Financial Feminist - 156. How Capitalism Weaponized Feminism with June Carbone

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Have you ever felt stuck in a workplace catch-22? You work hard, play by the rules, but somehow never get ahead? This episode of Financial Feminist tackles the frustrating reality many women face in ...the professional world. We're joined by June Carbone — author and Chair of Law, Science, and Technology at the University of Minnesota Law School. Her upcoming book "Fair Shake," written alongside 2 co-authors, explains plain and simple how the American economy is rigged to hold women back. In this insightful discussion, June introduces and explains the “triple-bind” — a concept that describes the limitations and unfair choices women confront in the workplace, and breaks down the three parts of the bind and how they hold women back.  Tune into this episode to hear June’s powerful insights on: navigating the “triple bind” in the workplace strategies for career advancement that don't require compromising your integrity the connection between women's economic struggles and societal factors Whether you're just starting your career or looking to break through a glass ceiling, this episode is packed with insights to help you win the game on your own terms. Read transcripts, learn more about our guests and sponsors, and get more resources at https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-show-notes/156-how-capitalism-weaponized-feminism-with-june-carbone/.  Not sure where to start on your financial journey? Take our FREE money personality quiz! https://herfirst100k.com/quiz. Get June’s book: Fair Shake Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I see employers as exploiting women. Women are more likely to stay with a company that passes them over for promotion than a man is. And companies often evaluate women for leadership and face it oddly on how aggressive and greedy they are. And that misvaluation of women and women's willingness to stay even after being passed off for promotion. These women make the trains run out of time. They are the ballast, the institutional memory, and they are not paid commensurate with the value they perform for institutions. Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa
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Starting point is 00:01:02 Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa Thanks for being here. I'm Tori. I host the show. This is the most popular and if I do say myself, I'll say it myself. Best show you can listen to about money for women. We talk about how money affects you differently and about how you can get more money, save more money and fight the patriarchy by getting rich. I also have a book of the same name called Financial Feminist. So if you dig this podcast, you should read the book. You're going to learn new stuff and other stuff in the book. And we just thank you for being here. Like the show, you can share it. You can do in the book. And we just thank you for being here. Like the show, you can share it,
Starting point is 00:01:27 you can do all the things, you know what to do. You've listened to podcasts before. Okay, now you might not have maybe recognized today's guest's name, that's okay. And you may be thinking, well, this sounds, I mean, depending on how we title it, this sounds really deep. I am not kidding.
Starting point is 00:01:45 This episode is like the reason I wanted to start this show. I say it in the episode, but I felt like I was like back in college for the first time since I was actually in a classroom. I learned so much. I was literally like taking notes and like referring back to things and asking questions. This episode is so fascinating and is going to be one that you just every three minutes,
Starting point is 00:02:12 you're going to learn something that you did not know before. So let's talk about today's guest June Carbone is a Rubina chair of law, science and technology at the University of Minnesota law school. Previously, she has served as the Edward A. Smith and Missouri Chair of Law, the Constitution and Society at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, and as the Associate Dean for Professional Development and Presidential Professor of Ethics and the Common Good at Santa Clara University School of Law. She has written From Partners to Parents and co-written Red Families vs. Blue Families, Marriage Markets, and Family Law. Multiple, multiple books. She is a co-author of the International Survey of Family Law.
Starting point is 00:02:52 Written alongside her co-authors, her new book, Fair Shake, which I cannot recommend enough, explains plain and simple how the American economy is rigged to hold women back. And boy, oh boy, do we get into that. Okay, hard to distill these topics, but here's a couple of things we get into. We talk about gender roles and how the changes in the last few decades have had a profound impact across the economy. We also get into some of the reasons why women are consistently fucked over by corporations, even though we are an extremely valuable asset. And we also touch on a few other things like the importance of collective bargaining, aka unions. The answer to the question we always ask, which is like, how can we really actually end
Starting point is 00:03:29 systemic oppression and also socially responsible investing? Now, I know a lot about these things. I thought I knew a lot about these things. You might be sitting there going, I don't need to listen to this episode. I know that gender roles are fucked. You do. You do need to listen because the way she approaches this and the research she has done and sites is just, again, it's going to be mind blowing. Let's just get into it. Let's go. But first, a word from our sponsors. Imagine being the first person to ever send a payment over the Internet. New things can be scary, and crypto is no different. It's new, but like the Internet, it's also revolutionary.
Starting point is 00:04:11 Making your first crypto trade feels easy with 24-7 support when you need it. Go to Kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. Welcome to BMO ETFs. Where do you get your insights?
Starting point is 00:04:37 Volatility has continued to be a hot topic. I think the Fed does have other cards to play. Are these mega cap tech companies here to stay? Never before has there been a better time to be an ETF investor. BMO ETFs presents Views from the Desk, a show all about markets and investing with ETFs. New episodes every Thursday morning. I don't know if I've ever been to Minnesota. I think I feel like I should. You're liking it so far? Yes. I've been here about 10 years now and we live next door to the ski area, you know,
Starting point is 00:05:33 overlooking Lake with a recreational area in the background and gorgeous sunsets. That sounds lovely. And every three weeks it's a new climate. The seasons are intense. Yeah. I'm up in Seattle and I feel like we get seasons but not intensely, which I actually appreciate. I'm like, no, I want to feel like it's fall and I want to feel like it's winter, but I don't want like negative temperatures because that does not sound fun. But let's cross country ski. Negative five at my age, it's warm. Perfect. Well, there you go my age, it's warm.
Starting point is 00:06:09 Perfect. Well, there you go. Yeah, it sounds like I'll have to come out and try it out. We're so excited to have you. Thank you for being here. We would love if you're comfortable to share your first money memory. What is the first time you remember interacting with money? And how did that influence the way you manage money moving through life? Yes. Well, I was saying, I'm sure this will separate me for most of your audience, but my husband and I, we've been married over 40 years. Early in our relationship, we talked about our childhood experiences and we both have the same reaction to our parents. We're eldest children.
Starting point is 00:06:42 They doted on us. They would give us anything we wanted, even if they couldn't afford it. And my husband and I both responded to that by feeling the only way to be independent of our parents was never to want anything. And we've lived our whole lives that way. I mean, in my entire life, there were two things I wanted, I felt I couldn't afford ever. Unlimited long distance phone calls when I was in college. And a house with a nicer view in the Bay Area. But I dealt with that by selling that house, moving to Minnesota. And I have a lovely view with sunsets that after 10 years, we are still in awe of every night.
