What I'm Reading and Thinking

January 4, 2024

Podcast of Interest

I just discovered the Jabot podcast, named after the decorative collar Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore. It’s an Above the Law product, dedicated to the challenges women, people of color, LGBTQIA and other diverse populations face in the legal industry. The subjects addressed aren’t just directed at women in BigLaw. It’s definitely worth examining the episodes for something that may speak to you. 

An Impressive List of Good Books

Lisa Kaplowitz of the Rutgers Center for Women in Business recently posted a great list of women-oriented books she read in 2023. I’ve read several and have a few more in my TBR pile. If you need inspiration for this year, check out her list!

Women Make Less Even When They Negotiate

In the column of the unsurprising, new research published in the Academy of Management Discoveries shows that, even though women are negotiating more (I would argue that they are merely getting credit for negotiating more), women are still getting paid less. So, again for the people in the back, it’s not that women don’t ask, it’s that they get punished for asking.

Why Remote Work Helps Women

In an article in the Atlantic [paywall], Olga Khazan writes about how remote work brought many young mothers into the workplace.

Where Remote Work Allegedly Fails

A study recently concluded that there are certain disadvantages to fully remote work. After examining 20 million scientific studies and 4 million patent applications over the past 50 years, the study’s authorities found those studies and applications that were collaborated in person produced more “breakthrough” work than those who were remote. Lots of questions on this one. First, very few people worked remotely until the last 5 years, so it seems like looking at the last 50 would heavily bias the study in favor of work done in person. Second, a study that looks over the past 50 years would primarily be looking at scientific work done by men—ignoring that many of the advantages of remote work inure to women (see above). Of course, neither of these observations stopped the Business Insider (paywall) from concluding in its headline that: “Remote Work Hurts Innovation.” And perhaps we should just stop talking about remote work and office work as a dichotomy, and work towards hybrid workplaces. There is something in-between working in-person every day and restricting all communications to Slack.

A Reanalysis of the Housewife

My TBR list for 2024 is already insanely long, but the Good Men Project’s review of Housewife: Why Women Still Do It All and What to Do Instead by Lisa Selin Davis makes this book sound interesting. It will be released in March of this year.

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