More Money Podcast - 400 Fighting for a Just Economy - Co-Authors of Fair Shake, Naomi Cahn and Nancy Levit

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Us women have come a long way to close the pay gap... or have we? Legal scholars Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, and Nancy Levit would argue that we are actually further away from pay parity than we think and there is much more work to be done for us to have a just economy. Despite leaning in, getting advanced degrees, and working twice as hard, women's wages are still being eroded and there is still barely any female representation in lucrative industries like tech, finance, and law (as they've personally witnessed as lawyers and law professors themselves). So, what can be done? In their new book, Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy and in this podcast episode, they not only identify the root problem and share real-life stories from women fighting the good fight, but they also share a path forward that both women and allies can walk together.  Follow me: Instagram @jessicaimoorhouse Threads @jessicaimoorhouse TikTok @jessicaimoorhouse Facebook @jessicaimoorhouse YouTube @jessicamoorhouse LinkedIn - Jessica Moorhouse For full episode show notes and transcript visit jessicamoorhouse.com/400 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome back to the Mormonly Podcast. This is episode 400 of the podcast, and I, of course, am your host, Jessica Borehouse. Welcome back to the show. I can't believe 400. Oh, that feels so nice. I love hitting a milestone like that. And what's very exciting, and I'm sure I've already mentioned this on a recent podcast, but I just realized this as we're getting close to the end of this season, FYI, we've only got about, including this week, five more weeks of the podcast, then I go on summer break. But this, so June, the last episode, which will air on June 5th, that will mark nine years since I launched the podcast, which means in 2025, that will officially mean I've done the podcast for 10 years. That literally does not make sense

in my brain. And hitting 400 episodes does not make any sense in my brain. And I've actually, like technically, we're getting technical here. I've already done more episodes than that because there are a few solo episodes and short episodes that I did. I think back in 2020, I was trying something new to do like Money Minute, I think what it was called. So there are some other episodes. They just don't have numbers. So anyways, doesn't matter. Welcome to the show. Got a great episode for you. I am interviewing two powerhouse women. So excited to do one of these other, you know, these episodes where I get two guests and we can have a really exciting conversation. But they have a new book called Fair Shake, Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy Out. And these women really know what they're talking about because they are all lawyers.

So I'm talking about Naomi Khan, Nancy Leavitt, and June Carbone. I've got Naomi and Nancy on the show. June was unable to make it, unfortunately, but nonetheless, nonetheless, we have an amazing, amazing conversation about what it really takes to thrive and survive in this new economy. And these women have really seen it all because they've been through it. So a little bit more about my guests. I've got Naomi Kahn. So she is the Justice Anthony M. Kennedy Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. She's also the co-director of the Family Law Center. And of course, she is an author of many books, including this one. And, you know, if you're interested in

reading some of her other things, I will link to some other books that they've written. She's read Red Families vs. Blue Families and Homeward Bound. And also, if that weren't, you know, wow enough, in 2017, she also received the Harry Krause Lifetime Achievement in Family Law Award from the University of Illinois College of Law. And in 2024, she was inducted into the Clayton Alumni Hall of Fame. Now with Nancy, she is the associate dean for faculty and holds a curator's professorship at the University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Law. She has been voted Outstanding Professor of the Year five times by students and was profiled in Dean Michael Hunter Schwartz's book, What the Best Law Teachers Do. And she's received the N.T. Veach Award for Distinguished Research and Creative Activity

and the Missouri Governor's Award for Teaching Excellence. She's also an author of several books, including The Gender Line and co-author of Feminist Legal Theory, The Happy Lawyer, The Good Lawyer, and Jurisprudence, Classical and Contemporary. And a little bit about June, even though she wasn't involved in the episode, she did write the book, give you some idea of her perspective that she added to the book. She is the Robina Chair of Law, Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota Law School. And previously, she served as the Edward A. Smith, 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. And she's also written several books, including this one. She's written From Partners to Parents, and she co-wrote Red Families vs. Blue Families with Naomi, as well as Marriage Markets and Family Law. And she's the co-editor of the International Survey of Family Law. So these women have done a ton during their careers, and they have seen the evolution of really how hard it was when they were starting out and some of the struggles that women experience still today. And what are some things that we can do? We do talk about the idea, you know, of the leaning in culture and how, yeah, doesn't really work.

