whole life and now I see it was never really my own original thoughts, but this cultural push and pull. Another one for the "Does free will even exist?" tally!
I also want to chime in that it is so laughably far from the truth that work-funded paid parental leave would somehow disincentivize moms from seeking government-funded paid parental leave.
You know what disincentivizes moms from organizing? Being fucking exhausted and isolated, and entering the psychosis state that convinces us it is solely a MOTHER'S job to protect and care for her children. A mom who has been cared for by her community (which includes her employer, her government, and - sad I need to call this out - by her partner), will feel outraged when she sees those things fail others. The DL community, which is chock full of mothers, is testament to that!
Goddamn 1:24:51 gut punch. The irony is not lost on me either, as I listen to this at 6:30am on a Monday morning cleaning my bathrooms — the bathrooms and the rest of the house I clean every Monday morning, which I take off from my paid job so I can take care of the chores and then teach yoga classes in the evening — that my partner, who I love and who treats me as an equal in every aspect other than housework, opting rather to pay a token monthly amount into a retirement fund for me as a panacea for this glaring inequality, has never cleaned a bathroom in 16 years except for maybe that one time when I came back from two weeks visiting my parents. To be fair though, this is Switzerland, where all the women do all the housework AND all the care work anyway, so I must remember to count myself as one of the lucky ones with my retirement fund.
On the topic of “biological differences,” I’m of course willing to entertain it as a biological statement about tendencies in the population. It’s completely possible that there’s something there. But if you talk to any number of people, you pretty quickly come to understand that individual variance dwarfs it, and also, it’s pretty clear that culture is inextricably bound to it in such a way that if there is something biological, it is really difficult to isolate.
So at that point it’s completely obvious that people who bring this up as an argument for the status quo are just not acting in good faith and don’t need to be taken seriously. Like, if we fixed everything else mentioned in this episode, we had cultural and societal support for women on exactly the same level as men, etc, etc, and we discovered that 48% of men and 52% of women were willing to do domestic work, or whatever, then that would be interesting. But that wouldn’t justify going back to oppressing the people who didn’t want to do that, so it’s obviously ridiculous to use an assumption that we’d find that to justify current oppression. It’s just not a serious argument.
This of course even leaving aside that some people are intersex and the more we let people examine gender the more we find that the whole binary thing is increasingly suspect, so just the foundational idea that we can externally sort everyone into either man or woman based on no input from them before they can even talk and accomplish anything is just not well supported by facts.
This episode hit so hard because I spent 2.5 years from 2022-25 working with an incredible group of women establishing a new office (RIP - thanks DOGE). All of those women had fully embraced the girl boss ethos, but not in the caricature that was so well described here. Instead, our leadership focused on hiring not just women but excellent people from everywhere across the country and ultimately ended up with an office that was extremely high performing and high satisfaction. I’ve never had better benefits, better work-life balance, or more purpose at work. Our group chat is literally called Boss Ladies and I have always cringed opening it. But this episode made me so proud to bear that moniker - because these women, who are all somewhere between 35-60, actually did it. They unashamedly were absolutely excellent at what they did, got the positions they deserved, took power, and also took plenty of vacation, prioritized both their children and non-child-centered hobbies, pissed people off (a lot), and spread a culture of affirmation and compensation. So often we forget that the people who pick up these books are WAY smarter than the generic “woman” the author writes to. More than a decade out from the girl boss, I was lucky to reap its benefits. Still hard to type that without cringing though ;)
Thank you so much for this episode - it genuinely made me think differently and address my own internal biases/feelings toward this as a #womaninbusiness. DL remains my Bible!
The irony is not lost on me as I sit in my car listening to this ep while getting ready for the gig job for which I left my corporate career when I had kids… only to open up my new eye shadow pallet and “girl boss” is the first color I go to apply. 💀
that's Big Sheryl winking at u from the great beyond
Great episode! It made me also think about Ivanka Trump’s “women who work,” which I was reminded of this week when Ivanka was in the news again. I even listened to some of it on Spotify out of curiosity. Spoiler alert- it’s nonsense and much less coherent than Lean In.
Katie, this is a true fucking banger. Thank you for sharing your very extensive research with the class!! Caro nails what I've always felt is the answer about big, systemic change with a (coincidentally) Ariana Grande joint when she says, "yes, and". It's going to take all of this. It's going to take some of every single approach. And that is nuanced and slow and does NOT feed well into cultural take-pieces or protest signs. But we've all just got to keep chipping away at the monoliths of sexism and misogyny in whatever way we can.