Starting point is 00:07:25 That sounds lovely. It's interesting to think about like giving you everything and so the response to that as you moved into adulthood. Yes. We've had a very nice life. But again, we have everything we want. Yeah, I grew up with a similar background where it was like I didn't want for anything and I really, you know, that was a privilege and I really appreciated that. And at the same time, like my parents are some of the most frugal people I've ever met. So it's that balance of spending money on the things that you value also the frugality of the things you, you don't really care about. So your career spans so many different areas of law, you get family law, bioethics, what
Starting point is 00:08:03 drew you to law in the first place and specifically to the various forms you've practiced and the various forms you've written about? So I was certainly a nerd as a kid. I did not fit in the world I grew up in. And, you know, my parents very much, you know, were focused on the fact that, you know, my fights with my mother in high school were that I did not wear enough makeup, I did not wear my skirts short enough, and I did not pay enough attention to boys. But what I did pay attention to was politics. So one of my earliest memories was being totally for Kennedy. In fact, I went to see Bobby Kennedy give a talk when I was 12
Starting point is 00:08:45 years old. My best friend and I took the bus downtown and went all by ourselves to see him speak. And so I was just, you know, absorbed by politics. As I get older, I was a high school debater in, you know, in high school and got more and more interested in law and less in politics. But this is all intellectual. I mean, I was the first in my family to go to college. You know, one of very few lawyers in the family. And I was really intrigued by the Policy Act. And I liked the technicalities of law, but I liked teaching better. When we're thinking about your background, especially when it comes to like researching family dynamics and political divides, can you tell us more about that?
Starting point is 00:09:31 Because we've had some recent guests talk about domestic labor and families and that is so incredibly fascinating. Well, I see it as a puzzle. I mean, you know, looking at the broad spot, the family law, I see it as incredibly responsive to economic change. And indeed, my father, Nancy Conn, and I have been at war with economists like James Q. Wilson or even the new book by Melissa Carney on marriage saying economics cannot explain culture. And we say, you're out of your mind.
Starting point is 00:10:01 Of course, it explains culture. So where we've been pretty radical for a long time is, I wanted to write an article for years, the feminist movement is a capitalist plot. When you see what happened in the 70s and 80s, it's a remaking of the economy and emphasize kind of work women have traditionally done. And to de-emphasize brawn
Starting point is 00:10:24 and the kind of blue collar jobs that men have traditionally held. And that the family has changed in the 70s and 80s and then more permanently, the same way it did in the 1840s. It is the middle class that were the first movers toward a new model of hyperinvestment of kids paying off brilliantly in a new economic era, and then the rest of the country catches up 100 years later. But that's our story. So I want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly. Do we believe feminism is a hoax?
Starting point is 00:10:57 Is it promoted by capitalism in order to keep what, like, tell me more about that. The change in women's roles is an adaptation to a new economy of the place. It's a huge amount of emphasis on skills women have traditionally done. And women are now in the marketplace. I mean, my argument in the new book is that women are the new organization man, the organization man of the 50s, loyal, competent, self-sacrificing, the ballast that makes institutions run. Not getting all the glory, not the limelight. But men performed that role in the 50s. Women are performing that role now. And the institutions that value that role do a whole lot better.
Starting point is 00:11:39 Are we saying that's a good thing or a bad thing for the progress of women? Both. Okay. Tell me more. that's a good thing or a bad thing for the progress of women? Ha ha, both. Okay, tell me more. Sure. So let me put it this way. One of my best lines is what are the two institutions left in American societies that still represent feminine values? Not feminists, feminine. School teachers and the military. Why the military? At a friend- I was just gonna say why the military?
Starting point is 00:12:08 That does not feel feminine at all. I have a friend, he's Israeli. He was a ruthless about his friends in Israel. Their children have been killed in the Hamas war. And he's talking about the values of the military. Loyalty, self-sacrifice, camaraderie, concerned about something bigger than you. Now talk about corporate America, who represents those values?
Starting point is 00:12:34 Women. If you buy in, right? Yeah. But again, the military as an institution values those things. Now it may also value killing people and a certain amount of aggression, but it values rule following within, you know, rule following and institutional regularity. The institution is bigger than the individual. And that was a lot of the mindset we were trying to
Starting point is 00:13:00 capture in the book. Where you see companies that represent them, you know, when you walk into a room your status is not how tall you are and how much you lie, but rather that you are cloaked with the mantle of institutional legitimacy. When you think about that as a value, women do very well in those environments. If what you're celebrating, Jack Welch is the exemplar of this, Jack Welch the former CEO at GE who represented the modern shareholder primacy area, it's a bet can you break the rules and get away with it? Can you beat the market by manipulating numbers? Can you reach into the ranks and pit the person who breaks through the bureaucracy
Starting point is 00:13:45 to do what the CEO wants, but not necessarily what's good for the institution? So that mindset, that mindset that represents a lot of modern corporate America, break the rules and get away with it, perform today and walk out the door tomorrow with a huge bonus, who cares what happens after you leave. That mindset is a kind of mindset that you could associate with Nietzsche. You could associate with some of the traits in the authoritarian personality. And today we might call that toxic masculinity. I was about to say that sounds pretty toxic masculinity to me. But okay, so to tie it back to what I have. Oh my God, I'm so fascinated and we have so many more questions and I'm
Starting point is 00:14:33 gone off script. So what we're saying is women are becoming more stereotypically masculine? Is that what we're saying? Well, no, we're saying something different. And, you know, it goes through what we try to capture in the book. If you're in that environment, you know, you're in an Enron. Sure. You're working for Elon Musk. Yeah. The only question is, what did you do for me today? Sure. It's transactional. It's transactional, stabbing your colleagues in the back to get ahead. And our argument about this is, yes, there is, I mean, you know, if you do a statistical analysis of men versus women, they're different.
Starting point is 00:15:14 I mean, there's Mark Egan at Harvard Business School. We talked to him about a study he did about misconduct in financial services. And he told us, you want to predict misconduct in financial services. And he told us, he wanted to predict misconduct in financial services. There are two things that jump off out of his regression analysis. One is prior misconduct. The second, men are more likely to commit misconduct,
Starting point is 00:15:38 less likely to be fired, more likely to cause their bosses bigger dollar losses, less likely to be re-hired. Now, if you ask the question why, I mean, if you- Is it because men are more comfortable taking risks? I mean, that's my hypothesis. We argued there are a couple of things. One is the ability to get away with it.
Starting point is 00:15:59 So one bottom line, and those statistics represent that, is women are much less likely to get away with it. They're more likely to be the scapegoats. If you look at Wells Fargo, which institution has the biggest gender disparities in who is fired for misconduct in the country? Wells Fargo. Finance?
