Episode 189: Stop Telling Women to Find an Equal Partner

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“I had moved and made multiple accommodations for my husband’s job. And this was finally the big moment where I needed his accommodations. And...that was the moment that my marriage fell apart.”
— Bobbi Thomason

Bobbi Thomason

Bobbi Thomason studies gender for a living. She was aware of the pitfalls couples can fall into, even those who assumed their relationship would be absolutely equal. Still, when her own marriage foundered over career equality (or the lack of it), she was gutted. At the same time she was reading social media comments urging women to demand a ‘50/50 partner.’ ‘I tried that,’ she thought, ‘and it didn’t work.’

In this episode we hear Bobbi’s story. She says sticking to her belief that she deserved a partner as willing to sacrifice for her as she was for him, has cost her a great deal. But she’s learned through academic research and personal experience that support comes in many forms, and that all women need a ‘village’ to get ahead.

You can also read a transcript of the show.

Further reading: Stop Telling Women They Just Need an Equal Partnership at Home by Bobbi Thomason.

If You Can’t Find a Spouse Who Supports Your Career, Stay Single by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox.

Here’s Bobbi’s doctoral dissertation on women’s rise to executive leadership in the Middle East and Africa.

Episode 188: You vs. Burnout

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“How we still talk about burnout is that it’s an individual problem to solve. You know, if you just do more yoga or engage in more self-care, we’ll solve for systemic discrimination or 70 hour work weeks.”
— Jennifer Moss
“I’ll be like, it’s okay for you to take some time off and spend time with your family...I think people need to hear that from their leaders. Otherwise they’re always kind of wondering, does she think I’m working hard enough?”
— Jamie Hand

Two years into a pandemic many of us are overwhelmed at work, feeling we have little control, and dealing with a lack of support from our organizations. Burnout rates are up all over the world. But they were bad even before Covid-19 came along. So what can we do about it?

In this episode we meet three women who know burnout first-hand.

Danielle Fried works for a small business that exploded during Covid. It took a health crisis for her to realize she was a frazzle of her former self.

Jennifer Moss is the author of The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It and a longtime expert on happiness and unhappiness at work. She says it's up to leaders to solve this problem, and there is plenty they can do about it.

Jamie Hand is one such leader, managing her own stress levels while tackling burnout one team member at a time.

You can also read a transcript of the show.

Jennifer started her book on burnout before the pandemic hit, then rapidly revised it as 2020 unravelled. Like so many others she and her family bought a dog during Covid - a dog who wanted to make her presence felt during our interview, as you can hear below in this short clip.

Jennifer Moss with her pandemic pup and antidote to stress, maple

Further reading: Beyond Burned Out and Preventing Burnout is About Empathetic Leadership, both by Jennifer Moss on HBR.org.

Burnout and hustle culture are related, as one of my correspondents - mentioned in the show - noted. The U.S. embodies this culture. I enjoyed this piece from Business Insider, How hustle culture got Americans addicted to work.

My first episode on burnout aired in 2016 and I still think about some of Stacy-Marie Ishmael’s comments. Episodes 119 and 170 each concentrate on women in medicine and the need for more empathy in that profession, in order to prevent burnout.

Episode 187: Redefining Success (revisited)

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“There was just a point at which I was like, you know, I’m not getting from this job what I need to get...And I had to be selfish and say, I need to do what’s best for me. And that means leaving without having any idea what comes next.”
— Tess Vigeland

Tess Vigeland during her travels in the Middle East

“Our society teaches us that our identity is equal to our successes, and we learn that from a very young age. What I’m having to learn is OK, if I succeed or fail in any given moment, it has nothing to do with my sense of worth or my ultimate worth.”
— Whitney Johnson

Whitney Johnson

It's the start of a new year - a time when a lot of us think about changing our lives in one way or another. In this show we re-visit a conversation with two traditionally successful women who left their old work lives for the unknown. But jumping meant leaving their identities behind as well as their paychecks.

Tess Vigeland is the former host of Marketplace Money, the public radio show here in the US. She left her job at the top of her game, and initially wondered if she was nuts to have done so. She writes about it in Leap - Leaving a Job with No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want. Whitney Johnson was itching to move away from her comfortable existence at Merrill Lynch and challenge herself in new ways. She invites other people to do something similar in her book, Disrupt Yourself - even if you may not think you need disrupting.

You can also read a transcript of the show from its original release.

