Understanding the Ambition Penalty with Stefanie O'Connell

Women are more educated and more ambitious than ever — and yet earnings growth for women stalls in their mid-30s while men's climbs for another decade. So what's actually going on?

In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Stefanie O'Connell, author of The Ambition Penalty, to dig into the data-backed truth behind gender inequality at work. They dismantle some of the most pervasive myths women have been sold,  from "women don't negotiate" to imposter syndrome as a personal failing, and explore what's actually driving the gap and what evidence shows can close it.

This conversation covers:

• Why women who negotiate are penalized more and rewarded less than men who do the same
• How the myth that women don't ask actually worsens gender bias and undermines pay transparency policies
• The "paradox of meritocracy" — why the most self-described fair organizations are often the most biased
• What transparency and accountability policies actually work
• Why collective thinking (not self-optimization) is the path forward

Whether you're navigating salary negotiations, building wealth, or trying to make sense of why the system feels stacked against you, this episode gives you the language, data, and framework to stop blaming yourself and start seeing the bigger picture.

The Ambition Penalty is available now.

About Stefanie O'Connell: 

Stefanie O’Connell is an award-winning writer covering ambition, money and power with bylines in Slate, Bloomberg, CNBC, Glamour UK, Newsweek, USA Today and Business Insider. She also wrote, hosted and co-produced the WEBBY award-winning podcast “Money Confidential” for REAL SIMPLE magazine.

Her book The Ambition Penalty: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up — and Then Pushes Them Down (May 2026, Basic Venture) is an essential guide to dismantling the hidden forces that hold women back, burn them out & make us all pay.

With over 100,000 followers across her social media channels and Too Ambitious newsletter, Stefanie uses data to expose how power and gender collide to keep women “in their place.” And shows how liberating women’s ambitions can liberate us all. 

Find Stefanie on Instagram,  Tiktok,  Substack, and website. 

Talk Rich to Me is a production of Huntress Wealth. On each episode, we explore the human side of finance. If you liked this episode, please subscribe and leave a review - it helps more people like you find our podcast. 

Huntress is your all-in-one financial planning app. Build your plan, get actionable steps and make your money move - all under 5 minutes a day. Sign up for the Huntress Wealth app at www.huntresswealth.com.

Curious to learn more? Drop us a note at hi@huntresswealth.com for questions. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We have this myth about why inequality exists. Not only is the myth based on a false assumption or an outdated assumption, but the false assumption in and of itself is part of what enables inequality to continue reproducing itself even when women are not acting in those ways. So what you basically get is this kind of scapegoat for inequality.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Hi, Huntresses.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

This is Talk Rich to me.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

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SPEAKER_00 0:39

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SPEAKER_03 1:07

Hi, welcome everyone. We're here today with Stephanie O'Connell, the author of the Ambition Penalty. So, Stephanie, let's dive into it. Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you for being here. So you wrote the ambition penalty, which it changes a frame of reference. Like I don't know how you saw the world through this lens. And before we dive into like everything that it says, where were you when you decided to write this book?

SPEAKER_01 1:33

I wish I could tell you I had some magical aha moment, like a strike of lightning, and it all just came to me. But I will say that the process of not only researching this book, but coming up with the framework for making sense of it. And when I say making sense of it is making sense of a world in which women's outcomes really haven't moved in a meaningful way in decades on terms of metrics like pay or basic access to personal safety or autonomy or meaningful corporate and political leadership. Making sense of that at a time when women were more educated than ever, more ambitious than ever, and trying to understand why women who were doing all of the quote-unquote right things were kind of stuck in the same place as their predecessors or the same place as women were when they started. And the moment it came to me was just slowly revealed over time in reporting and really starting to lean into my curiosity about what was actually happening in this disconnect between what we were being told to do to get certain outcomes and what those outcomes actually were. Why were they not what was promised? And I was reporting for a while about women's finances at Real Simple magazine. And I would have women calling and sharing their money stories, their money secrets. And one of the stories that really struck me was about a woman who was negotiating her salary. She worked in tech. She had religiously followed HR experts on Instagram. She was just like taking copious amounts of notes. She'd even taken a negotiation class in college, like, really truly did all the right things. They say women don't choose high-paying careers, right? No, she's she's got all her boxes checked. And she goes in and she implements all of these best practices and negotiating her pay. Her job offer is then rescinded. And I was like, wow, that is really traumatic. That is really a traumatic thing to go through, to be told that the biggest barrier to your opportunity is your unwillingness to be confident or ask for more, only to have that confidence and asking weaponized against you. And what I found as I was researching her story was that it wasn't just her, it was a pattern. And it was coming up in the data too. And it was really interesting because that was in stark contrast to so many of the sayings I had heard, and I think a lot of us have heard, like the worst they can say is no. And it never hurts. Yes. And me too, right? Like this is this, like I said, it wasn't a lightning bolt moment. It was more like a starting to question the stories and advice I had come to believe, and trying to understand, well, what's actually going on here? And that's what motivated the start of this journey, which has then gone on to reveal like layer upon layer upon layer around what that disconnect is.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:49

