In this episode of 'Two Shrinks on the Farm,' Robyn and Barb revisit their influential book 'Smart Girls in the 21st Century' ten years after its publication.

They delve into the societal changes that have reshaped their perspectives, including the Me Too movement, the 2016 presidential election, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The conversation covers the impact of racism, sizism, and evolving gender norms on the careers of notable women, debates over the 'lean in' philosophy, and the challenges faced by women in academia and corporate environments.

The episode underscores the importance of following one’s passion despite societal pressures and systemic barriers. Ending on a hopeful note, the speakers emphasize the resilience of women and the shift towards valuing workplaces that align with personal values and aspirations.

This thoughtful exploration invites listeners to reflect on progress and the ongoing challenges in the pursuit of meaningful work and personal growth.

00:00 Welcome to Two Shrinks on the Farm

02:20 Reflecting on 'Smart Girls in the 21st Century'

03:40 Unforeseen Changes and Regrets

06:17 Eminent Women: Hits and Misses

10:08 The Lean In Dilemma

18:59 Personal Reflections and Mentorship

27:27 Understanding Structural Backlashes

28:09 The Rise of the Men's Rights Movement

30:08 Impact of Roe v. Wade Reversal

33:48 Pandemic's Effect on Young Women

37:06 Pandemic's Effect on Accomplished Women

38:54 Navigating Corporate and Personal Life During COVID

47:45 Reflections on the Beehive Model

51:19 Empowering the Next Generation

56:46 Final Thoughts and Regrets

57:43 Closing Remarks and Future Plan

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Hi, I'm Dr. Robin McKay and welcome to Two Shrinks on the Farm. Yes, we really are shrinks and we really do live on a farm. No white coats or sterile offices here though, just wide open spaces, four horses, two dogs, and a couple of cats to keep things interesting. The title of this podcast was actually born one sunny Saturday afternoon when I was out picking cherries in the front yard and Barb was weeding the garden.

I yelled across the yard at her, Hey Barb, we should start a podcast called Two Shrinks on the Farm. And, well, here we are. Barb is the Distinguished Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Kansas and an award winning psychologist. She was also my professor once upon a time. And I earned my PhD in Counseling Psychology from KU as well.

Though I started my career as a university psychologist, I left academia years ago to found my own consulting firm. When I was just finishing my PhD, I lived with Barb on this very farm. And since then, the two of us have taken wildly different paths. But now, 16 years after graduation, we find ourselves back here once again.

We've both dedicated our lives to finding, guiding, and celebrating creative and talented people from all walks of life. And this time, we're ready to share our perspectives with you. In this podcast, we're not here to offer you the same old recycled advice. We're here to blow up the cliches and explore creativity from angles that might just make you squirm a little, or laugh out loud.

Whether we're talking about the real meaning behind those motivational posters, spoiler alert, they're not helping, or sharing stories from real life on the farm like how picking ticks off dogs can teach you more about life and love. This isn't your typical psychology podcast, so if you're feeling stuck, burnt out, or just a little bit bored with the status quo, you're in the right place.

Welcome to Two Shrinks on the Farm, where the two of us turn over the soil in your mind and plant a few seeds of radical new thinking.

Welcome back to the podcast. Hey you guys, guess what? It's been 10 years since Barb and I published our book, Smart Girls in the 21st Century. 10 years. And we were just talking the other day about how things have changed since we wrote that book. And Barbie had a great idea for the topic for today's episode.

So we will get to the rest of the Neo personality profile in upcoming episodes. But because this is actually the week that our book was released 10 years ago, I thought it'd be great to do this episode right here, right now. We'll also put a link to the book in the show notes. So you can grab that on Amazon, but as Barb says, don't buy it until you listen to what we regret about it.

Yeah, we almost titled this podcast, Je Regret. Because there, it, re reading the book, I realized there's, whoa, still a lot of good stuff that I still, fully stand behind. On the other hand, there were some things that we did not anticipate that would happen in the next 10 years. That would that would really change how we how we would approach smart girls.

We would have Done it differently in some ways. 

Well, I mean, hindsight, I suppose is 2020 in this case, we couldn't have anticipated the me too movement. We couldn't have anticipated Trump getting elected in 2016. We couldn't have anticipated a pandemic or the effects that would have on gifted and talented girls and women, around the world.

So there's a lot to this. 

