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Reshma Saujani

Teoksen Learn to Code and Change the World tekijä

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Reshma Saujani is the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, a national nonprofit organization working to close the gender gap in technology. She has been selected to Fortune's 40 Under 40, named a WSJ. Innovator, and recognized as one of the most powerful women changing the world by Forbes. She is the näytä lisää host of the award-winning podcast Brave, Not Perfect, and the author of the New York Times bestseller Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World. näytä vähemmän

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Whether you are a man or a woman… we are all part of a new movement because without women the US economy is cheated. There is a growing movement for working mothers that is bigger and better than before because we got it all wrong, and it now includes men. This is a book review for our times: Pay Up, by Reshma Saujani.

I was asked to provide a review for Reshma Saujani’s new book, pre-release in March, in line with Women’s History Month. Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (And Why It's Different Than You Think) was destined to arrive at my doorstep “early” by the powers that be. It also could have been sent to me as part of the professional trajectory I built for myself because I am passionate about equity in the workplace for women and working parents, as are the other changemakers who were sent the advanced copies. However it came to me, Reshma Saujani, the women’s empowerment activist, founder of Girls Who Code, and mother of 2 boys is talking directly to and about me and to each and every one of you.

Well, OK I won’t be so dramatic. Revised statement: Saujani is talking to 23.5 million working mothers in the United States, to the rest of the world, and to each one of you: women, mothers, daughters, fathers, husbands, partners, brothers, friends and all human beings of the 21st century.

Saujani is re-starting a Movement because we have gotten it all wrong over the past century. Pay Up gives us the much-needed history of women’s roles in the workforce and how they took shape in the 20 and 21st centuries. Women are invaluable to innovation and input that fuels the US economy. Without women, our entire economy is stifled. Saujani shares lots of data around this. There have been many “movements” towards gender equity with brave and relentless leaders, but the plight of working mothers specifically is abysmal in 2022. This is a well-researched call to action to empower working women, educate corporate leaders, revise our narratives about what it means to be successful, and advocate for policy reform.
I joined one movement 14 years ago when I jumped onto the Great Resignation train. “What’s that?” you ask. “The Great Resignation is now,” you say. “These past 2 years, the Great Resignation stems from the pandemic exacerbating the significant gender inequalities and double standards that are causing widespread burnout in women.” Well, I am talking about the OG Great Resignation. The Movement of leaving an untenable situation and the unreasonable expectations from corporate America and of society at large. In my privileged world, I “Leaned” OUT of the corporate rat race by quitting my job to recover from severe burnout from “having it all,” and following my personal values around raising my toddlers and protecting my wellbeing. Having a career, raising a family, striving for the next promotion, ensuring I remained on track for challenging and rewarding work all without support… “Having It All” was just killing me. And I was tough. I was raised as a latch-key kid of a working single mother. I was ready for the Motherload. But as mentioned, it was destroying my wellbeing and made very little financial sense with paid childcare and other necessary supports. This OG Great Resignation was the reason Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Nell Scovell and Sheryl Sandberg was written in the first place. Highly educated women were leaving corporate and other professional and service work in droves in the early naughts due to this lack of support from the system, corporate leadership, and the government. Not due to their “will” or lack of a will to lead!
Working-class and single women have always been strained with having to make enormous sacrifices to raise a family and to bring home a paycheck. Situations exacerbated by a lack of extended family and modern isolation, lack of government programs, childcare, and job protection laws, leave working mothers without the proverbial village of support needed. The pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on all women, and it was catastrophic for working mothers.
Saujani’s new book Pay Up highlights how Covid exacerbated the unsustainable plight of working women in America. She sheds light on the hidden inequalities at work and at home and the need for most ambitious women to hide half of their lives from their work leadership in order to get ahead. Pay Up is JUST the book we all need to read right now, to know we are not alone and to create change. Saujani exposes things many people have been getting wrong, or ignoring, and she creates a roadmap for change!
Saujani admits she was a huge advocate for Lean In and even looked down on stay-at-home moms. Her “Aha” moment came after she herself had a child, and then a second child, and had to juggle work and child-rearing during the pandemic. After she started to walk the walk, she realized that the system needs to change, not the working mothers. Um, yes! Yes, Reshma. That makes a LOT of sense and I am thrilled you point this out. Women are way too damn hard on other women. Other moms are not the problem. Women need to protect and nurture their wellbeing but it is not up to the individual women to change the system. It is up to corporate leadership, government, the system to change the system.
As a political activist fighting for The Marshall Plan for Moms, Saujani describes this as “an investment in women’s recovery and empowerment.” In the book she reveals the “big lie” of corporate feminism and a lack of real progress we seem to have been fighting for for years. Saujani presents an ambitious plan to address the burnout and inequity that impact corporate innovation and success, as well as harm America’s working women. While the government is fighting things out in Washington, Saujani offers a roadmap for change, or ”a bottom-line primer” on what’s needed and what employers and individual women can do to “contribute to the revolution.” This very specific tool for change can be super useful as we all strive to set up a more sustainable working world and to protect an invaluable source of our collective economic and personal wellbeing. I highly recommend you read Pay Up, and send a copy to any working mother you know is struggling and above all, share with anyone with the power to create lasting institutional change.
To each of you who read this to the end, thank you for being a key part of this revolution just be taking part in my mission and the mission of Monumental Me to create and better manage positive change.
Yours,
Liana Slater
The Mindshare Podcast
Monumental Me
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Liana.MonumentalMe | Apr 5, 2022 |
I think I would've gotten a lot more out of this if I fit Saujani's definition of a perfectionist—fixed mindset, constantly worried what others think of me, a Type-A Hermione Granger. As more of a Faramir (blessed with an awesome father instead of Denethor), I didn't quite reap the full Brave, Not Perfect experience of empowerment.