And so I've got a feeling we we grew up in in similar times and similar messages, right? So like the my mom, who's probably gonna listen to this. Yay, mom, hi. Um, like telling me I could do anything, right? Like it's very important for her to tell my sister and I, and we have a brother too, but really for my sister and I, like we can do anything. We can do anything a boy can do, right? Like, world is your oyster. Um and I love that sense of confidence that it instilled. It's it's not like we shouldn't tell our daughters that. But then in my 20s, with like everyone being like, have you read Lean In yet? And full disclosure, I don't know that I should admit to this. I still haven't read Lean In. I'd heard all the concepts. Grab your seat at the table, don't sit on the side. And it was this management of how we were supposed to show up and like get what we wanted. You were noticing this and then like living it and realizing it not working. Ah, well, it's so interesting.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

One of the things that became very clear to me early on was that people were conflating what works for straight white, upper middle class men with what works for everyone. And they were also conflating their own personal luck with just general good advice. So one of the things that was very, very important to me when I started digging deeper was that I write a book that wasn't based on anecdote, but that was based on what is the norm. What is the norm in a situation and why does that norm differ depending on the identity of the person, even if they're implementing the same behavior? Because a lot of times people will say, Well, I did this and I got this, but that is often not representative. And it's often really unhelpful in the context of understanding why our collective outcomes haven't improved. And I think the reason those collective outcomes haven't improved is because the research tells us that this kind of individualistic approach to getting ahead in terms of equity, in terms of like women's outcomes as a social class, not a woman getting ahead. The research is very, very clear that you can't individually empower your way out of inequality. Now, this is not to say that I don't think women shouldn't be should be taught to be competent or not taught to be, they already are, uh, or taught to be ambitious because they already are. I think I also think women should negotiate. What I have an issue with is the way we present the myth that women don't negotiate or aren't competent or are ambitious as the reason why gender inequality exists. And so what this book is about is not only kind of busting these myths and misconceptions, but also really understanding what buying into those myths costs us all. And there's a really fascinating paper that I write about in the book where researchers specifically studied the myth that women don't ask for more. And not only did they, like previous researchers, find that women actually do negotiate their salaries, much like men do, but are less likely to get what they ask for and more likely to be penalized for asking. But the myth that women don't ask for more in and of itself also increased gender stereotyping that hurts women in the workplace, and it reduced support for policies proven to close gaps in pay, like pay transparency. So this is a paper that reflects a lot of the different themes of the research that I dig into throughout the book, which is basically this model of we have this myth about why inequality exists. Not only is the myth based on a false assumption or an outdated assumption, but the false assumption in and of itself is part of what enables inequality to continue reproducing itself even when women are not acting in those ways. So what you basically get is this kind of scapegoat for inequality. Because even if women are asking for more, if people believe they're not paid the same because they don't, then you can just keep claiming that the problem is women don't ask for more even when they are. And this is why this is maddening, right? And to be sitting here watching the discourse kind of coming up again in like a little kind of girl boss 2.0 going on right now here in 2026. It's really crazy making because what we're doing is reinforcing these same myths and misconceptions that have locked this inequality in place for as long as it has been. So it's just very, very difficult to grapple with the the strength of those myths, the extent to which we all bought into them, because to be fair, like I did too. We grew up on those myths. And I think there was a they came from a place of hope, right? They came from a place of good intention, the idea that, well, if you could just be confident enough or ask enough or speak up enough, then that would solve all of your problems. But I think the reckoning with that failed promise is something that we're all experiencing in midlife here. For those who are like me, um, you know, I'm turning 40 this year. According to the latest 2026 pay gap report from Glassdoor, my career stalled out, statistically speaking. You know, it shows that women's earnings growth stalls out in their mid-30s, while men's earnings growth continues to climb for another decade. That is the latest data. That is the data reflecting the outcomes of the girls raised on girl power coming uh into their careers during the girl boss era. The women who have been in the workforce for 20 years, more educated than their male peers for over four decades now, still not being able to move the needle.