Starting point is 00:16:22 Finance in general, but Wells Fargo in particular, they reran the numbers on Wells Fargo after Finance? Yeah. Finance in general but Wells Fargo in particular, they reran the numbers on Wells Fargo after the scandal broke. So they had published these studies before and then they went back and said let's look at Wells Fargo in particular, number one in the country. Now why? Again, if you're selecting for misconduct, most institutions, especially finance, do it by dog lists. You know, you've got a bonus system that rewards it. If you hit your numbers, the institution looks the other way at how you get there. Walmart does this too. If you don't hit your numbers, you're audited and you may be fired. But we're reporting to the authorities because guess what? there's gambling going on in Casablanca
Starting point is 00:17:06 but we only fire the people we want to fire anyway. When you have that kind of system you need a mentor who will protect you. At Wells Fargo some of the women we talked to got fired because their mentors were fired then they were totally vulnerable even if what they were doing was a lesser misconduct than the men around them, if the men had protectors, they weren't fired. Or the boss doesn't like you. I mean, Curie Tolstad at Wells Fargo had a lot of enemies. She's probably taken more of the fall for this than anybody else. But her sense is she was a good soldier.
Starting point is 00:17:42 She made the trains run on time. She didn't invent the system, but she has probably taken a bigger hit than anybody else involved in it. Again, when the crisis hits, everybody is expendable except the boss. Women are more likely to be fired again because they don't have protectors or because they're more disliked for what they do than men who do the same thing. You know, it's a good episode when I have pulled out the notepad so that I can write down all of my thoughts so I can ask you about them so I don't forget.
Starting point is 00:18:12 Okay. One of the things you said though is, you know, okay, the perpetuation of like the dog whistle of telling on each other in order to get ahead. But that seems directly counterintuitive to what you said before about like comradery and like the focus on comradery and teamwork. So what is that friction there between we're promoting a culture of telling each other, get ahead, cutthroat, but also we're one big happy family,
Starting point is 00:18:37 which is the conversation in a lot of corporations. Yeah, but when is it real and when isn't it? Now I love the work. The reason I love Walmart, biggest sex discrimination class action in history, went to the Supreme Court, five, four vote denying class certification in 2011. The advantage of a class action is it has all this information, great data. And what did it tell you? Well, with Walmart, again, and I like spelling this out,
Starting point is 00:19:06 because it's how the system works. Then at other corporations like GE, Jack Welch could have borrowed his system from Sam Walton. And I think that suggestion would make Jack Welch turn over in its grave. But let me explain what the system is. So Walmart, you know, why didn't they promote men? 18% of store managers were women, close to 70% of hourly personnel were women. Also, women applied for these jobs and didn't get them. They selected them, tapped on the shoulder by an existing manager. They had rules, one point fairly rigid, then they got rid of them so that they couldn't be accused of sex discrimination, kept them in practice. Wal-Mart has a policy, you can never be a manager at a store where you were an hourly employee.
Starting point is 00:19:56 You have to be willing to move, and they routinely move, especially successful managers, every three to four years, hundreds of miles away with very little notice. They also delight in hiring B-sub students or C students, not A students. Women are more likely to be A students, especially at the universities where they recruit, which are not top universities. But you know, the branch campuses of a state university, women are definitely the A students in these universities. Now, why do they do that? Well, Walmart, which micromanages things like the temperatures in their warehouses, delegates HR entirely to individual stores. They don't believe in HR.
Starting point is 00:20:40 They don't believe in rules on hiring. They're relatively opaque about hiring and promotions. But high stakes bonus system, up to three quarters of the salary of a store manager comes from bonuses that are measured by total sales divided by labor costs and only labor costs. What does this do? An incentive to commit wages and errors violations. Walmart is number one in the country in wage theft. And you have lots of managers saying you can't really do it unless you're cheap, unless you don't pay overtime to people who put in overtime. They're chronically understaffed and that's a national policy. And now what you do is you encourage workers to clock out and clock in, etc. What's the art to doing that? First, you can't care about your employees. That's why they don't
Starting point is 00:21:40 want you working at a store where you've been an hourly employee, you have friends. Secondly, you have to do it without getting the employees to rebel. They have to like you while you're cheating them. That's tough to pull off. Now, what about camaraderie? Sam Walton, and we talked to some people who said when Walton was still alive, it worked. It works a little bit less well now. Walton made a point of hiring women to be our early employees because they would care about their stores, they would greet their neighbors, they would have deep roots in the community, and he would give them, he had a whole propaganda campaign, you know, Walmart TV, morale boosting sessions in which you identify with Walmart designed for female hourly employees.
Starting point is 00:22:37 Betty Dukes, who brought this case, she's African American, went to work in a store in Pittsburgh, California, which kind of like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is an old steel town where the mills have closed. And she was alive when she got there. You know, she hit rock bottom, contemplated suicide, found God, become a Baptist minister. And when she went to work for Walmart, she thought, this reflects my Christian values, and couldn't figure out why she could never get into the management training program. And the answer, Christian values, is for female hourly staff who identify strongly with Walmart
Starting point is 00:23:19 as an institution, but it's not what they're looking for in their management candidates. You're blowing my mind a little bit. The word that I wrote down in like all caps is just unions, which feels like part of the answer to a lot of these issues is unionizing or collective bargaining. Is that the answer? Is that the answer? Tell me more about that. It is. I mean, so one of the things when you look at modern corporate America, the
Starting point is 00:23:50 rise of shareholder primacy, which means for executives, a high stakes bonus system touch share price. Crushing units is absolutely part of this. Yeah. Well, I'm a lawyer. When I look at the Supreme Court, what is absolutely clear, particularly Samuel Alito's decisions. Yep. But John Roberts, the Chief Justice is not any different. Wholesale effort to crush unions is the focal point for employee camaraderie and for the Democratic Party and a wholesale effort to promote, particularly evangelical churches, Catholic churches, fundamentalist churches, as the bulwark, the union halls of the Republican party.
Starting point is 00:24:34 This is politicized because both kinds of organizations, unions and churches, it's not just the unions can fight back against employers. Unions play an identity that is a focal point for organizing. So without unions, the employees, I mean, Walmart has an incredible turnover rate. In some areas, it's like as high as 77%. And that means there is very little in the way of a stable workforce that identifies with the job that can be a counterpoint to management. And unions, where unions are strong, you have that identification. So it's not just organizing in the sense of imposing the employer. It is organizing in the sense of supplying an identity that translates into the political
Starting point is 00:25:26 sphere as well as the individual workplace. Well, and when the power comes from the people or from the collective, not from top-down organization as well. Right. Yeah. No, and we see Me Too in similar terms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the power of Me Too is identity, mobilization, spontaneous mobilization. I mean, probably Black Lives Matter too, any social movement, right?
