An impassioned guide for working women, especially working mothers, to dismantling the patriarchal systems that hold them back at work and at home, as told by a woman who shattered the mold.
Like many young women, tech journalist and Pando.com founder Lacy (Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from the Global Chaos, 2011, etc.) was lied to as a child when her mother told her she had two choices: being the perfect mother or having the perfect career. Believing it to be true, she spent the first decade of adulthood completely focused on her career before committing to the “risk” of motherhood. After seeing the incredible transformative power parenthood had on her home and professional life, Lacy began to question the narrative she’d been led to believe about motherhood and career. Drawing from personal anecdotes, academic research, statistical analysis, and the experiences of other successful women founders and executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, Sheila Marcelo, and Marissa Mayer, the author works to dispel the myth that women must choose between motherhood and a career by dismantling the misconceptions of women in the workplace. Once a sexism denier herself, Lacy clearly and precisely identifies the active negative role the patriarchy plays in the lives of working mothers, from the microaggressions of benevolent sexism from other women to the blatant misogynistic business practices that work to hold women back at work. Brick by brick, she breaks down the maternal bias to reveal that parenthood has been proven, both anecdotally and statistically, to benefit not only employees on the job, but also the companies they work for. Though written with a focus on working mothers, Lacy's feminist manifesto speaks to the universal experiences of sexism and misogyny all women face in the workplace and in society at large.
A fierce and persuasive call to action that demands women, especially millennials, rethink the relationship between maternity and career ambitions.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-264181-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Categories: GENERAL BUSINESS | BUSINESS | MOTIVATIONAL & PERSONAL SUCCESS
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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
Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account. Alongside all the metrics and estimates and reckonings of GDP, inflation, and the supply curve, he holds the great goal of economic policy to be the advancement of human dignity, a concept intangible enough to chase the econometricians away. Growth, the sacred mantra of most economic policy, “should never be considered an appropriate ultimate end goal” for it, he counsels. Though 4% is the magic number for annual growth to be considered healthy, it is healthy only if everyone is getting the benefits and not just the ultrawealthy who are making away with the spoils today. Defining dignity, admits Sperling, can be a kind of “I know it when I see it” problem, but it does not exist where people are a paycheck away from homelessness; the fact, however, that people widely share a view of indignity suggests the “intuitive universality” of its opposite. That said, the author identifies three qualifications, one of them the “ability to meaningfully participate in the economy with respect, not domination and humiliation.” Though these latter terms are also essentially unquantifiable, Sperling holds that this respect—lack of abuse, in another phrasing—can be obtained through a tight labor market and monetary and fiscal policy that pushes for full employment. In other words, where management needs to come looking for workers, workers are likely to be better treated than when the opposite holds. In still other words, writes the author, dignity is in part a function of “ ‘take this job and shove it’ power,” which is a power worth fighting for.
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7987-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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