Tess spent the three years after our podcast conversation living in Asia and the Middle East. In 2022 she’s just started a new job as host of a Wall Street Journal work and careers podcast. It will debut this winter.

Whitney’s latest book is Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company. She is also a podcaster. Her show is Disrupt Yourself.

Episode 186: Our Obsession with Winning (and how to re-think)

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“Suddenly it was...this is not about having fun, now you need to be a serious athlete. We are here to win. That’s all that matters. ”
— Cath Bishop

Cath with her silver medal at the Athens Olympics

The culture of winning pervades our lives. From sport to the classroom to the workplace, we're supposed to 'kill it' or congratulated for 'crushing it.' But all that crushing can take a toll on the psyche, as Olympic athlete Cath Bishop can attest.

cath bishop

Cath spent years training in her sport, rowing, and competed in three Olympic Games. When she left sport she thought she'd left the obsession with winning behind. Instead she found it was pretty much everywhere.

In this episode we discuss what winning actually means if you want to achieve long-term success (which looks a lot different than what most people think of as 'success.') We talk about the gendered language around winning, and the young female sports stars who are rejecting the winning narrative.

Cath is the author of The Long Win: the search for a better way to succeed.

You can also read a transcript of the show.

And per my teaser in the show, check out the Ask A Harvard Professor podcast - I’d love to have Prof. Claudia Goldin on this show. She was their guest in this episode.

Episode 185: Women Getting Paid

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“He said, ‘Let me stop you right there...you never, ever discount yourself, you never let anybody diminish your worth right before your eyes.’”
— Adrienne Graham

Photo via unsplash

“Step back and think, how am I feeling about this? What am I dreading them saying to me when I ask for this? What do I think they’re going to point out is a reason why I don’t deserve this salary?”
— Natalie Reynolds

In this show we're talking about women getting paid.

Two business owners weigh in on how to charge for your services and how to respond to people who ask if they can 'pick your brain.' We tackle a question from a woman who knows she's paid less than the last man who did her job, but asks if she's happy in her work, how much should she care? And we hear from a negotiation expert on how to use the negative voice in your head - the one that says 'you can't ask for that much!' - to help you get what you want.

This episode distills some findings from past shows. I'm using it as a springboard to more coverage on women and money in 2022. If there’s something you’d like to hear covered, let me know.

You can also read a transcript of the show.

Guests today are Adrienne Graham, Kathy Caprino, Jacquette Timmons and Natalie Reynolds.

Adrienne and Kathy originally featured in episode 52, When Women Work for Free. Jacquette was in episode 81, Money vs. Fulfillment, and Natalie Reynolds was the sole guest in episode 128: You’re Worth It - the Power of Negotiation (part 1).

Further reading: How I Came to Believe I Deserved More by Abby West.

The Luxury of Not Putting Money First by Tanzina Vega.

God, Grant Me the Confidence of a Mediocre White Man by Tracey Lynn Lloyd.

These articles are all from TueNight.com, a great site aimed at GenX women - however, I don’t think there’s much exclusively GenX about these three pieces. Check out the rest of their series on women and money here.

Episode 184: The Long Game

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“Playing the long game at a really core level is about...how can we take action today that will make tomorrow better or easier? I think about it as doing a favor for your future self.”
— Dorie Clark

Dorie Clark

“I saw a window maybe of four or five years where I felt I needed to maximize the chances that I was going to meet someone and...that having a family would be back on the cards.”
— Tom Waterhouse

A lot of people are quitting their jobs at the moment. In the US, more than 12 million people left jobs voluntarily between July and September. They are fed up, burned out after months and months of pandemic working, and some are wondering, what am I doing this for anyway? Is this what I really want to do with my life? If not, what do I want to do instead?

In this show Dorie Clark helps us answer some of those questions, which all involve the need for long-term thinking. She talks about the ideas in her new book, The Long Game: how to be a long-term thinker in a short-term world. We discuss how to carve out time to think about the future, identifying what’s most meaningful to you, and casting off the expectation that you ‘find your passion’ (too much pressure!)

tom waterhouse

We also meet consultant Tom Waterhouse, who had a long-term plan to have a family before it was too late. But realizing his dream meant infuriating his bosses.

Tom is the host of the podcast If I Had Been Born a Girl.

You can also read a transcript of the show.

Further reading: Women and the Liberating Power of No by Anna Holmes in The Atlantic. I mention this in the episode - a great, nuanced piece.

Dorie is offering a free strategic thinking self-assessment that you can download here to find out how much of a long-term thinker you are.