Starting point is 00:25:53 Comes from a certain level of, yeah, a focus on the collective, a focus on identity, and of like a direct opposition to some sort of greater than power or institution. Yeah. Right. So when you look at Walmart, Walton made a real effort to create an identity associated with the institution. But again, it was gender. The identity he sold to women, hourly employees is quite different from the identity being peddled to the management trainees. Well, and if you're comparing it, like you said before, to like the military, what I wrote down was like, there's this huge element of control, where especially, you know, unions feel like you're, you're, you have more agency rather than being, you know, controlled. And
Starting point is 00:26:41 I imagine there is a weaponization of the identity to again, of like, they're, you know, controlled. And I imagine there is a weaponization of the identity too. Again, of like, there, you know, we're all a family. I don't know if anybody feels this way, but maybe somebody's like, I'm so pro Walmart. I love it. It's my favorite thing in the world. I don't know. It's how I feel about Costco. And it's how I think a lot of Costco employees feel. I mean, I'm in Seattle, so I'm just like Costco. But I imagine that control is used and like identity in a negative sense to like get you to buy in, get your loyalty and to get you telling on everybody else in order to promote yourself. Yes. And that's, you know, again, one of the changes we try to highlight in the book is the move toward high stakes bonus systems. But you know, the Trump White House also did a lot of the same thing. We have a lot coming
Starting point is 00:27:31 out this week comparing Trump the businessman in terms of tactics with Trump the politician. Keep everybody- Can you give us a little sneak peek into that? Because I'm really curious. Sure. It's in the Hill. But it's basically keep everybody insecure, looking over their shoulder at what other people are doing. Right. Feel you're losing. I mean, that insecurity ties into a loss of status or threaten loss of status. Yeah. Then identify with the leader who's going to save you, who walks on water, who can shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose his supporters, who the charismatic CEO in the corporate sphere, who can shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose the supporters, who the
Starting point is 00:28:05 charismatic CEO in the corporate sphere, who will produce above average returns. And the focus on today. I'm laughing because you're describing, I can't say who because I might get a lawsuit, but one of my previous corporate experiences, almost to a T. Like I almost got fired because somebody else threw me under the bus in order for them to progress in their career. And yeah, charismatic CEO who was also extremely misogynistic and abusive. And oh yeah, you're describing an actual corporate experience I had in my early 20s. Yeah. So it becomes with the territory. So Don Langevoort at Georgetown,
Starting point is 00:28:45 who's a law professor, but heavily into psychology. And you know, these are the post-Enron, post-financial crisis studies, high stakes bonus system, boom bust cycle, everybody's insecure. Who is attracted to that environment? People with a high degree of narcissism, environment. People with a high degree of narcissism, optimism bias, amorality. Well, and a ton of privilege to probably men, right? Straight white men who can most likely succeed in that environment. All of those qualities are more common among men than women, although you can find women if you look hard enough. And when you put that group together and empower them, sexual harassment and bullying and grace,
Starting point is 00:29:30 so does stabbing other people in the back. Right, because there's not a culture of vulnerability, there's not a culture of coming forward, it's just like shame and shadows and cover-ups. And I grew up Catholic, so I know this very well. Yeah. I do want to transition because I've got so off script that I want to get back to some of our questions that we did have for you because I could sit here for six hours and talk to you. So we're talking about your book, Fair Shake, but I am also really interested in hearing more
Starting point is 00:29:57 about your previous book, which is called Marriage Markets. It seems like some of the research from that book may have supported the thesis for Fair Shake. Dive into that book a little bit and what you learned about the dynamics of economics and partnerships. So one of the things we were struck by, and I mean, one connection between the two is we found out when we ran numbers on marriage and women that the only group in American society whose marriage rates have increased are the top 10% of women by income. That's stunning. That used to be the group least likely to marry. Now it's the group most likely to marry.
Starting point is 00:30:36 And when we've started looking at why, and our whole theory is marriage markets, that's how many women match up. Same-sex partners may soften the effect. But when you say where are the men, the men are at the top and the bottom. That you have a dramatically more unequal society. What that society has done is increase the number of high-income men. We were shocked to discover the gendered wage gap
Starting point is 00:31:02 for college graduates as a group has increased steadily since the early 90s. We were surprised. Big, big improvement for college graduates came in the 70s and 80s. After the 90s, college graduate women have lost grip. Where women have increased on men is at the bottom because the group that has taken the biggest hit are blue collar men who used to have good union jobs. In relative terms, their position in society has decreased. I don't mean to interrupt you, but I can connect that back to why Donald Trump is so successful politically in America with those blue collar workers who, yeah, it's that we're taking you're taking away our jobs, you know, back to coal, right? It's like it's very much that sentiment is, it's, it's appeals to stereotypically a blue collar
Starting point is 00:31:52 male, probably what in the Midwest, like stereotypically, that's probably who he appeals to. Yes, and the thing about rural areas, I mean, you know, it drives me nuts because what's well, in the meantime, what's increased? When could you even with AI have unlimited number of jobs, healthcare and education? What does the right attack with a sledgehammer? Healthcare and education. What does the right attack with a sledgehammer? Health care and education. The demand is unlimited only with public funding, and public funding can take the form of increased insurance. But none of us, other than Elon Musk, can afford cancer treatments, state-of-the-art cancer treatments without some degree of cross-subsidization. So again, where are women?
Starting point is 00:32:49 Health care, education, entertainment, restaurants, the growth of the service economy, and service can be high-end. I mean, women are doing really well in medicine, in part because with hospital consolidation, a lot more doctors' jobs are routine. They pay well. They may pay $400,000 a year, but if you work for the hospital, your hours are capped. They're predictable. If you want to make a million a year, you need a private practice. That's what's under your assault. So again, the whole point of marriage markets was you've got more of these high-end jobs that are really competitive, and you've got more of the low-end jobs that, you know, women have a lot of low-end jobs, but it is the mid-ranked jobs that have become much more heavily female. Now, what does that do
Starting point is 00:33:38 to marriage markets? Well, there's two pieces of it. First, if you want to predict marriage, Bertrand, an economist economist did a wonderful study that says the likelihood of a random person you bump into in the street. If the man is more likely to make more than the woman, marriage rates go up. If the woman makes more than the man, marriage rates go down.
Starting point is 00:33:58 And we've spent a lot of time looking at this. And our thesis in marriage markets goes like this. There are two deals that work. One, mostly the guys that make a whole lot of time looking at this. And our thesis in marriage markets goes like this. There are two deals that work. One, mostly the guys who make a whole lot of money and a wife who's quite willing to trade the money and taking care of the kids, a very traditional role. And two, two people make about the same and trust each other. They can trade off. My husband and I over the course of our marriage, in the beginning he made more, now I make more, he's getting ready to retire. But you know, we trust each other, we don't care.