I have been a real nerd for politics and feminism since I was a child (I am 35 now) and it's jarring to see the way women around me have swung in big directions on the topic in the last 10-15 years. I am most terrified of this anti-ambition, anti-work moment. I recognize that much of it is jokes and memes. This is not a time when we can afford to give up power, responsibility, or financial independence, and I find joking about it to be short-sighted. The right wants us without credit cards, bank accounts, birth control, bodily autonomy, or our own ballots, and bowing out of the work force BY CHOICE is the first step on that slippery slope.
meg thank you for this very thoughtful comment, i really appreciate it
also amazing that you've been into feminism and politics since childhood when i was mostly into competitive cheerleading and finding new ways to manipulate teenage boys
Those things matter, too!!!
See some of us were being feminist in childhood BECAUSE we couldn’t get into cheerleading esque activities or boys interested in us. It was “a choice”
Hear hear!!
Amazing episode as always! The thesis was explored really effectively in terms of “Lean In” as a case study of the misogynistic cultural reception and narrative around a female-authored project of this kind and it was completely persuasive in all of its nuances. At the same time, I’m going to sleep relatively easy at night knowing that my critiques of Sandberg are fully based in her predatory business decisions at Google and Facebook (The Facebook Dilemma by Frontline, oldie but a goodie, does a great job laying out her role at these companies without relying on any gender stereotyping aka “woman-ing” of her), using her platform to spread Israeli propaganda (see: Free Press interview w/ bari weiss), and accounts like the one given in Sarah Wynn Williams’ book Careless People (this one ofc includes *some reasoning that relies on the crutch of criticizing the hypocrisy of Sandberg’s lean-in persona, but it’s also a personal, first-hand account of how Williams as a working mother was meaningfully thwarted in the workplace multiple times, directly by Sandberg herself). Do these things make Lean In an inherently bad book/worthy of the specific, specious criticisms it received? No! But her professional life encompasses much more than this book.
i agree, i loved careless people and were the critiques of lean in focused on these elements, this episode wouldn't exist. thanks for listening!
Holy moly. I was regretting having been so judgy about Sheryl Sandberg, but Careless People was so careful about deconstructing the myth it feels obvious now. We were just feeling without necessarily seeing the disconnect between what she wrote and her professional career and behavior.
When does the new “let women do fraud” diabolical lies merch line drop?
i'm thinking a line of temporary tattoo tramp stamps
I’m so glad yall talked about Elizabeth Holmes. I was obsessed with her downfall & while I was listening to an audiobook about her & the scandal it dawned on me that she was just doing what every other tech CEO was doing & I had the real ick with the coverage after that.
I also read Lean In as a baby corporate girlie & thought it was really helpful at the time. I did demand to be in more meetings & make my work visible after that. I think it was a step, not a solution. & I totally understand the backlash. I love the return to the actual text & all the caveats. As always *chefs kiss*
If Books Could Kill Wario episode….delicious 😈
As I am leaving my apartment building, AND listening your episode, this book was downstairs for anyone to take 🙃 😆
Do men not review books by women ... or do men not review books that contain pro-progressive women ideas?
See: all of India Frey's blurbs.
I know you said they're not participating in the trad wife conversation but I'm curious if conservative female authors are getting positively (or otherwise) reviewed by men.
Also, does it apply the other way? Are women reviewing Scott Galloway?
oooooo wow i didn't even think in the moment about freyas blurbs but great point
update since I didn't finish listening before I wrote this 🥲 They mention that Jessica went for a critical review of Scott Galloway's book in the New Yorker. A brief Google search also shows that Katie Couric had a conversation with him on Substack, though it is paywalled. Google snippets at least show she is aware of criticisms leveled at him.
Brava on this episode!
I’ve been listening to your free eps for a while but this is the one that made me subscribe. Thank you for your thoughtful and well-researched take.
I was in my first year of my first full-time job when this book came out, and I remember the immediate backlash so clearly. I got to go see her speak and while few things in the book seemed groundbreaking, there were a few aspects that really stuck with me in terms of knowing my worth at work and asking for appropriate compensation. And yet someone close to me was already telling me not to read it because she supposedly hated women who chose to focus on their families… not to to mention th critiques you outlined here from all my leftists friend.
i'm so happy you liked it rachel! i was genuinely nervous about it lol
The day-by-day media
sentiment analysis was a great approach for this topic!