SPEAKER_03 11:21

Not only more educated, but our labor force participation, that gap is closing as well. Right. And so it's not even like we're not in it or we're sitting out, right? Certainly we know that um career interruption is experienced more by women. I'm like equal opportunity career interrupter, like men's careers should also be getting interrupted. I agree.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

That's a huge part of my book. Men's careers need to be interrupted.

SPEAKER_03 11:50

Yes. Exactly. We are all complex human beings. Women aren't the only complex human beings. Um we are getting just as much education, we are pursuing just with just as much ambition into the careers that used to be more imbalanced. And then we're doing so with the same labor force participation, and it's still not moving the needle.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

And we've been regressing in recent years. Gender pay gap's been widening in recent years. And I just come to that stat because it's one we are all familiar with. But in the book, I dig into all of these different stats. Like this, this is a pattern that trends across all kinds of leadership, power, access to leisure and free time, even. So I just want people to know that I use it as a shorthand, but it's actually indicative of chronic gender gaps across so many metrics.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

We have talked about pay gap, but let's broaden this out to like a couple other examples that um people might have heard. Like getting to that, like, oh, that realization moment. Um, imposter syndrome has been a hot one for me for a while. Imposter syndrome, we really only talk about it when we talk about women.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yeah, that's always a really good indicator that something else is up. If there's a kind of phrase that we're using in a very explicitly gendered way and it really doesn't apply to men, having it all. Yep, having it all, work-life balance, like that usually tells us that something else is going on here. And what those phrases are typically doing are disguising a systemic failure as a personal failure. And even if we say imposter syndrome isn't a failure, even if we're speaking about it in a validating way, we're still talking about it like it's an individual issue and something that can be overcome on your own instead of it actually being a rational response to being treated like you do not belong, because that's what it actually is. Imposter syndrome isn't something we made up, it's not something we can competence our way out of. It is the result of power systems, workplaces, and um, you know, all of these environments in which women are systematically to this day excluded, belittled, looked over, um, and really worn and torn down in a way that does make them question themselves.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

The one that I think it's a good struggle.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

I'm happy to be on the struggle with is like we are talking about personal finances focused on women. And our whole reason for building this company is gender equity. Like we saw the need that like no one person was gonna solve this. We need to all collectively be exercising our power. It's like building wealth, yes, but like using your wealth is just as big a part of the equation for us. But I struggle with marketing this because we do want you to have confidence and clarity, but we also don't want you to be told over and over again that you don't have confidence and clarity already. And so it's this notion of like or financial literacy. It's people and very quickly go to the it's like, oh yeah, we need more literacy. And I was like, I don't think women are financially illiterate. Like I wholeheartedly, maybe you've heard that, maybe you've adopted that thought about yourself, but you know just as much as the run-of-the-mill man does too. Like it's it's we talk about financial literacy in women a lot. What are your thoughts on that? Or like what have you noticed, or have you seen any kind of research in that area at all?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

I think it comes back to a little bit of what we were talking about with the imposter syndrome, which is that we're speaking to a feeling or a circumstance that's real. Like in real terms, women women are being paid less, they have less wealth. There's a real issue here. But what we're often told is that that is the result, again, of some kind of individual failing instead of the direct result of women's systematic underpayment, exclusion from financial conversations, uh belittling women around money, uh belittling their shopping habits, considering everything they earn or spend money on frivolous. Uh this is asset ownership, right? Right. You know, so I always want to think about framing the conversation as um outcomes that have been purposefully engineered and why they are engineered in a way to exclude some of us more than others, and what it looks like to push back against that systematically. And that includes, you know, whatever we're doing for ourselves, but it also must include a collective element. I think sometimes even when we recognize a problem as being systemic or structural, we still come back to this framing of like, what can I do, me as an individual? And I think there's value in figuring out how you're gonna like cope within systematic constraints in a way that works sustainably for you. But I also think that actually reshaping systematic constraints is not an individual project. So one of the things I like to do is incorporate a collective element into anything I'm trying to do. So if it's trying to be paid more money or build my wealth in a better way, you know, what does it look like for all women to be paid more money, for all women to be able to build wealth in more sustainable ways? And how can I work with other people to push against those barriers that stand in our collective way, in addition to whatever I'm doing for myself as an individual?