You lean in, you know, and you still can't get heard or get that promotion, things like that. So what are some actual practical things that we can do as women and then also as allies to, you know, move the dial, actually move the dial. Because if we don't, and we talk about some of the stats out there, nothing's going to happen for hundreds and hundreds of years. And I think we can all agree we want a better world for our children, our nieces, our neighbors' kids, whoever. We want to make this a more equal or equitable world. And there are some things that we can do about it today. So we've got a really great conversation for you. And with that, let's get to that conversation. Let's get to that interview.

Welcome to the More Money Podcast. Ladies, I'm so excited to have you on and to talk about your incredible book. I don't even know where to start. I'm so excited to have you on and uh to talk about your incredible book uh i i don't even know where to start i'm so excited to have you here and just like you really are women that i'm like gosh those are some incredible careers and incredible things that you've been able to accomplish uh with amidst you know a system and inside a system that is very unfair and that's really what the the book is. So the first kind of question I have for you is, you know, how did the book come about? Especially there's you, there's also the third author, June Carbone. You know, how did you get together and be like,

we need to write this book now, this is necessary. We've been writing together for years. June and Naomi have several different books already on the market, like Red Families, Blue Families, and Marriage Markets. We teach and write about gender in the family and employment discrimination. So we talk to each other quite a bit about gender and economics. We did a back of the envelope calculation that showed that women college grads were losing. And when we started our research more than six years ago, the overall figures only reason women appeared to be gaining ground on men was almost entirely due to the fact that wages for blue-collar men were falling dramatically during the same period. And when we looked at the numbers for college graduates, we found that the gender gap in wages was increasing. Yeah, what really shocked us was there was enormous progress in the gender wage gap in the 60s and the 70s, and then into the 80s. And then suddenly, it just it just plateaued. It's like, whoa, what happened here? And so we wanted to find out just what happened. And that's

that's what started. That's what started the book was trying to get all of that research after we said, what's going on here that women, the gender wage gap is plateauing. What do you say? I see this a lot, especially when people talk about this topic, especially women, there is a there's a lot of heated discussions about no no, the data isn't there. Equality is here. We've shattered the glass ceiling already. Do you see these arguments still? And I guess this book is kind of the answer to it, but I'm curious what your kind of thoughts are on those. We looked at recent studies. 2019 Goldman Sachs got a lot of press for a study that said if present trends continue, women would not catch up with men in terms of wages for another hundred or so years. And by the time we finished the book,

we realized if present trends continue, women are never going to catch up. In fact, the most recent reports bear out those predictions. They show that the gender wage gap as a whole between men and women increased between 2019 and 2022. We don't want to paint a completely bleak picture here. It is true that the number of, in the US, number of female CEOs in the Fortune 500 has been increasing dramatically. And that number is now at a whopping 10%. Wow.

So even though there's been an increase, it's a very, very slow increase. And it's still one out of every 10. It's also, you mentioned the glass ceiling. We hear about the glass ceiling, and of course, that is one of the stories that we can tell. But it's even before you hit that glass ceiling, even before you get to the top, there are what the McKinsey Lean In Report finds, there are broken runs. If you look at women and men, maybe might start in entry level at around the same rate. And then if you keep looking at what happens at the ones who ultimately get promoted, the number of women and particularly the number of black women who are promoted compared to the number of white men falls dramatically. So it is, and I like what the McKinsey report says, I like,

it's a broken rung. It's not just a glass ceiling. It's what happens before you get to the top. That's where women are weeded out. And I know one thing that you talk about is the, you know, it's not a women issue, it's a system issue. And that's definitely something that I've always thought, especially just my personal experience. It's like, I'm doing all the right things. I'm just not getting the results that I was promised. That's so weird. And you use the term winner takes all systems. you want to kind of explain what that means? I thought it was such a great term to really encapsulate what you were trying to say. We use the term winner-take-all economy to describe a critical shift in the new economy