Starting point is 00:34:31 I mean, we have a very strong relationship. Those marriages work. What doesn't work? A woman who makes more than the man and is a primary caretaker for the children, getting married is a fool's errand. And what really destabilizes relationships? Economic instability. Who is hardest hit by the financial crisis?
Starting point is 00:34:54 Something like the people who permanently lost jobs, something like 75% of blue collar men, especially in construction. It's the single biggest factor in the decline of Latino births in the U.S. is the financial crisis. Again, nobody talks about that. We bailed out Wall Street. We didn't bail out Main Street. Not bailing out Main Street and bailing out Wall Street has more to do with radicalization in U.S. politics than almost anything else that's happened. So what we did was to put together this picture and say, why is marriage a marker of class? You have to look at how men and women match up, but you also have to look at instability in income.
Starting point is 00:35:40 The change, and for men, you know, I like to say it this way, but it works for blue collarcollar men, too. What's the difference between Mitt Romney and George Romney? George Romney was a dad who's governor of Michigan. He and Mitt both ran for president touting their success as businessmen and then having been governor of a major state. But for George, the sign of success as a businessman is the health of American motors, which no longer exists, but was profitable in that era. For Mitt, it was how much
Starting point is 00:36:14 money he had in his bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. No one cares about bank capital except as an extraction device. And the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal were saying, admit we're really a good businessman, he'd have more than $200 million in the Cayman Islands. If money is the marker of male status and money, income is insecure, men at the losing end of the downturns behave badly. They behave badly toward partners. They're in a funk. They're online more. Phonography usage goes up and they vote for Donald Trump. I was going to make a joke because I've actually never seen George Romney. I was going to say you're asking what's the difference. I was going to be like better hair, but George Romney
Starting point is 00:37:02 still has pretty good hair. Yeah. Gosh. it's so fascinating. Well, the follow up question I do have for you regarding that though, it might be too early to tell. But you just said, you know, the radicalization of the financial crisis or the financial crisis being like, you know, the driver of politics and the radicalization of so many people. I imagine COVID is having a similar effect but we know that like women are the ones who lost their jobs. Women are the one who are suffering in terms of the emotional labor and in terms of giving up careers because no one was able to care give. So do we know? That's actually not true.
Starting point is 00:37:38 Oh, tell me more. Yeah, Claudia Golden has wonderful studies on this. This is a class divide, not a gender divide. The group least likely to quit, and the group that was back the soonest following COVID recession is college graduate women. And the reason, again, this is why women are the organization men of the current era, women college graduates don't quit Again, this is why women are the organization men of the current era.
Starting point is 00:38:05 Women college graduates don't quit because what they do is they graduate from school, they get the initial job, then they have their kids. When they have their kids, they need a job that cuts them slack. That is where they're not competing against the guy in the next cubicle to put in 60-hour weeks. And so women who have credit, have earned some respect in the organization they're in. When they have kids, they try very hard not to quit because you can't switch jobs with a two-year-old and a four-year-old where the first year on the new job, you've got to prove yourself all over again. Those women with good jobs and some flexibility
Starting point is 00:38:48 were the least likely to quit during COVID. And they were among the soonest return to full time employment afterwards. Now, women, blue collar women, different story. I mean, the whole restaurant industry was decimated. And one of the problems for women who had been working as waitresses, cooks, etc., is they discovered they could get better jobs. My daughter was a chef for a while. She's now a preschool teacher. Being a chef, you can't combine with kids. And so her friends got better jobs during COVID and didn't go back. The restaurant industry
Starting point is 00:39:26 has only recovered recently. No, I appreciate you clarifying that because it's less of a gender divide and more a class divide within gender. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I would love to talk about your book, Fair Shake. It's sort of, I don't know, an anti-hustle culture, anti- girl boss book. And I was actually, I was revisiting Lean In recently, because I listened to another podcast called If Books Could Kill, and they were talking about Lean In, and how I feel like there was so many,
Starting point is 00:39:55 honestly good things that came out of that book. And I feel like in many ways it, you know, progressed us further. And also, you know, you read it and the whole time you're just like, but what about systemic change? You're like, okay, this is all on the individual. And it doesn't even seem like there's much acknowledgement because, you know, I wrote an individual book too. I get it. Like, there's a balance there. So I would love to discuss why the idea of hustle culture, girl bossing, or even like lean in fails so many women in our economy? Well, that's what we try to capture in the book. Now our stories are taken from real cases, people who filed lawsuits. We
Starting point is 00:40:38 were struck that every story is the same story. We talked to women, whether they were managers in a dental office or general counsels to a unit at GE or in finance or Betty Dukes at Walmart. They all thought, hey, I've got this job. I really believe in the company. I'm doing well. I get regular promotions. And then either I hit a glass ceiling or I'm pushed out. And most of them didn't see it coming. And when we went and we looked and we dug deep, what we saw was, okay, this is a company that is transactional, no loyalty to employees, there's a hustle going on,
Starting point is 00:41:27 and if you aren't part of the club with somebody who's taking you along with them, which is really hard to do as a woman, again, a woman in a male-dominated space is the men aren't going to trust you. And so a lot of these women were doing well until they worked and didn't see it coming. The final step that pushed them out, they didn't see coming. And we go through and say, lean in has no solutions to that because what you need is a powerful group protecting you is a powerful group protecting you or the ability to make yourself invaluable to the boss every day by breaking the rules if necessary. And if what you're doing and breaking the rules is illegal, you may be the person who goes to jail. They're quite happy to have you go to jail instead of them. So you can't win the game. On the other hand, one of the things we see happening starting around 2014 and accelerating after 2016 is ESG investing and an increase
Starting point is 00:42:34 in women across the board in the upper ranks of mainstream finance, but not private equity. And big companies, they're now 10% women as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and they outperform the men. Women co-founders in Silicon Valley startups, and while the percentage decreased with the downturn in venture capital funding, firms that have startups that have women co-founders do better. Now, why? Again, my radical take on ESG investing is that it isn't woke, it's good business.
Starting point is 00:43:11 It's not progressive and it's not woke. It's that the ability to manage diversity isn't hell for healthier management practices. Diversity is good for a business. Gender diversity in particular, all kinds of diversity, but gender diversity, NASDAQ has a 2020 study, firms with more women on boards, less securities fraud, just fewer errors that require corrections in financial reports, less earnings, it's called earnings management, I call it earnings manipulation. More transparency. Why? less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less profits, less gone. And also, you know, BlackRock knows that.