Dropped just in time for my 4 hour drive home from Stowe. Sublime timing.
is there gonna be a sign up sheet or maybe a draft to join katie’s anti-anti yesteryear war?
yeah we're going to wear spiky pussy hats!! ill put urs in the mail
Loved this one SO MUCH. I have been ping-ponging between #girlboss and #restisresistance my whole life and now I see it was never really my own original thoughts, but this cultural push and pull. Another one for the "Does free will even exist?" tally!
I also want to chime in that it is so laughably far from the truth that work-funded paid parental leave would somehow disincentivize moms from seeking government-funded paid parental leave.
You know what disincentivizes moms from organizing? Being fucking exhausted and isolated, and entering the psychosis state that convinces us it is solely a MOTHER'S job to protect and care for her children. A mom who has been cared for by her community (which includes her employer, her government, and - sad I need to call this out - by her partner), will feel outraged when she sees those things fail others. The DL community, which is chock full of mothers, is testament to that!
Goddamn 1:24:51 gut punch. The irony is not lost on me either, as I listen to this at 6:30am on a Monday morning cleaning my bathrooms — the bathrooms and the rest of the house I clean every Monday morning, which I take off from my paid job so I can take care of the chores and then teach yoga classes in the evening — that my partner, who I love and who treats me as an equal in every aspect other than housework, opting rather to pay a token monthly amount into a retirement fund for me as a panacea for this glaring inequality, has never cleaned a bathroom in 16 years except for maybe that one time when I came back from two weeks visiting my parents. To be fair though, this is Switzerland, where all the women do all the housework AND all the care work anyway, so I must remember to count myself as one of the lucky ones with my retirement fund.
On the topic of “biological differences,” I’m of course willing to entertain it as a biological statement about tendencies in the population. It’s completely possible that there’s something there. But if you talk to any number of people, you pretty quickly come to understand that individual variance dwarfs it, and also, it’s pretty clear that culture is inextricably bound to it in such a way that if there is something biological, it is really difficult to isolate.
So at that point it’s completely obvious that people who bring this up as an argument for the status quo are just not acting in good faith and don’t need to be taken seriously. Like, if we fixed everything else mentioned in this episode, we had cultural and societal support for women on exactly the same level as men, etc, etc, and we discovered that 48% of men and 52% of women were willing to do domestic work, or whatever, then that would be interesting. But that wouldn’t justify going back to oppressing the people who didn’t want to do that, so it’s obviously ridiculous to use an assumption that we’d find that to justify current oppression. It’s just not a serious argument.
This of course even leaving aside that some people are intersex and the more we let people examine gender the more we find that the whole binary thing is increasingly suspect, so just the foundational idea that we can externally sort everyone into either man or woman based on no input from them before they can even talk and accomplish anything is just not well supported by facts.
yeah i tend to pretty readily dismiss biological determinism arguments as well
This episode hit so hard because I spent 2.5 years from 2022-25 working with an incredible group of women establishing a new office (RIP - thanks DOGE). All of those women had fully embraced the girl boss ethos, but not in the caricature that was so well described here. Instead, our leadership focused on hiring not just women but excellent people from everywhere across the country and ultimately ended up with an office that was extremely high performing and high satisfaction. I’ve never had better benefits, better work-life balance, or more purpose at work. Our group chat is literally called Boss Ladies and I have always cringed opening it. But this episode made me so proud to bear that moniker - because these women, who are all somewhere between 35-60, actually did it. They unashamedly were absolutely excellent at what they did, got the positions they deserved, took power, and also took plenty of vacation, prioritized both their children and non-child-centered hobbies, pissed people off (a lot), and spread a culture of affirmation and compensation. So often we forget that the people who pick up these books are WAY smarter than the generic “woman” the author writes to. More than a decade out from the girl boss, I was lucky to reap its benefits. Still hard to type that without cringing though ;)
Thank you so much for this episode - it genuinely made me think differently and address my own internal biases/feelings toward this as a #womaninbusiness. DL remains my Bible!
thank you so much, i'm so glad you felt something shift!! i did too