as the ability of those who are at the top to take a much larger share of institutional resources for themselves. The winner-take-all era starts with the increase in CEO compensation. It rose a whopping 514% between 1990 and 2020. In the 1950s, 1960s, the ratio of CEO to worker pay, it was about 20 to 1. Today, it is a mind-blowing 399 to 1. Successful CEOs, in turn, began to reward their top lieutenants and managers and key employees with bonuses and stock options that could make the people who succeeded quite wealthy. The bonuses are typically tied to short-term reductionist metrics like sales or earnings or the production of Teslas. They began to change corporate cultures. And the change in corporate culture is that in workplaces

where there are increased rewards for people at the top, those are the same workplaces that tend to pit employees against each other. They have zero-sum games with actually negative-sum consequences in which typically people are competing for dominance by showing no weakness, by displaying physical endurance and strength and engaging in cutthroat competition. And those practices, practices like those are linked to increasing gender disparities. Naomi, do you have any kind, but to describe the critical shift in a new economy as the ability of those at the top to take a much larger share of institutional resources. Nancy mentioned the statistic of what the CEO to average worker pain has done, right? It's ballooned over the past half century. And so that's what's different. I mean, you asked us how this started. It started trying to figure out why the gender wage gap has plateaued. And what we found is that the reason it's not that it's it's sexism is still there. But But in addition to that, there's also this

whole WTA economy that measures employees against each other. Yeah. And I feel like, especially with new technology and even working from home, I wonder if that's even more now than ever has been. I mean, keystrokes are being monitored. Everything is being monitored. So you have more data. And yeah, it's not uncommon. I just saw, it was so terrible. I saw this one Instagram reel today of a woman, you know, in her car just explaining that she had her workplace review and she was penalized for taking paid time off like she had sick days and she was allowed to take them. But she was given a warning for basically being like, you're not committed to the company because she had to take

care of her kids that were sick at home. And one day she was sick. Whereas a man could maybe rely on somebody else to do that and could show up at work and look more committed. And there's all these systems in place that penalize, you know, usually the person who's not the primary parent or what have you. Right. And you're absolutely right that workplaces that are like these care very little about supporting families or about employee well-being. And that means that both male and female employees will experience substantial burnout, high rates of turnover. And women, much more so than men, have traditionally been accorded greater share of family responsibilities at home. And that makes it incredibly difficult to juggle. There's still an expectation that women will be the caretakers. And so when, I mean, there are studies of companies where they kind of wonder what happens to women after they have children. And it's not

that women are opting out of the workplace. It's that when they come back, they aren't being given the same assignments, because there's an assumption that they will be less dedicated. And so there are there are attitudes much much as we think we've all triumphed over these attitudes, we all have them. Yes, women should be the ones at home. And yet, on the other hand, when women are the ones at home, they are penalized. I have a good friend who was the first man at his law firm to take parental leave. Wow. And he was actually warned, you know, you shouldn't do this.

It's not a good idea. It'll affect your promotion chances. And actually, I think it was so unusual. I think it helped him. He ultimately did make partner, but it was unusual. It was so remarked upon versus if a woman had done that, nobody would have had a deny. Well, I know there's data that I've seen too that when men do show, oh, I'm also a caregiver, a father, I'm very caring. There's like that softer side.

They're actually rewarded. Women are penalized. Men are rewarded. And you're like, great. Married men actually get a wage premium, right? So if you look at the gender wage gap, married men are getting a lot more money. Now, you talk about in the book, and you mentioned this earlier, that, you know, we as two genders, we usually start on kind of the same playing field, men and women.

And then as we go up kind of the corporate ladder, so to speak, that's where things kind of start to shift. Now, I think, you know, a lot of what we've seen is, oh, the shift is because women start to have families and opt out or what have you. But that's not the full story anymore. I think there's more data to show that that's not the full story. Some sometimes it is, like you said, they realize they're in the system where they just can't win. And then I mean, that's definitely, you know, part of the reasons I left certain jobs is because I think if I stay longer, I'm not going to get any further. And so the only way to go further is maybe look elsewhere. Do you want to kind of speak to what are some of those reasons that women are leaving their workforce, either to stay at home or to start a business, because maybe there's more freedom in that way,