SPEAKER_03 17:42

Yeah. And there's there's something to the personal responsibility of knowing the system you're working in and the reality that you're working in, and like using the tools that are great and recognizing like participating in collective, even if it was using your voice, or I think like we always go to community building too, but like talking with other people to help get alignment and ideas and as a whole, helping reshape. I was at a this was a job a little while back, and I I like noticed that even like within the role, people doing the same job, they had like different titles. And it was very much so like it's a startup, it's scrappy. There's not like published handbooks on who gets what title, but I noticed the pattern. I like literally put together a PowerPoint presentation showing the unequal triangle of power of like. That's awesome. Um well, and I showed my boss, I like did the coalition building of the private meetings to like o people, and they're like, cool, what do you want us to do with this? And I was like, I don't know, fix their titles. Like, I don't like I don't know if you have the money, right, to do financially the difference, which I think that was addressed in some cases. But I was like, just even appearances' sake, right? Like, can we at least go for quality on some level? Um, but it also just feels like historically I was in an okay position. My title matched what I was doing. Turns out my pay didn't, right? And I I was not successful in individually negotiating there. But at all future companies, I had the information to like do better. But it probably cost me something in the work environment to go do that, but it was like for everyone and it felt really good. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Um no, I think that's so valuable. And I also think about this myself. I will tell you that the process of writing this book has basically decimated my career. Um in terms of revenue building being an author. Um, not in terms of my audience. My audience is bigger than ever. I think it's the best work I've ever done. Um, but just in terms of, you know, when you speak truth to power, there is a consequence. So I'm not gonna pretend sit here and say that there aren't some consequences. But I also do believe that as someone with relatively more privilege than most people, that's my role to play. And I accept that. But also one of the reasons I am able to accept that better is because of community, because I have built a lot of resilience over the course of my life. And I don't think of my life anymore as an individual project. I think of it as a collective project, where in some seasons, you know, I have to lean on others, and in some seasons, they have to lean on me. And that makes pushing back much more sustainable. It is too hard to do this completely alone, just like it's too hard to try to get ahead in your career completely alone. These are very powerful forces, right? Standing up against systems of power, especially in 2026, I feel like we say are seeing examples of this on a daily basis, is a huge risk. But it is really meaningful. And also that's something that's important to model. I think resistance demonstrating that trying to live a daily practice of resistance is something that people can see, it can be contagious, it can really reshape what is appropriate and norms. And I think some of the really best examples of that have really been in the in the dating market, honestly, in terms of just the kind of behavior that is no longer considered acceptable. Um, but I think we can translate some of the lessons from there into the rest of our lives too, and work on cultivating these daily practices and seasons of resistance.

SPEAKER_03 21:48

Yeah, and uh I love I think of my life as a collective project. That is like such a beautiful statement because we I think also as women, there's a burden. Of carrying everyone around us, right? Like a lot of people rely on us, but there is just something really positive and proactive and empowering of like my life is collective.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

It took me a long time to get here. Let me tell you that. Like, you know, I used when people used to ask me, you know, what do you regret or what advice would you give your younger self? I really struggled to come up with an answer. But that's the answer I would give now looking back. I think the thinking of things collectively and understanding my own life as a collective project, as an interdependent, not an independent, not a dependent, but an interdependent project, that is the biggest thing I wish I knew sooner, because it's just totally unsustainable to build in either extreme. It really does, you know, if you think about getting ahead collectively as a long-term project, I think that really helps too, because you can look at those moments and be like, it didn't work, you know, I faced backlash. But it is the, it is the that kind of collective resistance being practiced over the long term that historically has moved every major outcome. You look at the civil rights movement, you look at the women's movement. I think we really lost the lessons of that time. And we stopped thinking about what we need to do to access equal opportunity as this collective project. And we started thinking of it as a self-optimization project. It really changed from history to self-help, this idea of women's power or any woman's power across marginalized identities. And that's where we really lost the plot. And I think we need to go back into history and learn some lessons.