Starting point is 00:44:06 I have a long held belief and I appreciate you saying this. It's one of my most controversial takes as a finance expert is that ESG or socially responsible investing is just a way for these companies to make more money off the backs of women and minorities because those kind of people, women, people of color, etc., are more likely to want to do the right thing. And I put that in quotes. And so typically then the ESG funds have a higher fee, you're able to make more money. And so for me, it's like this continuation of a system where it's like, one, it costs more trying to be more ethical. And two, they're trying to more trying to be more ethical. And two, they're trying to limit women's actual money and their portfolio performance by saying, well, you should be feeling like you have a moral or
Starting point is 00:44:55 ethical responsibility to show up and invest differently. So yeah, it's one of the reasons actually I'm not, I like don't personally invest in a lot of like socially responsible funds because I'm like, yeah, but you're still making more money off of me. So I'm going to play the system and I'm going to invest like normal and then I'm going to take that money and do other things with it. Well, good for you. And I want to emphasize, you asked why gender differences. The initial studies were about risk.
Starting point is 00:45:23 The next set of studies were, it's not risk, because hedge funds, you know, female managed hedge funds, which are all about risk, do better than male managed hedge funds. And so the next set of studies were, it's about competition. And then the studies after that showed, you know, if you're talking about competition, to be on a team that's going to invent a cure for cancer, lots of women sign up. If it is a team-based competition or company-based competition, the old days of the 50s, women sign up. If it's competition against the person in the next cubicle, then the
Starting point is 00:46:02 number of men, you know, of the gender disparities and applications increased by something like 50%. It's no longer collaborative, which women tend to that tends to appeal to women, right? And they're accurate. They are going to be stabbed in the back. If you're in a male dominated space, as one of relatively few women, who's expendable for the guy who is clawing his way to the top?
Starting point is 00:46:29 You are. I'm about to ask a question that I often ask on the show, which is basically like solve systemic oppression and solve our entire economy. But like my answer- Oh, I have an answer. Well, great. Tell me the answer.
Starting point is 00:46:40 Because my answer to that is it's like, well, this is the thing of capitalism is you have to participate. You have to get a job in order to pay your rent or mortgage in order to buy your groceries. But also like, we know that the system's rigged. We know it fucking sucks, use my language, but like, so tell me about like, what is the answer? 90% marginal tax risk. Now bear with me a minute. Sure. Yeah, talk to me. So in the academy, I'm a professor, I get attacked from the left all the time.
Starting point is 00:47:08 Even though I have a couple of lefties. Also, it's really funny you say taxes because I literally, people didn't hear, but I jumped on this conversation. I was late because I was so angry at all the taxes we have to pay as a small woman-owned business. But anyway, I'm like, I was joking. I'm a good socialist until I have to pay my own taxes. Oh, I'm just kidding. But, yeah. Hear me out. I think we need to rediscover what happened between 1940 and the early 70s. And, you know, I say I get attacked by the left, even though I am of the left. I'm not allowed to say good things about the period from 1940 to 1970 without saying it's racist or
Starting point is 00:47:45 sexist. But I have news for you. The two best periods in American history for black men in particular were the 40s because of the war and 1965 to 1975 in the South. And when you ask why, I mean, you know, just giving you the big reasons. But here's the thing, because of the- Can I stop you really quick? We're saying war for black men was good? Tell me more. Oh, well, this is the thing. So everybody says, oh yeah, the defense industry needed
Starting point is 00:48:18 workers and now hired black workers, particularly black men when they wouldn't have otherwise. But it's not just that they had more jobs. It's also Franklin Roosevelt made a point of insisting that defense plants be located in pro-union states. And that means the people getting hired, black or white, got decent union jobs. black or white got decent union jobs. And if they got union jobs as opposed to simply defense plant jobs, many blacks kept them after the war. Now when the whites returned, you know, the soldiers returned home from the war, the late 50s were not a good period for black men in the Rust Belt North. But people who got good union jobs, the UAW, for example, their kids went to college. And so that was an important basket.
Starting point is 00:49:14 But I want to say not just unions, but I wanted to get to the tax rates. Yeah. So coming out of the depression and then World War II, is the whole period from 1940 into the 60s, marginal tax rates averaged above 80%. And what that did, and you see it, I mean, it starts during the Depression, discrediting Charlie Mitchell of City, National City, who got a million a year for causing the Great Depression. That's an overstatement about causing it. But he
Starting point is 00:49:46 was his major player in this. Big bonuses were discredited. High marginal tax rates came in because of the combination of the Depression and the war. And they stayed high. Kennedy in 63 lowered them for the first time since Roosevelt. And what that did, when I describe how for George Romney, it's the institution, for Mitt Romney, it's the bank account from Cayman Islands, it's that with 90% marginal tax rates for much of this period, getting a bonus didn't mean anything. The bragging rights of the organization man were, my company is bigger than your company, my company has Bell Labs, it's more prestigious. The critiques of the organization, man of the 50s, is how terrible. College seniors don't ask
Starting point is 00:50:32 how much they're getting paid, and they'd go to work for GE over a sales firm that would give them bonus pay where they could make maybe two or three times as much. They didn't care. They wanted the security and the prestige of a company like GE or GM. Again, why? Because the institution is bigger than the individual. There are no Elon Musk's. The hero of the era is Robert McNamara, the technocrat, who gets us into Vietnam. But the point is, the institution is bigger than the individual. GE's management training program, the 50s, is you need to cooperate. Cooperate better than they do, that other company we're competing with. Now, in that environment, women do quite well. Women aren't averse to competition. They're averse stabbing. They're colleagues in the back as the tournament
Starting point is 00:51:27 format competition that dominated corporate America, the part of corporate America with high stakes bonus systems. So that's a big part of the book. This has a pernicious effect inequality, has a pernicious effect on the entire society. We disinvest in institutions. We disinvest in the future. We invest in, hey, what's going to be on my 401K? What happened to the stock market today? We look at the immediate stuff, the future, that's for fools. We're at BlackRock. That stuff, the future, that's for fools. Or black craft.
