Bonus episode: Femininity and Power

“When you see the countries that have been run by women, they’re not necessarily the Anglo-Saxon countries.”

— Avivah Wittenberg-Cox

Former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner

“I do think Latin countries have a different attitude to women in power.”

In this extra episode we're back with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox. She's fresh from 30 years of living in France, and a keen observer of how gender plays out all over the world. "Anglo-Saxon cultures do not like, embrace, or value femininity," she says. She believes Latin cultures are far more female-friendly - that a woman can be as feminine as she likes and still hold power without the blowback she'd get in a country like the US. 

There's a lot to think about in this 9-minute episode. You can also read a transcript of the show.

Further reading: From The Economist, a piece on violence against women in Latin America. 

From UN Women - Fighting Femicide in Latin America.

Catherine Deneuve and Others Denounce #MeToo Movement, via the New York Times.

Episode 120: Does Your Partner Support Your Success?

“I’m hearing that more and more, that not only is there a reluctance or a discomfort when women are making more than men in a relationship but it’s actually hurting relationships.”

— Diane Reichenberger

“I think you have to be clearer than most couples are about how are we going to manage two successful careers? What are the terms of engagement, what kind of support do we need from eachother?”

— Avivah Wittenberg-Cox

Avivah wittenberg-cox

This time we're talking about couplehood and careers. My first guest is shocked that her mentees' boyfriends refuse to marry them until they - the men - are the main breadwinner. My second guest isn't surprised at all. In this episode we talk about who supports whom in heterosexual and same-sex couples, and what that support looks like. We discuss how dual-career couples can maintain partnerships where each person gets what they want and need. And we get tips on using team-building techniques to good effect at home.

My guests are Diane Reichenberger and Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, author of Late Love: Mating in Maturity. 

You can also read a transcript of the show. 

Further reading/listening: Avivah first appeared on TBE in episode 41, Stop Fixing Women, Start Fixing Companies.

This is a great episode of the new Harvard Business Review podcast Women at Work - it's called Couples That Work. Avivah is in this one too, along with other guests. 

Here's the 2015 Work and Families Institute study Modern Families - same and different-sex couples negotiating at home.

Do Millennial Men Want Stay-at-Home Wives? via the New York Times, by Stephanie Coontz.

Fairygodboss recently did a survey on male/female couples' attitudes to money in relationships. 

Diane reichenberger (r) and her wife sharon on their wedding day with jack the dog

Episode 119: Women in Medicine are Burning Out

“I think we look at other women and we judge ourselves on how they’re doing. So we see this little iceberg of their lives and we say, are we doing as good a job as they are?”

— Robine Devine

Photo by LUHUANFENG/iStock / Getty Images

“You don’t necessarily show that emotion. And so that’s how I carried on most of the time. And most of the time that worked, you know 90 percent of the time that worked, and then every so often terrible things happen and you react to it.”

— Heather Anaya

At the end of 2016 I did a show on burnout that got passed around a lot. At around the same time I began hearing  from female doctors saying burnout is a huge issue in their field. Studies show women doctors burn out at higher rates than men. And given so many of us have at least one woman doctor in our lives, that can't be good for any of us. 

Robin Devine

In this show we talk about why this is happening. We discuss a lack of empathy in a profession that on the surface seems to be all about it; how women judge one another’s success, and how they can help eachother. 

My guests are family doctor Robin Devine and maternal fetal medicine specialist Heather Anaya.

You can also read a transcript of the show.

Heather anaya with her husband and children

Further reading: A piece on the Harvard study on elderly hospital patients doing better under the care of female doctors. 

Why are Women Leaving Medicine? from ModernMedicine.com.

Stop Physician Burnout - Unconscious Gender Bias in the Healthcare Workplace via The Happy MD.

Female Doctors Have High Rates of Burnout - Here's Why via Healthcare Business & Technology.

Episode 118: A Year for Women?

“I think changes will be tectonic. We’ve had another movement of a tectonic plate and things are going to settle out and we’ll say, OK, where are we here? ”

— Anne Libby

“I think what might happen is two to three years of hard conversations and unpleasant dynamics. But you need to get that out of the way. ”

— Nastaran Tavakoli-Far

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far 

Anne Libby

Will 2018 be a good year for women at work? After the explosive, high-profile revelations of workplace harassment that snowballed towards the end of 2017, a lot of us are excited about this year. We're hopeful that the momentum created by the #MeToo movement can lead to fairer workplaces with less harassment and more equal pay.  But are we naive?

My guests are US-based Anne Libby, consultant and coach on all things management, and Nastaran Tavakoli-Far, or Nas, who lives and works in London and hosts The Gender Knot podcast. Each talks about her hopes and fears for the year ahead. 

You can also read a transcript of the show. 

Further reading/listening:

You can sign up for Anne Libby's monthly newsletter On Management here.

You can check out The Gender Knot on iTunes and on the show's website.

This is the letter former BBC China editor Carrie Gracie wrote to the BBC audience, explaining her decision to leave her post in China and return to the UK. She found she was vastly underpaid compared to two male foreign editors, and that the BBC would not consent to pay everyone equally.

Episode 117: Behind the Scenes at The Broad Experience

My desk in Brooklyn while I was working on this episode

This time, a short show in which I'm the interviewee. Sara Holtz (below) of the Advice to My Younger Me podcast talks with me about how I came to start The Broad Experience, what goes into making it and why production tends to be seat-of-the-pants.

I also talk about the difficulty of marketing when you're an independent podcaster wearing multiple hats. Below you'll find a picture of my 'studio', otherwise known as my clothes closet, where I record all my parts of the show (except the interviews, when I am sitting at my desk or with the other person). Every time I go in to record I have to move several pairs of boots out of the way, kneel down, and prop my laptop on a shoe shelf to read my script. It's a glamorous life!

It's a squeeze, but it's the only quiet place in the apartment - The clothing acts as a sound buffer

Episode 116: The Reckoning

“Hopefully this idea about shaking up the very foundations of male power, I think it potentially will lead to more women being successful at the top, but in new ways.”

— Linda Betts

Photo by Tomwang112/iStock / Getty Images

“Women have been resisting over-generalization for a century, so why would we want to turn and generalize men in the same way? ”

— Laura Linnaeus

Linda betts

Sexual harassment at work used to be something everyone knew about but no one talked about. Now everyone is talking about it. Scores of women are publicly naming prominent men as harassers. Many of those men have lost their jobs. But what does the reckoning mean for women in the workplace, and the power dynamic between the sexes?

This show features two guests, Laura Linnaeus from the US and Linda Betts from Australia. Each has a different idea of what #MeToo and the current climate will do for women's careers.

You can also read a transcript of the show.

Further reading: Here's Amber Tamblyn's New York Times Op-Ed, I'm Not Ready for the Redemption of Men.

The BBC wrote a piece about why there's a flood of sexual harassment allegations in the US, and only a trickle in the UK. 

This piece about what #MeToo has raised for Swedish women is fascinating. Just as my guests pointed out in the show I did called Better in Scandinavia, not everything in the Scandinavian countries is as equal as it seems.