SPEAKER_03 23:56

Yeah. That's fun of like in the financial realm. Um one of my favorite things to learn about was the mutualistas. Um are you familiar with No, tell me. Um, so they're co-ops, cooperative, like mutual aid organizations that were specifically heavy in Texas, but perhaps in other states as well, um, that were Hispanic-based, um, a lot of times excluded women. There was a handful of them that allowed women, and I think there was even one women's only one. But this was like the foundation of mutual aid, which did mean money. Like there was like self-insurance, right? Um, supporting each other's businesses, um, helping each other and the family. Um, and that doesn't exist anymore. The notion of like, oh no, my dues are literally helping my neighbor get medicine. You can see a lot more of the collectivism when you look back to those models. There is like a really big power in like seeing your community benefit from your participation.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Well, I think one of the best contemporary examples of this has been what's been happening in Minnesota in 2026. There has been remarkable community action, mutual aid, neighbors looking out for one another, business owners, um, you know, providing donations. I I do think in marginalized communities, that model is there often. And that's why centering those people who are dealing with being on, you know, constantly having their fundamental personhood attacked and centering their voices is so powerful because they are the people who deal with this constantly. And they have not only the history, but like the contemporary reality of a system that's working to exclude it them and trying to survive it and find alternative ways of living that work better for everyone. And that's where you see mutual aid coming up and community organizing. Um, certainly in the book, I talk about union membership and just how much that reduces uh inequality, not just across gender, but across racial and ethnic identity as well. There's so many lessons to learn. That's right. Yeah. Well, okay, there's a little nuance in terms of gender pay gaps in unions because a lot of uh some unions are still very much in industries that are uh very male dominated. Yeah. So unions maps to being older industries. Right. Yeah. I don't know exactly terms of the timing, but it's like um my husband, for example, is in a stage hands union. And so he has excellent benefits, but you know, women are still very underrepresented in that field. And so I wouldn't be surprised if even if if the women who are there who are working at the same level are not experiencing a gender pay gap, how gaps wind up being reinforced is by like women not getting hired in the first place, right? Or if they do get hired getting locked into lower level roles. So I think it's really important for us to look at what's working, but also understand what is it about what's working that makes it work? And understanding like any of the solutions I talk about in this book aren't silver bullets on their own. They have to be constantly uh examined and saying, okay, well, we implemented this collective organizing or union membership, and yet we're still seeing these gaps. What's going on here? Well, well, it turns out every other union is doing okay, but you aren't. So this is telling you now something else in your environment. And it's that constant curiosity that really um is necessary if we're going to be do taking this work seriously, instead of again just chalking up these gaps to false assumptions like women just choose this or don't want this or aren't ambitious or don't ask. I'm sure you've heard of the Glass Cliff concept, right?

SPEAKER_03 28:19

And I'm sure there's something to whether it's a feeling or a reality, and it's probably both, that like you've got to show up with the data and the evidence and like ready to prove your point in this realm. What pushback have you gotten on this concept?

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Oh my goodness, you can't imagine, but maybe you can how depending on how much time you spend on the internet. So, for context, I report on these dynamics, not just in my book, but I write articles, I make a lot of social media content. So I'm also in a pattern of constantly getting comments and feedback to my work. And it's really just so fascinating because it really shows you that people are much more committed to justifying inequality than rectifying it. And if you talk about something like unequal pay, because it's something that comes up all the time, you'll of course have a million trolls in your comments telling you that the pay gap isn't real. It's just that women choose lower paying jobs. I can go on and on and on and on and on. And I have, that's why I wrote this book. And I can go through one by one by one and debunk every single one of their false claims that they are repeating to me because I already know the playbook. I've been reporting on this for years, and yet there is no evidence I can cite that will make them accept that this is a problem that exists first and foremost and needs to be addressed.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

It's that and needs to be addressed that they don't want to deal with. And so it's easier not to admit it exists, you know.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Yeah. Because it allows you to maintain an illusion that uh inequality is either the either the result of personal preference, like women just choosing things. But most people wouldn't explicitly say this, but um basically what they're saying is men deserve more and women don't. Uh but that's really, I think, important to call out because that actually does make people uncomfortable when you call it out, and it should. And if data doesn't matter, but feelings do. You know, I can sit here and cite a hundred papers, it won't change their mind. But if I make them uncomfortable, then I have a shot.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

Yeah, I think it's important to note that like men and women have adopted these myths. And I think it's a very human thing to feel an obligation of if you see a problem needing to address it. So it's easier to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Well, it's also easier to believe you can self-help your way out of a problem, right? Because it's like, can you imagine if the real barrier between you and the job you wanted was how many exclamation points were in your emails? Like that would really make things so much easier. And I think that's one of the reasons, you know, that I bought into the belief system too, you know, as somebody who does want that. I how how liberating would it be if I could just power pose and then the world is equal, right? How amazing would it be that if I write use the right combination of words or stop saying sorry, then suddenly like doing the same things as my male peers gets me the same outcomes. That would be a dream. And I think there is a real desire for that. There is constantly this desire to kind of, especially in a world that is so challenging, literally for everyone, even the most privileged people, it is very uncertain, it's very unstable, it's very hard to feel like you have any sense of control. And the illusion of control that I think this kind of self-help framework gives people can be very seductive. What policies are shown to work?

SPEAKER_03 32:20

What actions are shown to work?