Which is not to say I didn't benefit from the read. Having Saujani's concepts and assertions to push my own experiences against allowed me to more closely define how my own drive toward perfection behaves in my life. And reading what motivates her and other Hermione Granger perfectionists to push themselves toward bravery (regret, jealousy, competitiveness) offered me the opportunity to realize that my motivations will have to be something else entirely. Even looking at some of her strategies to cultivate a bravery mindset affirmed that the ways I've worked to enlarge my life since adolescence are solid, beneficial approaches.

But this was definitely more a case of Learn How Different You Are than Learn How You Too Can Change Your Life! I'm an enneagram 4, so you'd think I'd be rolling in that special snowflake-ness like a cat in catnip, but...honestly...I could really use some help with the type of perfectionism I do experience.

It didn't help that a lot of Saujani's statements about the source of perfectionism in women, women's right to claim their truth, and how her readers, too, can achieve greatness through bravery were very black and white and riddled with logical holes and inconsistencies. Instead of focusing on what she was advocating, I kept getting snarled in what wasn't being said. (Or cited in the Notes.)

I mean, sure, maybe we should rethink how we raise our girls, but do we really think raising them like our boys is the solution? Doesn't the way we raise our boys cause problems of its own? And, yes! Claim your truth, ladies! ...But don't think that your truth gives you the right to stop hearing others' truths, too. And it's fantastic that so many women have found that bravery has led them to creating amazing non-profits and opening new chapters of success...but isn't that still focusing on the end goal instead of the process of being brave?

I think Brave, Not Perfect will leave many, many readers with an awakening sense of their own power and a roadmap for fully inhabiting their own lives, but for those of us outside Saujani's template—or those less moved by the pathos of her encouragement—there's a lot less here. I will certainly take the insights I've gained and see whether I can turn them into weapons in the neverending battle against my own perfectionist demons, and there are a few strategies I can put into immediate action (Take On a Physical Challenge; Trust Yourself; Review, Reassess, Realign), but the hunt for advice that speaks to my Faramir-type perfectionist continues....
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slimikin | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Mar 27, 2022 |
Girls are raised to be perfect. Boys are raised to be brave. Be more brave, less perfect. Just because a girl is raised to be perfect, doesn't mean she has to be ..... because perfect is hard? Just because a boy is raised to be brave, doesn't mean brave is easy. Brave is hard for boys (and girls) too.

And I don't need a hero to have the same genitalia as me to be my hero. I kinda joke that Alex P Keaton was one my childhood heroes. Ya know what? Xena Warrior Princess was one too. We can choose heroic qualities from people, not the entire person. For real life heroines, I like the courage of Grace O Malley and Eleanor Roosevelt.

I appreciate her honesty in telling about her Congressional election and she comes across really approachable .... and human?

In my culture, I find myself always chasing some perfect ideal. So I understand where she's coming from. Is it a bad thing to strive for perfection ... to become the best version of yourself ... even if you're crying yourself to sleep each night? To aim for perfection can be brave, and heroic. (Aim for) perfect. Be brave and heroic.
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wellington299 | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Feb 19, 2022 |
Eh, it's okay. I wanted to like it better, and to like it more consistently.

I mistook this title for a "how to unleash your creativity no matter what anyone else thinks" book, and I was disappointed, but I kept reading until the mid-point, when I accelerated and skimmed it. I began to realize, after a few chapters, that I am not the target audience for this book: as an, I guess, braver-than-I-realized GenXer it never occurred to me to curate my life on Instagram, or to give any f*cks about having the perfect selfies or vacation photos. I had no idea people cared about things like that, and the last time I experienced FOMO I was an adolescent. It may be of some use to adult (women -- it's really geared toward women) people in their 30s who may have been raised to be too risk-averse and social media-centric to embrace life in all its messy temporary-ness.… (lisätietoja)
 
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FinallyJones | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Nov 17, 2021 |

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Teokset
5
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439
Suosituimmuussija
#55,772
Arvio (tähdet)
½ 3.7
Kirja-arvosteluja
8
ISBN:t
50
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4

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