And even in 2013, when we were writing this we had no idea that, women would lose reproductive rights. We had no idea that would happen. We were just assuming that, just like the rest of the developed world, that women now had control over their bodies. Ah, and then the rise of the men's rights movement.

The I You know, Robin, I always say in my talks about Smart Girls, that if we recognize that for the last 8, 000 years men have dominated women, have owned their bodies, women have been property since the beginning of agriculture in most human societies, did we really believe that 8, 000 years of, The dominance of women would end in one or two generations.

Yeah, I think we did. At least that was our hopeful thinking. And I think that our book is full of that kind of optimism and hopefulness that we could undo those effects on bright women because we'd made some advances. 

And I think too for me coming into the smart girls world a little bit later I was in my 30s by the time I started reading the book that originally you had published based on research of my generation Gen X back in the mid to late 80s.

I sort of had this optimism that just accompanied my life because I had been. taught from the time I was a little girl. I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grew up and really truly probably my generation is the first generation who had actually a shot at that. So there is sort of this, Enthusiasm and optimism for what's possible for girls and women, particularly at the time that we wrote smart girls.

And that was published back in 2014. And little did we know the the shifts that would be happening over the, subsequent 10 years that would maybe look at and create the conditions for us to look at the book and say, Hey what, have we done differently? Knowing now what we know, how will we make our contribution to maybe the next edition of this book?

Do you want to dive into one of your least favorite chapters of the book to start and then we'll get into the 

nuances? Oh, I'd be happy to. Je regret. I am so sorry, oh world that we inflicted the chapter on eminent women upon you because since we chose our eminent women, some of them just turned out to be terrible people or else just be blah people.

I mean, just 

big assholes, basically, and I'm still grateful knowing now what I know that you didn't let me put the essay on Sarah Blakely, the Spanx lady in there because, oh, 

God, oof. Well, yeah, thank goodness we didn't get her in there. But, you know, I was all for. I was all for putting in the the leader of wait a minute.

It'll come to me. Well, let's just go with J. K. Rowling. I was all for putting in J. K. Rowling. And I did. Oh my God, we had no idea that buried somewhere in the unconscious mind of this author of these delightful Harry Potter books was this lurking, intense fear and hatred of trans people. And You know, in our book where we talk about LGBTQ, about how important it is that we understand this intersectionality, we had no idea that J.

K. Rowling, who we thought pretty much followed the pattern of eminent women that she would turn out to be such an awful human being. And so yeah, we regret that, and probably, and then Oh, gosh, I could go on and on about the eminent women. Why don't you throw out an eminent woman you're sorry about, even if they weren't terrible people?

Well, je regret.

Here's the thing. I loved writing about them at the time. I really did. I think that was a chapter as a I'll say a young author that I felt like I made a contribution from my heart. Do you know what I mean? Like I fell in love with these women as I was researching them and understanding them and so on.

And so I think that my great disappointment, let's just start with Jennifer Hudson. Yeah. I really liked writing about her because I did think she had a good story and you know, come growing up in the south side of Chicago, starting singing when she was a little girl and so on. But really in the last 10 years, 

 I don't know. I just like, I feel like that she, that. I had great hopes for her to step into her eminence and perhaps she still will she's still fairly young, and that's, I know that's my eternal optimism speaking but I think for what we've seen over the past 10 years there hasn't been a whole lot of contribution on her part she's sort of gone her way and I don't even know what she's up to these days.

We have no idea what kinds of, , what kinds of external barriers might have affected her. Certainly racism, certainly sizism that could have really affected her career, but we don't know. I'm just disappointed that for a singer that, you know, she was the one. I'm also super sad. About the fact that that we praised Sheryl Sandberg, because at the time, and this goes for the, one of the big regrets I have about the book in general, one of the big themes of the book is lean in, little knowing the challenges that were going to happen with the pandemic and everything else.

And I'm afraid that by choosing Sheryl Sandberg, we were featuring a woman who was already privileged by her education, by her position. This woman who was telling all of us to lean in when she had nannies, for heaven's sakes. You know, she had the support of family and friends. She had the privilege that was needed for her to lean in.

No, today I wouldn't give the Message to women to lean into their corporate lifestyles because often their corporate lifestyles are taking away their opportunities to live full lives. 

Not only that, but we couldn't have predicted of course with COVID. And I know we'll get to this, how COVID really created a collapse between any separation that women who worked outside the home in corporate leadership had with Their families and how that changed everyone's relationship with work and family and life and so on.

