happy Sunday from the cool midwest. i’m personally waiting for fall weather to make its elite entrance. summer is my least favorite season, ironically.
yesterday was my birthday. 41. a dear friend said over facetime, you are now officially in your 40s. grateful to be here and reside in this decade for a min. until recently, i hated my birthday. it always felt like something to get through instead of something to look forward to. but that’s changed because i’ve finally got the people part of life right. had a gorgeous day celebrating and felt deeply loved.
last week, we heard from dozens of women in response to our essay about the cautionary tale of the well-intentioned manager and how important it is to not surrender your psychological sovereignty at work. and while it’s validating to know we’re not alone, the resounding chorus of i’ve experienced this many, many times leaves us with a more sobering question: if this exhaustion is universal, what is the way forward?
well, we have to get really real. and talk about how women everywhere are systematically being evicted from the workplace. but first…
five things you need to know right now about the culture of work…
nearly 25% of US workers are functionally unemployed. this includes people who are looking for a job, involuntarily working-part time and are earning poverty-level wages, or less than $26k annually before taxes.
58% of Americans would turn down a promotion that required them to be available outside of working hours or interfered with work-life balance, even if it came with a bump in pay.
Eleven years after Hayden Panettiere was retaliated against for disclosing her postpartum depression, Neutrogena admitted they made her feel unsupported following intense public backlash surrounding the actress’s death.
P&G is the latest company to bet on employees as creators. Chief Communications Officer Damon Jones hinted at the cultural shift following the Cincinnati Music Fest. after showcasing internal talent, Jones openly questioned whether employees are actually an organization’s greatest creative asset.
Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, a new Netflix documentary from Rory Kennedy, examines the devastating consequences of prioritizing profit over the safety of people. the film highlights the immense courage of today’s modern heroes — workplace whistleblowers, offering a devastating, enraging yet inspiring look at those risking their careers to expose corporate greed.
women are being evicted out of the workplace.
last Thursday night, i chose violence i was scrolling on LinkedIn and commented on a post by the CEO of Chief, Alison Moore, that agitated me. she posted the alarming stat that’s been circulating this month, women accounted for 100% of the labor decline in July.
my first reaction was to double tap in solidarity. but as i kept reading some of the supporting text that accompanied the perfectly polished graphic in Chief’s green and light gold branding, i felt a divine agitation.
…the report doesn’t explain the 100%...it’s helpful, but stops short of naming root causes....we must better understand root causes...I wish I had the answers. But I do know it’s exactly why the work we do at Chief matters more than ever before right now. Networks. Encouragement. Support. Partnership…
by the end, that thing activated in me where i have to say something. this is the same trait that got me in trouble most of my career. so i asked…respectfully,
i’m curious what chiefs mission is right now. what is the job to be done with the organization today for the people it serves and society in broader terms. not the subscriber number that drive your growth…
and because i was fueled by the exhausting cocktail of late-luteal hormones and early-perimenopause insomnia, i woke up at 1a to a pitch-black room, reached for my phone and to my delight and saw Alison responded:
maya watson I appreciate the question- and will give you the short answer— Chief has and will continue to evolve to meet our women leaders where they are. Right now, our focus is on keeping senior women’s expertise in the workforce by helping them navigate through ( increasingly!) non-linear career paths. That shows up in many ways: coaching, community, connection and more. 💚
for the next 45 minutes, i fired off three additional comments that began with, i say this with deep love and respect… idk, maybe it was the hormones. maybe i was tired. or maybe it’s the fact that women at work are facing a structural emergency and we’re not ringing the bell loud enough.
we are in a full blown crisis.
and the July jobs report was just icing on an already disgusting cake. what worked for women’s advancement in the last season is not even going to come close to cutting it in this season. let’s paint the picture of the moment…
the systemic eviction began in earnest last year with a coordinated attack on Black women, who were pushed out by the hundreds of thousands, a number that has since increased to over 600,000 (i think it’s much more than what’s being reported). corporate America quickly took that as a cue to admit they ever cared and companies everywhere actively eliminated their once earnest DEI commitments, that we sometimes forget included female mentorship programs, formal sponsorships and career pipelines we’ve been building since the 70’s.
then they faked us out with the return-to-office mandates, that were framed as neutral corporate policies but operated as an effective mechanism to evict moms. i hate that i’m quoting Sheryl Sandberg’s organization (especially after just finishing Careless People), but the data proves that only half of corporate America even pretends to prioritize women’s advancement anymore. the other half are actively stripping away the flexible and hybrid structures that allowed us to survive (not even thrive) while also navigating the dissolving societal safety net.