or what have you? The role of family responsibilities has always explained a part of the wage gap. It continues to do so today. The second conventional explanation for the gender wage gap is that women make different occupational choices than men. The difficulty, though, is that this line of thinking, focusing on women's choices to take different jobs, to assume family responsibilities, is that those factors have always held women back, right? They don't explain why the gender pay gap for college graduates, which is the group with the greatest access to quality childcare, increased after the early 90s. It also doesn't explain why Black women, who've long managed to a greater degree than white women to juggle work and family responsibilities, remain one of the most disadvantaged groups in society. The other thing that tends to happen,

and we focus on this in the book and discussing the tournament in some workplaces, is that there are things that happen to women who lean in, because that's been another explanation for the wage gap, right? Women fail to lean in. I bought into that. I remember reading it like, well, that's maybe what I'm not doing. I'm not leaning in. And then I did and it backfired. And I know a lot of women had the same experience. Exactly right. Everywhere we looked and in almost every story we tell in the book, women who did lean in, whether they're working longer hours or questioning their bosses or insisting on raises or objecting to sexual harassment, they found that leaning in might mean getting booted out. There is a great story by a Harvard economist whom we interviewed for the book, Professor Mark Egan, and he wrote

a paper based on a study that he and others conducted. The paper is entitled, When Harry Fired Sally, The Double Standard in Punishing M punishing misconduct. And it showed that women who have leaned in are substantially more likely to be fired for financial misconduct than men who committed the same misconduct. And they are also substantially less likely to be rehired. And so this leaning in, whatever form it takes, can prove disastrous for women workers. And that study was of people who had leaned in so much that they had committed some form of financial misconduct. So the question was, what happens when both men and women perform the same types of financial conduct? It turned out that women were substantially less likely than men to engage in the financial misconduct. And when they did so, they caused smaller dollar losses to their

employer. Nonetheless, they were substantially more likely to be fired for the misconduct and also substantially less likely to be rehired. This was a study of a particular financial firm. And I think that it's the kind of patterns that we found repeated throughout a number of different businesses as we did research for the book. And I know you shared the story at the start of your book of the, you know, woman employee worked at Tesla and was the one to, you know, kind of say, hey, there's an issue with the cars we need to address for safety reasons.

And that and then also her addressing, hey, there's also some harassment going on. We need to address that. And she was basically let go. And I feel like these stories are so they exist everywhere. But and you also kind of touched on this in the book. We don't hear these stories because often what happens is, you know, you would think, oh, just get a lawyer and fight this in court. And, you know, do you have a lot of money for lawyers? Lawyers usually are super expensive. And so what's the more affordable or something that won't, you know, bankrupt you is to settle, and then you have to sign an NDA, and then no one will know these stories. And it's a kind of a cycle. So with that being said, I mean, how do we kind of get out of that

system? That seems like an impossible cycle to kind of break. You're absolutely right that the individual lawsuits are difficult and difficult in a whole host of senses. One is it's hard to find attorneys to take them. Two is there are damage caps limited by federal law. Title VII has pretty sharp limits on damage caps that haven't increased since 1991. There's been a ratcheting back of class actions or the ability to do collective litigation. One thing we have seen as more effective is combining the whistleblowing with harassment or discrimination claims. In other words, if someone has the ability from the inside to say, there are some patterns of misconduct at this company, and this is a company that has winner-take-all themes to it.

It is crunching employees in the service of more widgets, faster pace, bordering on the edge of ethical misconduct. We've seen those are the same kinds of companies that have the toxic leaders, the toxic environments, and not just for women. Bringing the sunlight to those is hugely important. Making sure there is airplay for those companies is a way to get not only the individual behaviors addressed, but also bring attention to the patterns of corporate misbehavior. This is one of the reasons that the Me Too movement was so effective. It was a form of, as we say in the book, essentially jujitsu. It took the very celebrity of the abusers and in our book, the large companies and turned that against them to topple them by saying, you've demonstrated bad behavior. Me Too was also effective because it was extra legal. It didn't rely on finding a lawyer using

a legal system. It was the power of the internet and it was the power of collective action. We are, the three of us are lawyers and we've actually been on different sides of employment discrimination lawsuits. So we know both sides of employment discrimination lawsuits. And yeah, as Nancy said, it's not always that easy to find a lawyer. And often lawyers, if you're suing a large company, it can be quite difficult to have an individual lawyer facing a whole array of the types of attorneys that a large company can afford. And then there are limitations in the law. And so in terms of how much can be recovered, but combining that

with publicity, combining that with shining a light on what's actually going on can be a way of getting some redress. And so, yeah, once you find a lawyer, it's great. One of the cases that we followed hours and hours of pretrial investigations and then going to court. It can take over your life. And so it's quite an investment just to do a lawsuit. On the other hand, there are, as you said, in some of the cases that we talk about in the book, some of the cases were settled pretty quickly, in part, we think, because the companies did not want all of the publicity that these kinds of cases would bring. In some cases, there are also these non-disclosure agreements. And so that does prevent other people who might be in the same situation from knowing precisely what happened.