I do want to go back to Jennifer Hudson, though, because I feel like I was just a big able to stop. 

You can't stop. 

I just, well I have to because I feel like I was a big a hole in, having some criticisms about her and to your point, we can't know the external barriers and I think that's one of my big mistakes.

As. Privileged white lady having these conversations, then even though I had been educated and trained in multicultural development and distance from privilege and all of those very important features that we really must look at when we're looking at any woman's. trajectory. But I do think that, you know, in terms of her being a singer 

who, would have we chosen instead of her knowing now what we know? 

Well, actually, I was thinking of a, dancer that was covered very little in before, but now I think we understand her incredible contributions. And that's Maria Tallchief the ballerina Native American who has been a prima ballerina and has has really shown a genius that I think that she would have been good in there.

And then there's and, then I think, yeah, I might choose somebody who, , going from the if I was sick with popular culture I would want to have somebody who had a lifetime, of achievements and, , that was our overall problem. We chose people who weren't dead yet.

Yeah, I think you're right. Our future book will have to look only at dead people for the trajectory dead eminent 

life because even in elderly years, people who've had a lot of achievements and have been real geniuses can just suddenly become. Horrible people. Oh my god.

Do you know we, well you wanted so much to do Malala and I was like, oh hell yes. Oh no, we did Malala. No, we did do Malala. I'm glad. But but the editor wanted us to cut down that chapter, so I cut out Aung San Suu Kyi, and boy am I glad.

I am so glad that you wrote up Malala, because if I'd written up Aung San Suu Kyi, I would have been writing up a person who went from being a person promising democracy to her country to a person who became a tremendous oppressor of the minorities in her country. Yeah, thanks for not doing that.

You're welcome. On behalf of, everyone, I suppose that would have made the chapter even more difficult to read, I suppose, now these days. Who else? Who else do we have in there? Tina Fey. How do you feel about Tina Fey these days? 

I'm okay. I think, you know the fact that she's continued from being a comedian.

to then becoming a writer, and a very funny one, and a producer. I mean she really has continued to rise and do amazing things, you know, so I'm okay with that. I don't think they all have to be, I don't think our eminent women, You know, all have to be sort of people who achieve in the classical fields that are considered fields of genius, because another thing that happened during the last 10 years was the amazing research on conceptions of genius.

Have you heard about that? No, tell us about them. Well Sympion is the name of the, Leslie Sympion is a researcher who began to study what people mean when they think of brilliance or genius. And it turned out that there are certain fields where where there are expectations among people that the people in that field will be geniuses.

And they tend to be fields where men dominate. For instance even though women are beginning to be really well represented in some sciences, like biology, and especially in the humanities it turns out that in the, women are underrepresented in the fields where practitioners believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement.

And can you guess what some of those are? 

I'm going to guess the hard sciences. 

Absolutely. Physics, computer science, engineering, math, astronomy, philosophy, musical composition, econ, classics. You want to know where people consider where people don't think genius is needed? You're gonna hate me.

education, psychology, sociology, anthropology, communication studies, languages, history. So I'm just talking about in the general republic, in the general public, those are the stereotypes. And I think that finding helped me to understand why we had such difficulty looking for eminent women.

Because we were trying to define genius as we thought of it, which was this combination of ability, personality, values, right? But the general public was just thinking ability, alone and, stereotyping certain occupations. It also explains why when I did the first Smart Girls in 1950. 85. I could hardly find any biographies at all of eminent women, which is why I was stuck with, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt and Marie Curie and people like that.

But at least they were dead. 

At least they were dead. At least they were dead. I hate to say it, but I agree with you that I think that we need to wait for them to be dead so that we can see that the trajectory of their lives and, Have it be kind of a full circle moment so that we can make sure and, double make sure that they aren't being coming big a holes by the end of their lives.

Exactly. 

But here's the other thing. I want to get personal with this for a moment because I remember when I first started working with you, it was probably one of our first conversations. You told me, you said I will help you, but you have to promise not to fade out of your profession or something like that.

Do you remember that moment? Not to fade out of the profession, not to fade out. You said, I will help you, but to fade out or to drop out of the profession. And I promised, but this is something that we see with with women who have such high potential. And then somewhere along the way they do fade away or they do step away from their professions and so can you talk about that just in a more personal way as you've seen this play out over and over with people who you well you've mentored along the way.