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Yeah, so I mentioned earlier that transparency policies, uh, not just in terms of pay, but also to your point about titles, you know, understanding how opportunities are distributed, how they are rewarded, not even trying to put your thumb on the scale in any way to change how that works, literally just making transparent the processes by which those things are happening reduces inequality. Because what it does is it keeps people accountable and in check who believe they are unbiased. And it forces them to confront the fact that they are. And I think one of the lessons from the literature is you should never assume you're unbiased, no matter who you are. You should always assume you're biased to begin with, because the more you think you're unbiased, the more biased you express, scientifically speaking. Uh, it's called the paradox of meritocracy, where the organizations that consider themselves the most meritocratic actually perpetuate some of the greatest biases. And so accountability and transparency are the two fundamental themes that come up in all of the solutions that actually work. So if you implement a pay transparency policy, for example, and gaps get worse, you could say, well, that just shows us that it really was the women weren't interested all along anyway. We did the transparency policy, right? And people do that.

unknown 33:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

But that is again operating on those myths and misconceptions that are really just a way of justifying inequality instead of rectifying it. So what you do instead is say is you get curious about the gaps that emerge. Well, why is this happening? Is this happening at every level? Where in the process is it happening if it's not happening at every level?

SPEAKER_03 34:18

And one of the things it's seeing more than another Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

One of the things to really deconstruct in these processes too is just the frequency with which you have examples, like I talked about pay negotiations, but the frequency with which you have these events in which the same inputs produce different outputs across identity. And there are so many of those moments in a career, from when you get hired to the way you're being evaluated, to who's getting access to mentorship opportunities and sponsorship, zooming away from just those single moments of direct discrimination into understanding the compounding cost of each of those little moments over the course of a career and really bringing transparency to all of those moments and accountability is really going to take to disrupt those patterns.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

Very much so. It's uh the transparency and accountability, like we were mentioning, like unions work at least to some extent, right? And it's like it's not maybe it's not that unions are better negotiators because there's this collective bargaining process. It's because there is a process that is documented and public and understood that sets the rules for everyone gets paid, or the rules for the leave, or the rules for titles and flexibility.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Yeah, the unions offer such a valuable playbook, even for people who aren't in unions. When you have this kind of opaqueness that we have within the private sector, there's just so much we don't really know about why things are happening, the way they're happening, and how often those rewards are being distributed because of any number of reasons. The old boys' club, nepotism, you know, a million things. And I think in that way, you know, transparency is something that companies have an incentive to adopt too, because it really hurts employee morale if people feel like what they do doesn't matter. And it's not good to uh promote people who are not as good, who are not efficient, who are not great performers. And yet that's how companies constantly operate.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

My number one advice to people when interviewing and like negotiating a job is like, yeah, sure, do all your research, know what you're worth, like do all those things, but ask for the employee handbook. Right. Like just straight up, cool. Can I get that in writing? And can you provide the employee handbook? That's great advice. And it's not like, what is your PTO, right? Or it's not like, hey, I think I might need parental leave, right? Like you don't have to disclose anything about yourself in that process, but you immediately see how transparent they are and how specified, like how to play the game. And it gives you all the answers on what you probably can negotiate. Right. But it's um that notion of like, oh, we don't have one or no, we can't give it to you, or if it's a mess, right? Like those are all signs to run. Like, you know, and that's you know, short of having a union in your corner, like that is the kind of stuff, like making sure the processes are there.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Uh that is really, really good advice that I haven't heard someone articulate that way before, but is really excellent because again, it's showing you, you know, what is the commitment of this company to transparency, accountability, like making sure everybody knows the rules of the road, um, and we're not operating in the darkness.

SPEAKER_03 37:54

At that individual level, maybe think of ourselves as a collective project, as investors, as employees or employers, as donors and contributors, right? As resistors. What are some things that we can do or look to participate in to make a difference?