There's a move to do away with these NDAs and there's some new laws on them that will help, but they still exist. They're still legal in a variety of contexts and yeah, they prevent some of the transparency that we meet. What's in this McDonald's bag? The McValue Meal. For $5.79 plus tax, you can get your choice of junior chicken, McDouble, or chicken snack wrap, plus small fries and a small fountain drink. So pick up a McValue Meal today at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. Prices exclude delivery. And I know that's a big reason why a lot of women don't speak up when people ask, like, oh, something happened to you. Why aren't you speaking up? There's a lot of consequences. You can get blacklisted. You won't get hired again. You can't afford a lawyer. If you hire lawyers and there's lots of litigation, you run out of money. There's so many negative consequences. I think it makes a lot of sense why many women who experience something like that, they're like, the easiest route is to just quit and go somewhere else and just keep it to myself because I don't want that scarlet leather. I don't want people to also think that I'm difficult and all these other

kind of things that are usually put on women who speak their mind. Absolutely right. I mean, Naomi mentioned that there have been some changes in law fairly recently. Several years ago, California enacted legislation that banned nondisclosure agreements for sexual harassment. In 2022, Congress followed suit and partially banned NDAs in harassment cases in what's known as the Speak Out Act. Now, it only bans the enforcement of confidentiality provisions regarding assault and harassment that were signed before the dispute arose. In other words, employers are free to bargain for silence during an arbitration process. But you're right, women have been silenced pretty systematically. She is a lawyer celebrated who has spent decades bringing sex discrimination cases. Her clients have included Christine Blasey Ford. She was the Stanford research psychologist who testified that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school. And Deborah Ketz told us when we talked to her, she had a great line. She said, silence has never helped us. And she said it's important to be effective by being willing to shed light on issues to ensure accountability. She was emphasizing that publicity can be a powerful tool and not just for the individual, for other individuals.

But we also recognize how hard it is, as you said, to speak out because you fear that something will happen to you in your current job or in future, that whatever you say will follow you and you may never be hired again. And so it takes a lot of courage. And so the people that we talk about in the book, we completely admire their courage for speaking out. In this day and age, it's great that there are online platforms that have created movements online, you know, Me Too being a big one of them and lots of other, you know, people saying this happened to me online. So just

going public because maybe they know that there's just no way I can do this in kind of the legal realm, which is great. But again, too, this can have a really big impact. It can take those, you know, predators out of the equation. So maybe that the behavior can stop in that kind of situation. But then again, there's always the consequence of death threats and all these other things that can happen to you online, which again, it's I think ultimately that is one of the biggest barriers for women not, you know, being able to get what they need or out of this unjust system is just downright fear of survival. You know, if this I don't, there's definitely been situations where it's like,

it's easier to say nothing than to speak out. But kind of on a lighter note, you don't just talk about all the problems. So I think that's really important to like have the evidence because believe me, there's still a lot of people who don't believe that there is a gender pay gap, even though the numbers are there. You do talk about the solution. And I think that's the hardest thing for people to really wrap their head around is how can we fight such a system that has been in place for so many centuries that has been doing this thing so effectively, keeping so many people down. How can we make that change? Because I think even during the Me Too movement at the height, people were like, I want to do something, but I don't know what. And I feel like there was just

a lot of confusion, a lot of back and forth. There wasn't, you know, this is okay, this is the movement, and this is what we're going to do moving forward. So did you want to kind of speak to in the book how you presented how we can move forward and start changing and breaking these systems down? One of the things that we talk about and it picks up on our previous conversation is to break the silence, to start discussions at work and perhaps not in the, it depends on the workplace, right? There's some workplaces where it is safe to talk, others it is not. And sometimes one can find one's best allies outside of work, but starting discussions about gender equality or about pay transparency or about career development opportunities. One of the people we interviewed who was a silence breaker was Melissa Tomlinson,

and she was someone who went to a campaign rally for governor when Chris Christie was running for reelection as the governor of New Jersey. And he was- And she's a teacher, we should say. She's a teacher. Thank you, Naomi. And after Christie did his stump speech, she approached him and said, why do you keep portraying our schools as failure factories?