Well, you know, I began to think that being a woman's advisor, you know, that Barbara Kerr was the kiss of death, because here I am, a feminist scholar, and yet many of my PhD women who had such incredible promise, got married, changed their names, moved off, and never you know and then did not go forward as scholars.

I'm not saying it's a terrible thing to be a practitioner, but many of them went part time just really even you know, even in fields where there aren't ranks like in academe, they fell behind in terms of salary and so that I've come now to understand that just having a feminist mentor does not make you immune from the pressures in our society for women to see marriage as their major achievement and as this life change that they symbolize by changing their name, that now they become one with a man and either follow or engage in a dual career where somehow his career always ends up more important than hers.

It reminds me back in grad school when we were studying for comps. I remember some of the women in my cohort were negotiating out loud with themselves. If I don't pass comps, I'm going to have a baby. If I don't pass comps, I'm going to get married. And for me, that was never. Even in the front of my mind, I just knew I was going to pass comps and move on.

But even in my career, you know, I left academia 10 years ago, 11 or 12, actually 11 or 12 years ago now, and was never in a scholarly role necessarily. I was a practitioner and a a teacher, but I think that the message that I got from you then is don't fade away, keep going, and I like to think that I did that.

Although it hasn't been without its, of course, foibles and missteps. 

Yeah, but you know, Robin, I think you're a good example of what we really mean when we say, don't fade away, rather than the lean in message, which is just like, you know, whatever your corporation is handing out, you lean into it. Our message is not about a job that you lead into.

It's about leaning into your calling, leaning into your purpose in life. And that means, Yes, you can take time off. You can you can, you know, move to a place where your career is not as valued as your husband's career. But that doesn't mean you give up your calling, your vocation. You keep writing about the things you care about.

You keep volunteering for the things you believe in. You stay active in your professional associations. You don't give up, you know. You could lose a job, but you cannot lose your vocation unless you give it up. And so I did want to make that clear that even though the book came across as lean in, it was not about leaning into a job.

It was about, 

has been, it's always been for you about. Falling in love with an idea. That's something that has always stayed with me. And first you fall in love with an idea and then somewhere along the way, you find your partner as well. Those are the two things that always stood out for me about still 

very early work together.

And so I also realize now as a mentor that I have a responsibility to be sure that the women and the men and the non binaries that I am advising that they are falling in love with an idea and that I'm helping the courtship along. Sometimes things like graduate school are so punishing and so miserable that people can't wait to escape.

And so they associate even their passionate ideas with this bad experience of graduate school, and that's not good. We have to, I have to make sure that my people graduate in with their love of their idea and their passion intact, and not completely beat up by the APA. accreditation requirements. 

Yeah.

Well, I can say you certainly did that with me. And I like to think that 10 years after the book I'm still following that path of falling in love with my ideas and. 

And it is happening. It is happening with my with, most of my, current students for quite some time now. But. That's wonderful.

But when I was at Arizona State I, was still under the curse. But again, you know, that was two decades ago. And in the last decade, I've had more and more women graduate students who have stuck to their passion. And that's, I love 

that. So they're on track for becoming eminent women as well. Let's go back to the book.

Thanks for that bunny trail, but I thought that was important to bring it into a really personal perspective for a moment. Any other regrets? From the book besides the chapter on eminent women. 

Yeah, that's the biggie really. I'd say the chapter on eminent women and the and the chapter in which we encourage women to lean in and we weren't really clear as much as it needed to be about that.

I think also I did not anticipate the. The viciousness of the the viciousness. of racism rising again. I never dreamed that there'd be states that legislate that young people cannot be taught the history of slavery because it might make white kids feel bad. I did not anticipate that the Black Lives Matter movement would occasion such a racist reaction or that Obama, you know, he was president when we were writing this, are that Obama's presidency would unleash the kind of white supremacy and reaction.

Never dreamed that. I also didn't anticipate the once the, we had the gay marriage amendment in, I'm sorry, the gay marriage ruling. I thought, Oh, this is great. Now we're on our, on track to LGBTQ people being fully accepted by our culture. And no sooner did that happen, then politicians found themselves another scapegoat in transgender people who make up 1 percent of the population.

But who are, but seem to be, you know, about half of what legislators spend their time thinking and fantasizing about. So I think, I regret that we didn't. Even though we couldn't anticipate how bad it was going to be, that we didn't talk in more detail about the ways in which structural racism, homophobia and, of course, sexism, to talk about what backlashes are like, because we know those backlashes happened before.