Starting point is 00:52:13 So really you're saying tax the rich. Yeah. I mean, if you have a society with greater equality, you invest in things that pay off down the road. You invest in hilarious. You invest in health care. And to your point, we basically made a game out of how much money can you earn as an individual? What is your personal net worth back to the Romney example? Right. And that is success and face and very stereotypically for men. But again, I don't know why I'm linking everything back to Donald Trump, but part of why Donald Trump has been successful is this perspective or
Starting point is 00:52:50 the belief that he is a multi, multi, multi-millionaire billionaire, but really he has what? $500 million in bail he's about to pay. So yeah, it's, oh gosh, this is so interesting. So yeah, we're seeing tax the rich and start to view, well is that these are start to view success not again as individual net worth, but rather how our corporations doing? Is that right? Military. And again, the corporation man thought this way too. They believed, I mean, you know, my husband's stepfather worked for Ford Motor Company He wouldn't dream of buying a car that was made by Ford's
Starting point is 00:53:33 his identity with Ford was incredible to the day he died and His identify identification with UAW was next to his identification with Ford But the answer can't be like get a mallorant tattoo, right? Like buying that hard like get a mallorant tattoo, right? Like, buy in that hard. Is that the answer? Is like buy in harder to the corporations that are like feeding off of us? I don't know. No, I'm saying something else. I'm saying that, again, when I talk about marginal tax rates, I'm not talking about taxing rich so we have more money to spend than other people. That's a complex economic issue. Okay. I'm saying I don't want Elon Musk running the country.
Starting point is 00:54:06 I don't want Elon Musk deciding whether we're going to share military information with Ukraine. I don't want what's good for Teslas. I mean, and you know, Elon Musk, again, terrible for his workers, but also sacrificed car quality for ramping up production to attempt to dominate the market. What happens if you just go a little slower, but you're making decisions on behalf of the greater good? I mean, we're seeing this with Boeing right now too. Seattle, like Boeing's the perfect example of like they are now so focused on profit and on margins that they've sacrificed the safety of their aircraft.
Starting point is 00:54:49 Yeah, Boeing hired a series of Jack Welch acolytes trained at GE. How did Jack Welch make his reputation at GE? Earnings management, earnings went up several hundred percent when he was CEO, share price went up for thousand percent because he beat earnings expectations every time. What's the easiest way to beat earnings expectations? You cut the research lapse, anything that doesn't pay off short-term you get rid of. You get rid of your more expensive senior employees who have real expertise, you emphasize bottom line reductionist metrics, quarterly earnings, give it in about quality defects that will show up five years from now. That's what Boeing did. It destroyed a high quality engineering culture.
Starting point is 00:55:41 And by the way, Carly Fiorina tried to do the same thing at Hewlett Packard. Worse than any of the men. Yeah. I mean, I, my personal belief is I want both. I want what you're saying and I also want to tax the rich. I will take both. I don't want Elon Musk influencing, you know, everything else besides what happens at Tesla. And I would also like to tax the hell out of him. So I will take both plays. Why not both? And if you do that, if you just level the top, then you have a group of leaders whose personal status depends on institutions. And institutions depend on collective well-being. Elon Musk's individual well-being does not
Starting point is 00:56:26 depend on how the country does, at least not in the next 10 years, in the long run it might, but not in the short term. And that's what they're doing. They're selling out our future. His individual well-being now fully hinges on whether Twitter is going to be a turnaround and be a success. One of the things that I want to talk about that's in the book is, I mean, I kind of danced around it. Once women see the rules of the game, they're like, I don't want to play. I don't want to participate. And I see this in the personal finance realm with, again, capitalism in general, of just like, this system screws me over every day, so I'm not going to participate. And we're also told every time we do ask for more money,
Starting point is 00:57:11 okay, you're greedy, you're, you know, you should just sit down and shut up basically. So talk to me about that. It's like once the rules of the game are revealed to us, we don't want to participate. Yeah. So, I mean, the easiest example is the study I mentioned that said, there are both natural experiments with actual ads and efforts to manipulate this in the lab. So again, when I join a top flight research team that's going to cure cancer, competing against other teams, women sign up. High stakes bonus culture, lots of opportunities for advancement, highly competitive.
Starting point is 00:57:52 The number of women declines, I think one study said by 95%. That's what I mean by women taking themselves out of the running. But in some cases, it's also recognizing what the company you're about. Now, but this happens to men and women. One of the big debates in the literature is about women whistleblowers.
Starting point is 00:58:13 We talked to a number of women whistleblowers, but a number of women, when they recognize what was going on, just either quit or sued. But the women who complained, Wells Fargo, one of the best whistleblowers back in 2011, she complained and said, hey, people around me are cheating and I can't make these quotas unless I cheat. What did they do? They fired, trumped up charges because she was complaining. She sued. What did the Court of Appeals say? Oh, you weren't making your photos, they had reason to fire you. They didn't take it seriously until, of course, the scandal erupted on newspapers all over the country. But the women we've talked to in finance is really quite
Starting point is 00:58:58 interesting. I mean, and we've talked to more than one in the course of doing the book, but the woman who was fired at Wells Fargo that we talked to, Michelle Viparossis, she had tried to thread the needle. She cared about her customers. So what she did was to give talks on how, look, Wells Fargo wants you to open multiple accounts for every customer. Here's why customers might be able to use multiple accounts. Don't do fake accounts, talk them into it. But there was some concern for trying to train employees to listen to what people needed and tailor the services to what they need in the context of a completely corrupt institution. And we talked to a number of women, especially women in finance, they care about their customers.
Starting point is 00:59:45 The customer's service end is simply more important to them. They often gravitate toward areas of finance where that's more important, where you can be clever by designing products your customers need. And then they talk about how they're getting bonuses that are less than men who are simply ripping off customers, or how they're the ones who are fired because they're more expendable. And I think figuring out how you can have institutions that do care about customers, and some institutions do, but they're not necessarily as profitable. I feel like all of this, yeah, it's calling back to earlier things we've said too around, yeah, it's not as profitable
Starting point is 01:00:29 to invest in socially responsible companies, but then of course, or at least for the women, it's not as profitable, but then it's more profitable companies because yeah, I talked a lot in my book and it would actually be interesting to hear your perspective that altruism is kind of ingrained in women or girls at a very young age based on like the toys we give girls, like toys we give boys. It's you know, Legos. Okay. I'm talking in stereotypes and I'm talking in gender binary here, but boys, it's Legos and things to build and we're taught, you know, they're taught resilience and they're taught failure and getting back up again and their own ingenuity.