And he poked a finger in her face and raised his voice and said he was sick of you people and told Tomlinson, do your job. And it's a picture, in fact, that went viral. And throughout this altercation, she found herself shaking. She stood her ground. She saw confronting Christie as part of a larger fight, not just for teachers, but also for teachers' values, and it's a battle for children who have become pawns in a conflict that seeks to undermine public education. And she joined with a group entitled the Badass Teachers Association, and she is currently, I believe, the executive director of it, which seeks to promote professional practices within teaching. It's that getting a collective core of support. So starting conversations, finding a collective of people to move those discussions forward is one piece of something we found promising. There are different solutions, right? There's the individual solution, what we can each do in our own workplaces or in our own

lives. And then there are also, we talk about some of the systemic solutions as well that will help in dealing with the winner-take-all economy, the WTA economy that we've identified. But we do say that on an individual level, you certainly can make some changes. And even if you're not willing to go to the press or to become a member of the Badass Teachers Association, you can at least find allies within your workplace and also make sure to have connections outside of your workplace because you may at some point need to leave your workplace if it gets so toxic that you can't stay there. So starting conversations with others around you, both within and outside of your workplace, educating yourself so that you know, as you said, the general statistics on the gender wage gap. But also, some companies are starting to move towards more transparency. So making sure that people see that employees know what those statistics actually say for people who have some power within their

companies advocating for more inclusive policies. If people do have a little bit of power, use that power because a rising tide, right? We'll lift all boats. And so if you can start to make some changes like that, that will affect everyone else. And again, on the individual level, just making sure that you find mentors, that you are a mentor, that you can create a community both within and outside of the workplace. So when you do speak out, you've got that supportive

community of people you trust and who might also speak out with you. That's on the individual level. And you also have to be, I mean, as I've learned in the negotiation process, you have to be prepared to leave. You have to, you can't, right? You have to say, okay, enough is enough. I'm going to leave. If you're negotiating for something, you need to know the point at which you will not give up,

but say that's enough. I will no longer stay here. I will not take it on these terms. So, and then there are more systemic changes. Everything from raising the minimum wage. Yeah. Minimum wage in the U S has been stuck at the same level for decades. Wow. And guess who's most likely to work at or below the minimum wage, right? It's women. So that will certainly help women. It will, of course, it will, of course, help men as well, but raise the minimum wage, start to attack more generally some of the practices and in general, these non-disclosure agreements prevent all kinds of mandatory arbitration so

that people can't get to court. Just, just a whole list of solutions. The winner take all economy intentionally breeds insecurity, which keeps wages and benefits artificially low. And so one of the things we suggest is look at policies that invest in children, invest in individuals, invest in communities. One example that was pretty dramatic, we talk about it in the book, is the expansion of the child tax credit during the COVID pandemic. And it demonstrated how quickly government policies can slash child poverty and provide stability to families so they can weather job crises or economic downturns. Even before taxpayers filed their returns, the government sent checks to many people of 600 per month for each child under the age of six. And the child tax credit was a significant factor in reducing

the child poverty rate by 46% in that single year to its lowest rate ever of 5.2%. And so we look at examples like these throughout the book of ways there can be government policies that help raise the floor for children, for women, for families generally. Absolutely. You mentioned something, Naomi, the word allies, and it just made me think sometimes when we're having these discussions on what we can do, we think of us as women, what we can do, but we also need men to do. We need them as our allies. They kind of have less negative consequences if they speak them as our allies. We, you know, they kind of have less, you know, negative consequences if they speak up on our behalf. And I think sometimes they may not realize