We know about Jim Crow, we know about the backlash of the 50s against women who were independent, these things happened, but we didn't anticipate that. So now, I would want to write about the ways in which those trends are affecting women. Hey, so what do you think about the men's rights movement, Robin?

That's new too. 

That is new. And with that being on the rise, let's, I want you to dive into that and I want to contribute, but I know you've given a whole lot of thought to how the men's rights movement has affected women and non binary people and men also. 

Well, I was just so disappointed in the hordes of young white men going to Jordan Peterson talks in which you know, half of his you know, half of his talk is always about make your bed, You know, be prepared, be be well disciplined.

And the other half is, you know are, women really necessary? Or, shouldn't women be in their traditional roles? And now we have a vice presidential candidate who says that women who don't Have children are not contributing to the future, and that single cat ladies are just miserable. And oh boy, we 

are the poster children for the anti JD Vance movement.

I think I think to, I think that the optimism that I had 10 years ago about women's role in the wor women's roles in the world and our capacity to make. contributions and to be respected and affirmed in culture has been really, for lack of a better thing to say, kicked in the teeth when I look at some of the things that are going on with the men's rights movements and the the just what you're talking about, the criticisms of women who make choices that are other than what J.

D. Vance and his crew would like us to be. 

And I think the removal of, you know the, end of Roe versus Wade, the and now threats to contraception, which is hard to imagine but that's there in Project 25, 2025, they want to make contraception more difficult, this idea of forcing women to have more children and, it's stated as, You know, women need to have more children in order to have more workers, but what the subtext is, they want more white children and to replace the immigrants that they're going to deport.

And so that just puts young women, I think, in a terrifically fearful position right now.

Everything that you were talking about reminded me of the Handmaid's Tale, which had not been produced at that time. I know the book was out, but the Handmaid's Tale has become sort of a playbook that plays out in our reality. It's where, what do we say when art becomes real? And that's sometimes how it feels to me.

Yeah. 

Yeah. Or that truth is stranger than fiction. I think about. Adolescent young women now, and I think about what it would be like to, fear pregnancy so terribly as to completely fear their own sexuality. And, It was, I think we made such great strides forward in having women accept their sexuality, having, being positive about it, being positive about their bodies, that we made such strides forward.

And now, once again, we have young women who have to be afraid that getting pregnant doesn't just mean that they're going to care for a child for 18 years, it can also mean that they're going to die in childbirth. Most people don't realize that before contraception, a woman had the capacity to have 19 births, and most women actually had around 12 or 13 births and of those half miscarried about and then another half didn't make it through their first couple years.

However, there were women who had 19 and 20 pregnancies and ended up with six kids, you know? And people don't also realize that about 1 in 20 women died in childbirth before doctors started washing their hands. And that didn't happen until the 1900s. That women, that doctors consistently washed their hands and knew how to do what midwives knew how to do.

We're closed out of their jobs. So it's so yeah, that's what adolescent women are facing right now. And I don't know how it's going to change their relationships with young men. I 

don't either. And I do want to, if we can turn the page and talk about another thing we couldn't have predicted or controlled in 2014 was The pandemic, and the effect of the pandemic.

So you guys, Barb has spent much of her career researching and, supporting and guiding the young women. And for the last 10 years I've spent a whole lot of time with the adult accomplished women who are the physicians and the engineers. the attorneys and so on who are, out there in the world working.

And when COVID happened, when the pandemic happened, everything changed for all of them. So do you want to start by talking about what you noticed happening during the pandemic for the young women? And then we'll kind of tag team on this next part. 

Sure. Well we we wrote about it in an article in Frontiers in Psychology that was called They Saw It Coming, where we we looked at the sense of foreboding that so many of the highly creative young people had Even before the pandemic, it's they were so worried about environmental issues.

They were so worried about society collapsing. You know, they were reading a whole lot of post apocalyptic novels and things like that. That was already going on, and then the pandemic happened. And just like, We saw across adolescents, yes, they did become more depressed, and yes, they did become more anxious.

But for these highly creative, talented kids, it was the continuation of a decline in their mental health. But we ended on a hopeful note. In the articles that we've written about it, the articles and papers we've written about it since then, The whole notice is that despite their anxiety and depression and isolation, loneliness during the pandemic, they turned to social media to be productive and creative, So that the gifted girls, the creative girls, they kept on creating despite how upset and miserable they were.

