Mainstream career advice for women loves to pretend we can’t possibly know even the most basic facts about having a career. 

We tell women to ask for a raise, as if they don’t know they work for money. 

We tell them to “lean in,” as if the problem is just that no one ever bothered telling them to try. 

We tell them to communicate better at work, as if women have never learned to talk, and as if men are known for their exceptional communication.

It’s very similar to how we talk about domestic labor. We insist on locating the problem in individual women rather than acknowledging the political reality. The truth is that women are outpacing men on almost every imaginable metric: college graduation, law and medical school admissions, and more. Yet our hard work and competence never seem to translate into fair pay, equal respect, or even an acknowledgment that most women work. 

Stefanie O’Connell’s The Ambition Penalty takes a hard look at the double binds and misogyny women face at work. She’s a brilliant speaker and writer, and I learned so much talking to her. Her book will be out in two weeks, but pre-orders are live now (and very important for publisher numbers). 

You can find her book, as well as all books I talk about on the podcast, and a list of book recommendations, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. 

If you are in New York City, I hope you’ll consider attending Stefanie’s book launch event.

About Stefanie O’Connell

Stefanie O’Connell is an award-winning journalist and author of “The Ambition Penalty: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up– and Then Pushes Them Down.” Her work dismantles the myths keeping women from equitable pay, leadership and power — one data point at a time.

With bylines in Slate, Bloomberg, CNBC, Glamour UK, Newsweek, USA Today and Business Insider, Stefanie exposes how power and gender collide to keep women “in their place.” She also wrote, hosted and co-produced the WEBBY winning podcast, “Money Confidential” for REAL SIMPLE magazine. Stefanie has appeared on ABC World News, CBSN, Fox Business, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, The Doctors and local news stations across the US. An honors graduate of New York University, Stefanie lives in New York City with her daughter.

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