Starting point is 01:01:02 And then women are taught or girls are taught, okay, easy bake ovens, bridal veils, right? Doll houses, they're told that like their value to society is how they give to others. Like we give a two year old child another child to take care of. Like that feels bonkers to me. And then for me with personal finance, like when women start having the audacity to say, okay, I, yes, I'm going to advocate for my, my raise or yes, I'm going to, you know, show up in these spaces or yes, I'm going to charge this amount. Society and the patriarchy then weaponizes that altruism and says, well, you're greedy, you should just want this for the collective. I mean, my Instagram comments still are just like,
Starting point is 01:01:40 you should do this for free if you really loved this. Like, why don't you care enough to just do this because you want to do it? So I feel like that's a bit of what we're talking about here too, where it's like, even in like, you were talking about, you know, cancer research or whatever, women are going to be like, yes, this is for the good of the world. Great. And then the moment they might want to get paid for something, society is just like, well, why are you a terrible person for wanting money? Yes. And that's what I was saying about Women Are the New Organization, men, that the mommy
Starting point is 01:02:09 track, which has its own dynamics. A lot of women are willing to trade lesser opportunity for advancement or for raises for a secure job that gives them time to spend with their kids. Not a bad deal. I mean, I went into teaching. I love teaching. I much prefer the law practice. But when I did it initially, I took a salary cut and did it in part because I had a young kid. And so I had more control of the hours. I work more
Starting point is 01:02:37 now than I did then. But again, I'm in a job, great job security, and I choose when I work. And I was quite happy to make that trade-off. I see employers as exploiting women. Women are more likely to stay with a company that passes them over for promotion than a man is. Companies often evaluate women for leadership, and basically on how aggressive and greedy they are. That's a misvaluation of women and women's willingness to stay even
Starting point is 01:03:09 after being passed off for promotion. These women make the trains run out of time, they're the ballast, the institutional memory, and they are not paid commensurate with the value they perform for institutions. Or even non compensated working parents, you know, stay-at-home moms. Like that's what keeps society running. The emotional labor, the physical labor, that's all unpaid. And society would fall apart if women decided tomorrow, you know what, I'm not going to
Starting point is 01:03:38 do this anymore. And again, do you know that in the 70s, Congress passed by overwhelming margins a child care bill that would have invested in universal pre-K federally funded child care subsidies, dramatic increase in just the entire federally funded institutional support for trial hearing and Nixon beat at it. Fucking hell. Of course he did. Of course he fucking did. Because he was moving to the Christian right and to low tax, low spend conservative Republicans. So both houses are both sections of Congress, House and Senate passed it. So it just went to his it went to his desk. He was like, No, yeah, fucking hell. Okay. I'm so angry. And
Starting point is 01:04:35 you know, universal pre case. So if you want if you want support for all universal pre pre K, I mean, it's been passed by Florida. It's passed in Florida? That's the last place I would have expected. I don't think it may have passed in Oklahoma. I'm trying to remember whether it was at our Medicaid expansion. But again, Medicaid expansion, a lot of money. I mean, not just for 40, Medicaid pays for 40% of births in the U.S. The COVID relief package paid for an additional year of postpartum benefits. It took Mississippi forever to adopt it. Again, in conservative states with high maternal mortality rates, maternal mortality tends
Starting point is 01:05:19 to be postpartum rather than during childbirth. States with some of the highest rates of maternal mortality are least likely to adopt these provisions. But if you were to say what gives you the biggest bang for your buck in public spending, it's early childhood. Maternal health, child health, child care. One of the concepts you have in the book, and we were talking about before, of like, okay, once women see the rules of the game, they don't want to play this as part of it, is this concept of the triple bind. Can you break this down for us and give us some examples of what this looks like too? Sure. First, women don't compete on the same terms as the men, they lose. What does that mean? Again, a number of women never
Starting point is 01:06:01 saw it coming. Betty Dukes is just wonderful. She works for Walmart. She thinks it shares her Christian values. She bragged she has deeper roots in the community than Walmart does. She had been in Pittsburgh, California longer than Walmart. And what she only gets when she becomes part of the class action is that those are qualities Walmart viewed
Starting point is 01:06:26 as disqualifying for promotion. Secondly, if you play by the rules of the game, you've figured them out. You're more likely to be hated and may be fired for doing the same thing as the men. One of the women we talked to at Wells Fargo described how she was teaching her employees how to do it right. Why did she get fired? Because the Wall Street Journal wrote a story that profiled her. She didn't do anything illegal. She was doing things that were less egregious than what the men around her were doing, but she made the mistake of attracting the attention of the Wall Street Journal. If you don't have a powerful protector, you're toast when the company gets in trouble. Third, the triple bind is that women who fully understand
Starting point is 01:07:20 that what it takes to get ahead is stabbing other people in the back, often don't want to do it. And so our advice is be sure you know what you're getting into before you commit too much to a company. The name of the game is using the first job to get the next job. And if you feel the company doesn't share your values and is not loyal to you, you should be looking for the next job. And as a career and finance expert, plus one on all of that, we talk about all of the time that job hopping is not the evil thing that people said. And even like my parents' generation of like, oh, you should stay in a job and loyalty pays. It does not pay.
Starting point is 01:08:00 It does not pay. It does not pay. It just, it just fucks you over. And also the women who succeed are more likely to rise through the ranks in a single company than men who succeed. Interesting. But that mean, yeah, but you know, if you find a company that does share your values, go for it.
Starting point is 01:08:18 Yeah, totally. That, that treats you well and that, yeah, yeah. It's more, it's more the job hopping of, yeah, realizing I'm getting undercompensated. I've asked for more money. They won't give it to me. I'm taking on more tasks with no more compensation. There doesn't seem a path for advancement. Yeah, totally. I am so endlessly fascinated by your work. I'm so excited to go read your book. I mean this as the highest compliment because I was the kid, a little nerdydy as well who loved school. This is the closest I felt to being back at college since I was actually in college. Like this conversation with you is just so insightful
Starting point is 01:08:56 and really, really interesting. So thank you. So Fair Shake is the book. Where can people find it? Where can people learn more about you? Okay. Well, it's coming out from Simon and Schuster beginning of May. Where can people find it? Where can people learn more about you? Okay, well it's coming out from Simon & Schuster, beginning of May. You can pre-order now. And you know, it's on Amazon. It's easy to find. And I'm at the University of Minnesota. And the thing about professors, we're very easy to find. Website, just Google June Carbone. I will come up. Amazing. Thank you for your work. Thank you for being here. Well, thank you. Great fun.
Starting point is 01:09:27 Good question. Yes. Thank you so much to Professor Carbone for joining us. One of my favorite, most fascinating episodes we've done in a long time. You can get her book, Fair Shake, wherever you get your books. E-book, hardcover, audio book.
Starting point is 01:09:41 I have a copy of it and I'm really excited to delve into it. It's gonna be really, really good reading. Thank you for being here. As always, Financial Feminist, we appreciate you and we'll talk to you soon. Okay, bye. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, associate producer, Tameeshaap, produced by Kristen Fields, Associate Producer, Tameesha Grant,
Starting point is 01:10:05 research by Ariel Johnson, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Medcalf, marketing and operations by Karina Patel, Amanda LeFeu, Elizabeth McCumber, Masha Bakhnakiyeva, Taylor Cho, Kaylin Sprinkle, Sasha Bonar, Claire Karonen, Darrell Ann Ingman, and Janelle Reisner, promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography
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