They were turning out hilarious TikToks, or they were singing beautiful songs, they were composing music, they were telling stories they were sharing their anim you know, sharing anime with one another. Learning how to use technology in ways to create their own their, own videos. So, there was a burst of creativity among the teens as well as a burst of depression and anxiety.

Now, I suspect that all that productive creativity was possible because Their mothers were taking care of them. 

Yeah, you think? 

Thanks to your work. How did the pandemic affect the right accomplished women that you were working with? 

You know, for those years, I often felt like I was, in a mass unit right behind the lines of a big war.

And every time one of the women would come in for a session we can talk about the physicians and the engineers and the scientists and so on who will come in for their, sessions. I felt like I was having to stitch them up, brush them off, pick them up, put them back together. Not that they were falling apart, but they were, battle weary over time.

And I remember several of them saying to me, I just want somebody to tell me what to do. And I had to deliver that because they weren't getting information from their governing bodies or the, leadership in their hospitals weren't making decisions fast enough or they were having to fight for personal protective gear where the obstetricians and the gynecologists were whereas the.

Of course the, knee surgeons and the hip surgeons got all of their gear right away. So there were all of these things that were happening in, especially early on in the pandemic that I found with the women who I was working with. And they all came to me with that same question. I just want somebody to tell them, tell me what to do.

And I said, I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but nobody's coming. And what I meant by that is that it's your turn. You decide you lead, make your decision, the right decision. And we'll, work it out. We'll figure it out as we go. And that was often what I was doing with the women who were in leadership.

Now, the ones who were staying home, got sent home from corporate and then had no division between their, work life and their home life. There was no 30 minute ride in the car to listen to their podcast, to decompress after a hard day of work before they got to see their kids and their families.

We had to do a lot of working on understanding how to navigate the boundarylessness that was the pandemic for many of them. The physicians at least got to go to work, I say at least, but then they had to, you know, do their surgeries in full. protective gear on COVID positive patients and things like that, things that we had never seen before, things that they had never really even trained in before were happening, not to mention, then we have all the political upheaval that's happening at the same time.

And there were companies that I worked with to simply help navigate the Black Lives Matters I don't even know what to call that the violence that came out of the Black Lives Matters movement, I will say, and things of that nature that really created the very, difficult and stressful.

Workplace and just way of being in the world. And on top of it, shall I go on. I mean, there was a lot here wasn't there Barb. On top of it, then we have the people who are fully isolated they're single and now they're working from home and they really can't go out. Because of the restrictions in their cities or their, states.

And so then we had to deal with the the, depression, the anxiety, and then on top of it all, on top of all of that, we have the existential stuff. What is my purpose? What is, happening here? What am I meant for? Is this all there is? And on the other side of it, what I've seen happening in the past couple of years for the women who I work with they're saying, I want to work in companies that share my values.

Yeah. 

I know that I made for more than being a cog in a great machine 

and I 

want to find a way of, living and working in the world and contributing in the world that aligns with who I know I am in my heart. That I'm not just a worker bee, that I am something so much more than that. So I could go on and clearly I have a lot to say about this, but I would love to 

know your thoughts 

on that too.

As you were talking about it, Robert, I could just even imagine all the comforting that you had to do. And it makes me feel very fortunate. Because. I am with a faculty that actually managed really well during the pandemic and that's I've often said to you that the reason I stayed at my university for the longest I've stayed anywhere is not not like it's a first rate university or anything.

I've stayed here because of my faculty. who care about each other. During the pandemic, we had four of the faculty had young children at home. And that was, the four of the six of us, right? And so I admired so much how how the, you know, how faculty came to each other's aid and supported one another.

Our department chair, and this is the larger group, our department chair made it very clear that we were to take care of ourselves as well as our students and. And our teachers and so there was just such compassion and such an attempt to to make it easier for the students to survive, to support one another.

That the I was living alone, recently widowed, and even I just felt this outpouring of compassion and care from my colleagues. And it made me wish that every woman could have had that experience. It wasn't like that in other academic departments. Where women would not only have to care for their children, but be working desperately toward tenure and being held to exactly the same standards as men who had fewer care responsibilities.

I should also mention that the men in our department tend to be really fussy. It's really egalitarian in terms of caring for children. But it's so different from what the women that you work with experience, since they're out there working in hospitals, in corporations, and in a world that, where even if they cared about and supported each other, the rules of corporate life.

were stacked against them. 

