Concentrating on the years 2014 through 2016, journalists Cabot and Walravens (editor: Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood, 2011) tell the stories of dozens of women who are working in or leading tech companies.
With considered optimism, the authors relate a few accounts of failed companies led by women and present statistics indicating how small a percentage of women are involved in tech jobs, but they keep most of their attention on those who have managed to break through and thrive in a tough business environment. Some of these leaders took off from relatively small internet niches and parlayed them into much larger presences, such as YouTube star Michelle Phan, creator of the e-commerce cosmetics company Ipsy. Others found areas that their male counterparts ignored: Sheila Lirio Marcelo, for example, was motivated to form a site for seekers and purveyors of domestic help by her own “struggles with balancing babies and aging parents.” In addition to tech leaders, the authors consider female “angel investors” like Joanne Wilson, who invests in female startups, or the group of Chattanooga female movers and shakers who invest their collective cash in businesses run by women. Cabot and Walravens make a point of seeking out minority women, whether women of color or lesbians, to include in their account. While a majority of the book covers high earners, one chapter follows women who have pieced together tech work at home following the births of their children and suggests that such work will be increasing in the future. Using evidence of colleges where computer science departments have managed to maintain female students, the authors argue that environments where women support other women offer the most hope of success and that tech companies must reach a tipping point where women will be encouraging the growth of other women.
A well-organized if sometimes-superficial survey of the successes and occasional failures of women working in what has traditionally been a male-dominated field.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-11226-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Categories: GENERAL BUSINESS | BUSINESS | ENTREPRENUERSHP
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A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
Categories: BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | PSYCHOLOGY
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BOOK REVIEW
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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