SPEAKER_01 38:14

You can challenge expectations around what power should look like or who should have it every single day in every environment you operate in. And it doesn't have to be this thing where you like walk into the federal government and say, I'm gonna do a sit-in for parental leave, right? We often imagine that when we talk about systems change, we're only talking about like some huge national legislation. And so therefore, we can do nothing. But one of the things I break down in the book is how systems operate out every single layer of our lives and in ways that we interact with every day. And so that understanding that really gives us an opportunity to show up individually in resistance every single day. So interpersonally is a system, a system of how household labor is distributed in your own home. Let's adopt our systems thinking to our everyday lives. You know, what are the expectations of the school environment and how parents are expected to show up and how that differs across identity and the expectations that are unfairly placed on mothers relative to fathers? And how do you push back against that? You know, I'm much more worried about modeling as I'm a mom. Um, in my motherhood, the thing I worry most about is not like how much I bake for a bake sale. It's more about how much do I reinforce my daughter's perception that it is women's responsibility to always take on the unpaid care and labor. I believe that labor is valuable, but I believe it's also critical that that labor is shared. And my daughter knows that and I model that. So that's an example of a way I think about, you know, what I'm doing on an individual basis, individual basis every day to operate in a more systems thinking level and challenge perceptions of power or what it should look like. Thinking in terms of interpersonal, organizational, and finally on top, you have political and cultural. But even within that broader system of the political sphere, you've got a lot of levels. And one example I've been using recently is I'm based in New York City. And just in 2026 alone, they've expanded 3K programs for free preschool. They're rolling out a child care for two-year-olds next year. And it really is a case study in the fact that our greatest barrier to these things is not a lack of these solutions. We know these things help people. We know they reduce gender gaps, but we also know they provide critical care infrastructure and support to families. The biggest barrier is political will. And so if you understand that the project is coalition building and sentiment building, then you really understand how important just the myth busting really is, because it's the myths that keep us in this kind of self-optimization trap and gets us to blame women for their own marginalization and other minorities for their own marginalization instead of the systems that marginalize them. So myth busting is actually one of the most uh impactful things you can do on a daily daily basis. Um, I'm walking well actually, so well, I love that. I love that as a uh full-time myth buster myself.

SPEAKER_03 41:44

So, and you talked about even starting within our own home. Women aren't going to fix gender equity alone. And so how do we invite men? And as men suffer under this system too, right? How do we invite them into the solution?

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Yeah, I mean, patriarchy hurts everybody. It's absolutely limiting to men to have to cut off half of their human emotions without penalty. Like I say, women experience penalties for their ambition. Men experience penalties for their compassion and for being flexible, for the parenting. Is that your next book? Penalty because I hear a next book coming. Well, here's what I will say is my empathy is not that great for it because the costs of men expressing empathy relative to the costs of women expressing their ambition are not comparable. It's literally life-threatening to, as a woman, to assert yourself or to say no or to set a boundary. In a way that is not true for men. I'm not saying men don't experience violence, but they are not experiencing it based on this kind of transgression in a way. There are certainly, I would say, you know, if for for for men from marginalized backgrounds, that's a different story, right? You're talking about trans men, you're talking about um LGBTQ men, but even that is still shaped by this fundamental idea that to be a man, the right man, you can only be this one way. And to be a woman, you can only be this one way. And so, like, just like I said, it's a come incumbent upon me as a woman with a lot of relative privilege to bear some of the costs of the backlash. It's also incumbent upon men to bear some of the costs of the backlash that they might experience, let's say, if they take the paternity leave that they're entitled to, um, or if they are the ones who start having to leave school, leave work early to go do uh school pickup when there's an unexpected early closure. I think we give them too much grace, to be honest. Um, we because our systems are so bad, what winds up happening is. Uh, we wind up saying, well, you know, it's just that it's a system failure. And it is a system failure, but it's also a failure of a system of heterosexual, heterosexual households in the nuclear family that says, oh, when the system fails, it's women's job to pick up the slack. And so this is very, very uh a huge focus of my book. And I just want to say that like I believe patriarchy hurts men very much, but I really, really do think that the responsibility to kind of lean into dismantling this really is going to come with costs that men must be willing to bear as well.

SPEAKER_03 44:42

Very much so. Claudia Golden is like my person, maybe, for work on like greedy jobs. This uh notion that it is very reasonable to want to protect the financial stature of your household by having someone in a greedy job that the whole point of it is it pays more, and that having two parents in greedy jobs is very hard. You better be getting paid enough to pay for all the help and support that you're gonna need, right? Without underpaying them. Well, and then I'd also argue greedy jobs aren't necessarily required. And so, like knowing what's important to you in the greediness of your job being um I think it is going to take men having the resistance on greedy jobs because men are more likely to be in the greedy jobs in heterosexual like relationships.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

We know that the greediness is not necessary and it's also not sustainable unless you are willing to basically exploit someone else's labor. So um one of the really fascinating things in the research is the extent to which pay gaps are driven by married men. If you look at single men's incomes relative to women's incomes, gaps are much smaller. Their incomes are very, very comparable. And so what it really tells us is that men are being able to sustain their earnings advantages in part built off of these quote-unquote greedy jobs, because they're relying on the uncompensated labor or sacrifice of women at home. Oftentimes, women, uh, most of the time actually, scaling back in ways that they do not want, being asked to sacrifice things that they do not want. And so what you're having is men getting ahead at women's expense. It's been really interesting recently to see how um marriage rates falling are is actually contributing to a smaller gender pay gap for some industries, and also that um work hours for men on average are declining. And I when I say work hours, I only mean paid work hours because actually men have more access to leisure than women do. Men have more free time than women do. So even the idea that men are being paid more because they work more hours is fundamentally flawed. What you have is a system of paid labor and unpaid labor that is so inequitably distributed that women have less time and make less money and they have less power. And so, yeah, the marital dynamics are fascinating. There is a paper that finds that men who are married to women who stay at home are more likely to discriminate against women in the workplace. They are more likely to block those women's job opportunities and advancement. It's really indicative of the way in which we can think of these things. If we instead contextualize what we're experiencing within the broader experience of all heterosexual relationships and how consistently the things fall, the inequality along gendered lines, what you really, really see is the way in which, you know, the power is maintained by kind of creating these uniquely gendered constraints that reproduce the same outcomes, even when more explicit barriers fall away.