Definitely were stacked against them because when we look at the the gender disparity, especially in leadership and in tech, I will say they, the women who I worked with continued to have to do all of the daily activities with the kiddos not to mention the online school and All of the other things and lead their meetings and, it just became well, an exercise in how much can you handle.

And at some point, something had to give, I think. And I think that each of them, each of the women who worked with me found their way through that, but it was not easy by any means. And I think that to go back to the book and the chapter on leaning in, I think that's an example of well, let's don't, let's let's take a step back here and see what's really working for me at that, or working for the individual at any given time in their life, rather than under the, old rules pre COVID, I'll say.

Okay, I have to say I am seeing that. You know, I recently attended my 55th reunion and most of the women are still alive that I graduated with, and a big part of my original little gifted class, the post Sputnik gifted kid, the, I mean, they were still alive and still going, and they had, an attitude that's very similar to what you're talking about, you women, and that is, we have been through a lot.

very much. And we have survived so much. Here's the key. I no longer care what people think about me. It's incredible, and I do see this in older gifted women now, and I'm talking about usually the women over 40. They don't give a damn anymore about what people think of their opinions, what people think of their clothes, what people think of their bodies.

These were really important aspects. I mean, do you remember dress for success? 

Do I remember Dress for Success? Of course I do. 

That is so over among the bright women that I work with and certainly with the women I graduated with. It's like, no, they're just like, no, I'm not doing it anymore. You know, I've been through it.

I've seen what happens. You know, if they sometimes the pandemic pointed out to them that they were really in an unequal relationship with their husband and they parted from them and those are not miserable divorcees. They're pretty happy. And, but most of them renegotiated their relationships. In such a way as to be more egalitarian, because as we said in the book, right, women are well adjusted and, that really is a good thing until they're too well adjusted for their own good.

And then it's a perfect time to start renegotiating all those, all the things that you say yes to when there's certainly other people who can carry some of the weight for you as well. 

Yeah. 

The eternal optimist that I am. Can we go back to the book and just talk about a couple of things that we're most proud of.

Okay. I'm like still really proud of the beehive model, which even a few people have written about and I wish it would get out there more because you know, Robin, we based it on, the most we really based it on empirically valid research not on our opinions. What we did is combine everything we knew about general ability, general intellectual ability, and specific ability.

We combined that with what we knew about personality. and with what we knew about privilege. I, further, I took our model a little further in a recent chapter that my students and I got together and wrote that was called Cognitive Ability, Personality, and Privilege, and showed how when those are the three most powerful variables in determining a pathway, and particularly for women, if you understand their, abilities, especially their specific abilities, what they're really good at.

And their personality, like what aspect, and that's what we're getting into the next few weeks, right? We're going to be talking about the neophyte factor, but the factors of personality. When you combine those, then you've got a really clear idea. When we have intelligence and personality, we have a really good idea of what kinds of career paths, what kinds of vocations, callings, would be appropriate.

Right for that person, but then you have to add privilege or distance from privilege and that's an and that's intersectional and when we combine those we can really figure out how to do psychotherapy and counseling with women in such a way as to help them to Use their abilities to the best the ones they like as you and I know you can be really good at something You totally hate but the abilities That they treasure if you put those together with their strongest personality traits, and then you help them to work toward social justice within their family, meaning their gender relations within their community and within their society so that they can neutralize some of those of.

Then you've got a woman who's firm in her purpose and can go forward with her life. I'm still proud of that chapter, Robin, and I think it still helps us to understand pathways for gifted girls and women. I think it does, 

too. I, you know, I just did a talk for the AAUW, the American Association of University Women up in South Dakota, where I grew up, and I brought in, I didn't talk specifically about the Beehive model, but I did bring in distance from privilege as a, something that yeah.

You're welcome. I know for me, I have to keep paying attention to in all the work that I do because so much of my work in the last 10 years, it's really been about internally changing things inside of us. I will say that sometimes I make myself a project more so than I will probably like and I think a lot of talented women do the same.

The thing that I'm most proud of is. You know, I was able to highlight some of the young women who I was working out with at the Herberger Academy at ASU right before I left, and I, am still, I've told those, all of the students boys and girls alike, I'm here for you until I'm dead. And I, so I've stayed in touch with them and I love to see where they're taking their lives and truly, so proud of what they have accomplished in their lives.

We have somebody who when she was 12, wanted to be a veterinarian, she downgraded her career aspirations at her, the first exam that she got to be on. And she ended up graduating from an Ivy league veterinary school not long ago. She's an example of somebody I'm so proud of. So I think that for me, as I.