the impact that they can have, you know, within those work policies or really advocating for more inclusion. You know, I think this is also just like a reminder for anyone listening, you know, our allies are so, so important because, I mean, as we've seen over the past couple of years, we've seen a huge shift with more diversity and inclusion. I think largely that is because we are all coming together. One of the problems with this winner-take-all system is it's very individualistic. It's just about the individual. And I see that a lot, you know, in personal finance circles, it's all about me making my money. But if we really want a world worth living in and a better world for our children or

our families, we actually need to think in broader terms and the bigger picture of us as a community, a global community, a national community, and smaller communities. And I think often we kind of forget about that just because, again, if you are working in a system where it is just, you know, you against your team, it doesn't really breed collaboration and, you know, working together to find those solutions. One of the points we make is that the winner-take-all economy doesn't just affect women. It affects everybody who is working. And so it affects men and women. And so it's also, it's in men's interests to be allies and to speak out on their own behalf as well, because that's how we're going to be able to change this whole system that has these disproportionate rewards for those at the top. So it's important.

It's important to have men as allies in the workplace. It's important to have men as allies outside of the workplace. We're never going to change the expectation that women are primary caretakers until we have more equal sharing of that. So it's not just a question of women leaning in, right? It's not that question at all. It's changing the system. It's building allies.

It's having men and women work together to change the system. Yeah, benefits everybody. And I think sometimes that just gets lost. Or there's other messages that are louder that are kind of covering the message that actually works for everybody. There are so many amazing things. And again, great data, great research in this book that I think is so necessary because we are not going to stop having these conversations. As you say, if we just keep doing what we're doing, we're never going to close this gap. And I think it's really important for us to really understand where does that gap stem

from? And what can we do as a communities as teams and individuals to fix that? Because I remember being a kid in the 90s, hearing someone says, Oh, the gender gap is, you know, it's getting better. So I honestly figured once I graduated with my degree, that I would have an easier time than my mom. And there's a lot more opportunities. And there's some benefits for sure being in this timeframe compared to the 90s, but still there's a lot of barriers and they're invisible. And a lot of people don't think they're there, but they are very much there still, unfortunately. So we need to acknowledge that and we need to do something about it because otherwise otherwise, this is just going to be I don't want to have these

conversations for another 30 years. You know what I mean? I don't want to be talking about the gender pay gap. I want to talk about it in retrospect, remember when. So thank you to for coming on the show. Your book is called fair shake, where can they find more information about you? I know you also have other books and you're doing all these other amazing things. Nancy, I'll start with you. Could anyone find you online or find anything that you've worked on before? I'm the Associate Dean for Faculty and a Curator's Professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. My other writings are, the books are principally in

the legal pedagogy and law practice area. The Happy Lawyer is one, The Good Lawyer is another, Law Jobs, those books, and those are, you can just Google me and find those books or they're on Amazon. I am the Anthony M. Kennedy Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. So pretty easy to find me as well online. And I, like Nancy and June, our third co-author, who's unable to join us, but I've written a number of books on everything from, as you mentioned at the

beginning, red families versus blue families, to marriage markets. I've written about step families. I've written just a variety. I mean, one of the wonderful things about our jobs is that we can write about so many different aspects. I've written about elder care. So we can write about so many different things. And yes, please Google us. Please look it up and please buy our books. Absolutely. Yeah, no, I think this is a really important book. So thank you both for coming on the show to talk about it with me. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having us. We've enjoyed the conversation.

And that was episode 400 of the More Money podcast. And I was speaking to Naomi Kahn and Nancy Levitt. And their other co-author who unfortunately couldn't join us is June Carbone. They are all the co-authors of the book Fair Shake Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy. I am giving away a copy of their book plus all the other books that have been currently featured on this season of the podcast. There are quite a few. So if you want to enter to win one of them, I mean, you can enter to win all of them, but you'll only win one. But why not enter to win all of them? I don't care. Just go to jessicamoorehouse.com slash contest or check out the show

notes for this episode to find more information about the episode, but also link to the contest jessicamorehouse.com slash 400. So just a little life update. If you've been following me on Instagram, you know, the big news is my tulips that I planted or my husband helped me plant or he really planted. He really did do most of the leg work there. But I did buy the bulbs and I did tell him where to plant. They have bloomed. And I'm very excited because this is I really don't have a green thumb. And, you know, I really want our neighbors have incredible gardens and I'm really trying to keep up. So that's the exciting news. No, not really. Though I am proud of it. But in terms of the book,