SPEAKER_03 48:30

Women who are suspicious or worried about like working for women. I I mean I I hear that all the time from people, and it's people genuinely view as like feminist foot. Yeah. And the biggest problems I've had in the workplace from a sense of fighting to like maintain a sense of power and equity is with men who have stay-at-home wives. Well, but here's the thing is why.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Right. So what you're this is why I said I wrote a data-driven book, because what you just articulated about your experience is data backed. What people are saying about women who block other women is really not backed by data in a meaningful way. In fact, women do better the more women are represented in the workplace.

SPEAKER_03 49:16

Like there's probably plenty of shitty female leaders. Oh, and we I mean plenty of shitty male leaders. Like there's not like a later balance of shitty women leaders.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

That's right. And there are women who get ahead by upholding patriarchal systems, right? Because when the way to advance is to be part of the old boys' club, oftentimes you have to be willing to reinforce the old boys' club. I mean, that is our political system in a nutshell right there. 100%. And I wrote a whole this on my Substack, I wrote a whole piece about why I think that in the political system those women were elevated, not only to basic um to provide cover for this um for misogynistic policies, which is what how women leaders are often elevated. They'll elevate a single woman into a position of power. And then exactly. And then the likelihood of another woman being hired, according to this analysis of SP, I think it was 500 companies, the probability of another woman being hired into a top position drops by 50% because they're not actually interested in meaningful inclusion or rewarding women equitably. What they're interested in is providing cover for maintaining a patriarchal work culture while pretending it doesn't exist. And then they will throw you under the bus. Yeah. They will throw you under the bus. And then it's also very effective because when you have a single woman in a position of leadership in a culture that is still not willing to change in any meaningful way, you can also sideline the women who are trying to change it. And you can cast that woman as ineffective to everybody else at the organization. And you can say, ah, that must be, we tried a woman leader once, that didn't change anything, right? Um, so it's really just that women leaders are the problem. And again, what we see in the data is as soon as you have women represented at scale, not a woman, but at scale, at 30%, you start to get a tipping point where things really start to shift because it because that way you have enough women at the table that they can meaningfully challenge the culture instead of having their perspectives sidelined, even if they are in a position of leadership. You're incentivized to play by these patriarchal standards to get ahead. That is true. And yet, even with that in place, when we do see women accessing power in a meaningful capacity, we do see statistically the vast majority of the time at scale, outcomes improve for all women throughout the organization. And so that's why I think really important, even when we talk about what works, what's the metric we're using, not what worked for me, because then it could have been a million other reasons that that happened. No, what works statistically, collectively at scale, not for a woman, but for women as a social class that also is inclusive of many other social classes.

SPEAKER_03 52:25

Um we do end every episode with two questions. Um the first one is what is one piece of advice you have for all the huntresses out there?

SPEAKER_01 52:38

Practice your collective thinking and practice your systems thinking and recognizing what systems you're operating in every day that extend beyond, you know, just policies and laws and legislation. Remember, see it and learn to recognize it in your everyday life. What are you being incentivized to do that's really contingent on your identity and not what makes sense and find ways to practice your resistance. Amazing. And Stephanie, what what does rich mean to you? Rich for me is just you know being liberated to do whatever I want to do. And like I said, um, you know, being able to take a risk and and write this book and speak truth to power and um do work that I care about, trying to support causes I care about, being able to show up for things, how I want to show up for things. That's rich. That's really rich.

SPEAKER_03 53:43

I love that because it means you're rich now. A lot of times there's an aspirational answer, and I I love that you are doing what's important to you. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 53:55

I wouldn't mind if it were more lucrative. We'll get there. Book is out name. Oh yeah. Like at me getting like one dollar for every book sold, we're really gonna hit the jackpot. Hey, hey, one at a time. It takes one at appreciating that.

SPEAKER_02 54:14

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