then, the government allowed billions in federal pandemic-era childcare stabilization funding to expire which meant that thousands of daycare centers were forced to spike tuition or close their doors overnight, forcing parents into an agonizing choice between a paycheck and care. the fallout was immediate: the labor force participation of mothers with children under five fell by 2.8% in a hyper-compressed timeline, marking the sharpest mid-year decline in over 40 years.
and if you think HR or federal agencies are coming to save us, which i don’t think anyone does, the recent policy shifts have weakened enforcement bodies like the EEOC, making it exponentially harder to resolve systemic cases of workplace harassment, wage gaps, or pregnancy discrimination.
so, naturally, we’ve tried to pivot and upskill in the AI wave, only to find the oligarch bros blatantly defaulting to its gold old boys’ club settings. women currently account for less than 26% of hires in the booming AI sector, with top female executives leaving the prominent firms en masse. nbd, we’re just actively being locked out of the most consequential, highest-paying tech revolution of our lifetime.
ok, fine, we’ll try to build our own tables. but, the already ridiculous 2% of VC funding allocated to women-led startups has shriveled to a miserable 1%. left with absolutely no choice, we are migrating to the creator economy in droves, constructing our own monetization loops and digital ecosystems because traditional infrastructure has evicted us. it’s why nearly two-thirds of all content creators today are women, according to Goldman Sachs creator research (i pray the Substack founders don’t hate women too).
the deeply frustrating part of this reality is that women are more educated and possess more degrees than men today, making up the majority of the U.S. college-educated labor force. but despite our academic dominance, we still we still hold a pathetic 10% of CEO positions across the Fortune 1000 and less than 29% of leadership roles in the entire corporate C-suite.
and because we are smarter, we can see it all so clearly. it hurts. it’s not fair. and it’s not right. the pain we are all feeling right now is the price of our collective brilliance. no matter how many times we adapt, we are still bargaining with a corporate architecture designed by men who never built it to hold us, never wanted us there, and never imagined we would survive it.
also, this is just work. we haven’t even begun to open the other tabs of modern relationships, marriage, motherhood or the crushing mental load of caring for aging parents.
but there’s a massive flaw in their master plan. we are brilliant, resilient, and everything of value gets birthed through us. we are the mothers of revolutions.
just last week, Fast Company highlighted 21 Black women who are actively pivoting, reinventing themselves, and finding entirely new ways to express their ambition. they are proof that you cannot kill a force that is designed to create life.
for years, organizations have been laying the groundwork, probably unaware they were mobilizing for this moment. they built the infrastructure, gathered talent-dense circles of brilliant women and created sustainable business models. and that should be celebrated. from the Female Quotient to historically Black sororities to communities like Chief. but massive rosters and exclusive membership clubs mean absolutely nothing if we don’t organize and show up when the city of women has been lit on fire.
i can promise that all of these brilliant and capable women who are being evicted out of the building don’t need more content. they don’t need more panels talking about what could happen, or safe conversations about the pain of what’s currently happening, or encouraging pats on the back to stay in the fight. we need brave, strategic and stealth coordinated effort to initiate an entirely new revolution—one designed together by women, for women.
rome is burning, and we are the first burn victims. and I guess what i really wanted to say on that LinkedIn post last week is that we are dealing with structural rejection. and wrapping this rollback in polite phrases like pivots or non-linear journeys trivializes the damage. we aren't voluntarily shifting. the architecture is breaking under us.
we need leaders of these female-led orgs, like you, Alison Moore, who are sitting on top of resources and powerful networks to recognize that they maybe they were placed at the helm for such a time as this. maybe they are meant to be the brave women who stop managing the decline, step out onto the ledge, and build something that has never been done before. we don’t need them asking for answers. we need the people running them to realize they are meant to become the answers they seek.
sending u so much love,
m
p.s. we will be sending out information this about our first monthly virtual meet-up, book club, conversation club thing around Careless People. if you are interested in joining, hop in our subscriber chat and let us know so we can add you to the private chat and email list so we don’t spam everybody else.
Other than Happy Belated Birthday, Maya, (mine is Tuesday), I’m not so sure there is anything left to say. You said it all with hella clarity and conviction.
Ohhh so the 22nd? That’s when my birthday is too!