Before we dive in, a quick reminder that my new book “THE AMBITION PENALTY: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up — and Then Pushes Them Down“ is officially out in the world and the best way to support me (and this work) is to buy it, share it and review it if you love it.
A quick look at what reviewers are saying:
“A seething indictment of the myths we use to prop up gender inequality, not only in the workplace, but in the home as well. Well researched and passionately argued, I am recommending this book to every single one of my friends.”
“Excellent read! I tore through this book in a day. I couldn’t put it down […] This is such a refreshing shift from the girl boss, Lean In, hustle culture feminism that millennial women were raised on.”
“Well researched, brilliantly written. Stefanie makes a compelling case that many of us women probably know anecdotally, yet here she codifies evidence with a call to action. Every man would learn from this book, and every woman should be armed with the data she so expertly elucidates”
You can add your review here — and please stay tuned to the end of today’s newsletter for more book updates, including a very exciting LIVE event!
I don’t want to lean in. I want to lie down. Sound familiar?
This cry of exhaustion represents a broad and ongoing reckoning for ambitious women, our disillusionment with the 2010s girlboss era, and the broken promise that getting what you want is as easy as asking for it.
Social media hashtags like #softlife, rack up millions of views showcasing lifestyles that prioritize personal comfort, ease and leisure — pilates, homesteading, crochet, a cross-stitch that says: “I do not dream of labor”
In viral essays with titles like A bigger paycheck? I’d rather watch the sunset!’: is this the end of ambition? anti-ambition is celebrated. And the message is everywhere (as Katie Gatti Tassin so perfectly summarized in her recent piece on ““The Female Ambition Memoir” and Women Who Want”)
In the face of the unsustainable expectations of modern womanhood, it’s not surprising that an aesthetic of slowing down and leaning out of public life has become a highly aspirational response. But it’s not just peace that these trends are promising.
While anti-ambition has been lauded as everything from personally empowering to radically anti-capitalist, these bold claims are undercut by one glaring oversight: the supposed ambition reckoning has landed almost exclusively on women’s ambition: #softGIRL #lazyGIRL #FEMININEenergy #tradWIFE.
Where is the anti-ambition rhetoric for men?
If hustle culture, endless striving and dogged careerism is so bad (and I agree it can be), why aren’t men also getting the message to trade in their power suits for #prairiecore and paychecks for personal care?
Where is the genre of personal essay telling men how much easier and more fulfilling their days would be if they just stopped worrying so much about their livelihoods and started leaning into their #softness?
If public and professional ambition is why modern life has become too exhausting, exploitative and expensive, then why is it only recognized as something we should opt out of when women pursue it?
Why aren’t videos asking men why they would spend an afternoon at the office when they could spend that time making oreos from scratch overtaking their algorithms?
But no, the #boybosses never seem to have to reckon with their professional ambitions — even though they are the ones who overwhelmingly shape the policies that make women’s ambitions uniquely unsustainable to begin with.
While access to meaningful leisure and rest remains a social media fantasy for most women, it’s something men in the US already enjoy. And they haven’t had to give up their professional or economic power to unlock it.
“For full-time workers, it is as if men get a month more a year of vacation compared to their women peers,” according to this analysis of 2022 American Time Use data. This free-time gender gap leaves men with more than 400 additional hours of leisure each year.
While it’s well-known that women remain tasked with the vast majority of unpaid household management, cleaning, and care work (no matter how much paid labor they do), it’s rarely acknowledged how much this household labor leaves US women with 13% less free time than men on average— and 23% less between the ages of 35 and 44. A gap that holds in men’s favor across education, marital status, employment status, race, ethnicity, age and children in the household.
In addition to this leisure gap, more and more data has emerged suggesting just how much men depend on access to women’s unpaid labor. “Marriage substantially increases male labor supply. Counterfactual simulations suggest that if men were unable to marry, prime-age male work hours would fall by 7%,” conclude the authors of a 2023 paper from The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
While the analysis doesn’t go so far as to draw a causal connection, it does point out that “currently married men [between the wages of 20-54] work at least 30% more annual hours than men who have never been married, a gap which has remained roughly constant since 1975.” Notably, this is only a reference to paid work hours. As other findings demonstrate, “Men’s (and women’s) overall housework and care burden lowers their labor market participation and working hours.” While another study confirms that, “Women’s housework, in particular, helps men earn more.”
How convenient then that anti-ambition trends like the #tradwife started taking over our algorithms just as Covid forced a shift to more flexible and autonomous work, enabling women’s labor force participation to reach an all-time high.
When the men running these media platforms (along with the other senior leaders across Corporate America, 83% of whom were men ) quickly reversed course — adopting return to office mandates while opining about the need for more “masculine energy.”
From Elon Musk’ s infamous “fork in the road” email to Twitter employees demanding they adopt his “extremely hardcore” vision of workplace culture, to manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate extolling the virtues of 16 hour work days, hustle culture hasn’t actually gone anywhere. In fact, corporate leaders are doubling down with a push for even longer hours, like ‘9-9-6’ work schedules — 9am to 9pm, six days a week. While the benefits that enable all of us to integrate our personal and professional ambitions more sustainably, like PTO and parental leave are steadily being rolled back by employers.
So what better time to double down on the story that women’s unpaid labor is the pinnacle of leisure, or that women letting go of their professional ambitions is the true meaning of liberation, or that women (and women exclusively) opting out of paid work is the ultimate rejection of hustle?
Because the more women’s labor is redirected into enabling men’s career growth, the more men can double down on careerism without interruption for caregiving, household or other essential life responsibilities — making the pursuit of professional ambition all the more untenable to those (ahem, women) without access to the same at-home support.
The ambition reckoning doesn’t have to come for men so long as the price is built on the backs of women. And the distinctly gendered anti-ambition discourse ensures it stays there.
Through a combination of soft piano music, soothing voiceover and carefully curated content, anti-ambition influencers will remind us that the real problem isn’t the ways in which women remain chronically overworked and undervalued (both in and outside of the workplace), but the ways in which women just want too much. Too much, of course, being what men already have.
After commiserating with Katie Gatti Tassin on both her podcast and in response to her anti-ambition memoir piece, I devoured the most recent episode of the podcast she cohosts with caro claire burke, Diabolical Lies, that digs deeper into the rise and fall of the #girlboss archetype. In this episode, Katie generously shares some excerpts of my new book The Ambition Penalty as well as some of these ideas that we’ve been passing back and forth. I highly recommend tuning into the full episode here:
I’m also thrilled to announce that Katie, along with fellow author and founder of Bossed Up, Emilie Aries, will be joining me for my next book tour stop in Denver, Colorado on June 17th!
For more information on how you can join us (or if you want to pass along the invite to your Denver friends) check out the Eventbrite link and RSVP here.
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