right now I'm in this little limbo, which I'm loving because I don't have to work on the book right now. It is at the copy editing stage. So I'm waiting to get those copy edits back. So I have been working tirelessly on doing a big update to my Wealth Building Blueprint for Canadians course. So if you don't know anything about it, you can find all the information at jessicamorehouse.com slash course. But as the name may suggest, it is a course about how to build wealth through investing, but specifically passive investing and specifically just for Canadians. Because what I found and what I've honestly heard from every single student who's entered the course, there's a lot of investing courses out there and they are American or they say they're for

Americans and Canadians, but then you enter there and they don't have all the specifics you're looking for as a Canadian. So it's just like some of the tax rules and retirement rules and all these kinds of things that are really important for us are going really deep about different products or platforms specific to us Canadians. And I've got video tutorials of me opening up, you know, robo advisor accounts, doing trades on Canadian trading platforms, things that people who are non Canadians can't really show you because they can't have access to these things. So if you're interested, JessicaMorehouse.com slash course, I think it's pretty incredible there. I had it since 2021. It is a course that honestly, I have not actually really ever marketed properly, not properly, but I've only done organic like promo.

So I've only ever mentioned my course on this podcast a few times on my YouTube channel and my newsletter, which I send out maybe once per month. But I've realized, you know, this is an incredible course and I want more Canadians to know that it exists so they can learn how to invest on their own for low fees in a passive way and have access to me to provide feedback and guidance. So I am definitely going to be doing some more marketing, doing some like social media kind of stuff and maybe some advertising and some webinars because I have not done a webinar. I don't think I've done a webinar since 2021, maybe. I don't know. It's been years. So that's something that you can look forward to. But again, if you just want to look more into it for yourself right now, jessicamorehouse.com

slash course. Currently, how the course is structured is it's by application only. And then if you are a good candidate, then you have a call with me and then you can ask me whatever the heck you want. I'm probably not going to always do this. But for the past few years, it's actually been really incredible getting to know a lot of you. A lot of the people that are in the course are podcast listeners. And finding out, you know, what are you struggling with? What do you want to learn? And seeing if it's in that course can can help you with that. And also, I've got to say, talking to hundreds and hundreds of people over the years in these calls has been just a really cool thing for me to learn more about you and to, you know, just be better at what I do as an educator. So, you know, thank you for anyone

who's done those calls with me. So anyways, you know where to find that information. That is where you can find it. And yeah, let me just tease who i've got on the show next week to wrap things up oh yeah i'm excited about this is a great episode i learned so much so you know i had uh episode 393 i had sean stewart from air miles on the show great episode to learn more about air miles how to optimize that program it is a in my view it is a free freaking reward program why why isn't everyone just participating in it because i you know i hate going to a store and here i was just at the grocery store today so the sobies and their reward program is seen and there's a guy in front of me and they're like oh do you

have the scene points he's like no and then we all me him and the cashier all had a conversation. Oh, do you want to sign up? He's like, oh, I guess so. And then we had a conversation about just like, it's like money on the table if you're not participating in this free plan. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't cost you anything, but you could get something if you're shopping at this place and that's the reward system and you can be accruing points. So since we already had an episode about air miles 393, That's the episode with Sean Stewart. I have another expert to talk about aeroplan. I've got TJ Dunn. He is the editor in chief of Prince of Travel, which is really big and popular, you know, travel website, blog, YouTube channel, they've got some really great content. And they really kind of specialized in aeroplan. And so that is what we're going to

be talking about. If you want to know more about how do I optimize that program? How do we get more Aeroplan points? How do I get those business class or first class seats? That is what we're going to be talking about. And there's some really great information in that episode. So that is what you can look forward to next week. And with that, I mean, just to let you know, we are wrapping up this season very soon. I can't believe we're already in May. How is that happening? We're going to wrap up this season June 5th. So just a few more weeks of the More Money Podcast until we take a summer break. But a big thank you to my podcast team, Video Edit by Justice Carrar and produced by MRAVCanada.com. I will be seeing you next Wednesday.

So with that, have a good rest of your week. Good weekend. See you soon. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.