I was inspired and very, grateful that you invited me to co author the book with you. And I was so glad that I could bring in some of the young women the stories of the young women who I worked with. During the time I was at the Herberger Academy because I've been able to follow them for 10 years and to see the remarkable women that they have come into so something that we're doing is working.

That is delightful and I, have to say it's the same. I still hear from, I hear from girls who I talked to in their, you know, in special presentations with smart girls, and now they're young women doing these amazing things and saying just want you to know that it had a real effect on my life. I hear from graduate students who I didn't even think liked me at the time I felt like you were challenging me to do something that I wasn't able to do, but now I realize that I really was.

So I want to thank you. I think, well, that's funny because, you know, honestly they're people I didn't think I had that much impact on but that, but they were impacted by smart girls and by the, message that we gave that. You know your, purpose in life is what makes you strong and and that there is a place for you in the world that you don't have to give up.

You don't have to give up the idea you've fallen in love with in order to fall in love with another person. And I think that it's true. A lot of the things that we wanted to come true for young women did come true. You know the, group of people that bought most of the books, I mean, all the smart girls now are approaching having sold a hundred thousand books of that group.

The largest group was teachers. And it makes me glad to know that teachers read the book and didn't just see, really see and know the girls in their class better. They saw themselves. I can't tell you how many teachers have said, I never thought of myself as gifted or creative and now I see, and that's a wonderful thing to learn.

It really is. It makes all the difference because when you understand yourself, when you truly understand who you are, how your brain works, that your brain is faster than most other people's brains, that you have different responsibilities and gifts than other people have. It makes all the difference going forward so that regardless of what's happening in the outside world, what we're navigating politically or societally and all of the external barriers.

If we remember who we are, I think that's the key to this, isn't it? 

Yeah, and not giving a damn about other people's opinions. It's I mean, I really think that I love Gen Z so much because I think they're really taking a cue from this generation of women who survived the pandemic, and they're saying, I am not going to comply.

I am not going to conform with your ideas of what a girl or a woman is supposed to be. And I'm not just talking about the privileged kids. Like here in my rural area, I see young women who are, you know, in rodeo and stuff and young women who are Really succeeding in agriculture, who I never would have, you know I don't think 20 years ago, I could have fathomed that.

And then also the, when we were bringing in young people from urban areas in Kansas City who were really coming from difficult backgrounds. It was stunning to see the amount of creativity and activism in this group. None of them saw social activism as separate from their lives as students, or separate from their career.

For them, it was all intertwined, and it made them so brave. So I remember sitting there thinking, Wow, I wish I'd been that brave when I was that age. You know? Brave 

and complex and I think and creative and those are all the things that we wish for any, person. Oh, for sure. 

Well, Barb, any final thoughts we could go on and on, but any final thoughts for us today on smart girls and regret.

You regret ? 

I really I, think I've gotten the regrets outta my system. And I hope that we have pled for forgiveness for not seeing into this. If we do ever write one again, Robin. We will write only about dead eminent women and. And, I think, you know, really we, instead of leaning into our institutions and corporations, we'll teach women instead how to not lean in, but push back.

I'm going to leave it at that, everyone. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time. Take care.

Well folks, that's a wrap for today's episode of Two Shrinks on the Farm. We hope you had as much fun listening as we did making this episode, and maybe even picked up a new way of thinking along the way. We're here to offer you something different, no growth mindset platitudes or just work hard or mantras.

We're all about getting you to question everything, especially those voices in your head telling you to stick to the status quo. And if you've ever wondered how the two of us ended up on a farm, it's because we figured out that sometimes the best way to get unstuck is to dig in the dirt, literally and metaphorically.

Plus watching the horses roam free, tromping through the fields in search of the elusive morale mushroom, or picking cherries along the road. It's way more enlightening than a year's worth of meetings. So if you enjoyed today's episode, share it with a friend, or maybe with that one person who needs to hear that it's perfectly fine to trade in the corporate grind for something a little more natural, like planting flowers and dreaming up your next adventure.

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Until next time, we'll be here on the farms during the pot, both literally and figuratively. See you soon on Two Shrinks on the Farm.

if you're interested in having your personality tested and interpreted by the two of us, or you're ready to bring us in to work with your teams, Get started by sending an email to [email protected] and we'll help you start the process.

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