The book’s title is a reference to the need to get workplaces and government “to pay up for the unseen, unpaid labor of mothers—via respect, recognition, and cold, hard cash.”

Pay Up

<ul><li>Give women control over their schedules. </li><li>Support women with childcare.</li><li>Own their role in shaping gender dynamics in homes.</li><li>Provide paid leave for illness or taking care of a sick child.</li><li>Identify and eliminate any anti-mom bias.</li><li>Don’t rush new mothers back to work.</li><li>Establish a strong reentry approach</li><li>Prioritize women’s mental health.</li><li>Advocate for mothers publicly.</li></ul>

Nine ways workplaces can work for women:

<ul><li>Affordable, quality childcare</li><li>Paid parental leave.</li><li>Monthly payments to moms</li></ul>

Three policy approaches

All things being equal, I’d hire a mom 10 times over because we’re the ones who know how to juggle a million things at once, which is in fact the ideal worker.”

The founder of Girls Who Code and bestselling author of Brave, Not Perfect confronts the “big lie” of corporate feminism and presents a bold plan to address the burnout and inequity harming America’s working women today. We told women that to break glass ceilings and succeed in their careers, all they needed to do is dream big, raise their hands, and lean in. But data tells a different story. Historic numbers of women left their jobs in 2021, resulting in their lowest workforce participation since 1988. Women’s unemployment rose to nearly fifteen percent, and globally women lost over $800 billion in wages. Fifty-one percent of women say that their mental health has declined, while anxiety and depression rates have skyrocketed. In this urgent and rousing call to arms, Reshma Saujani dismantles the myth of “having it all” and lifts the burden we place on individual women to be primary caregivers, and to work around a system built for and by men. The time has come, she argues, for innovative corporate leadership, government intervention, and sweeping culture shift; it’s time to Pay Up. Through powerful data and personal narrative, Saujani shows that the cost of inaction—for families, for our nation’s economy, and for women themselves—is too great to ignore. She lays out four key steps for creating lasting change: empower working women, educate corporate leaders, revise our narratives about what it means to be successful, and advocate for policy reform. Both a direct call to action for business leaders and a pragmatic set of tools for women themselves, Pay Up offers a bold vision for change as America defines the future of work.

career

Career

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

books

Books

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER The founder of Girls Who Code and bestselling author of Brave, Not Perfect confronts the “big lie” of corporate feminism and presents a bold plan to address the burnout and inequity harming America’s working women today. We told women that to break glass ceilings and succeed in their careers, all they needed to do is dream big, raise their hands, and lean in. But data tells a different story. Historic numbers of women left their jobs in 2021, resulting in their lowest workforce participation since 1988. Women’s unemployment rose to nearly fifteen percent, and globally women lost over $800 billion in wages. Fifty-one percent of women say that their mental health has declined, while anxiety and depression rates have skyrocketed. In this urgent and rousing call to arms, Reshma Saujani dismantles the myth of “having it all” and lifts the burden we place on individual women to be primary caregivers, and to work around a system built for and by men. The time has come, she argues, for innovative corporate leadership, government intervention, and sweeping culture shift; it’s time to Pay Up. Through powerful data and personal narrative, Saujani shows that the cost of inaction—for families, for our nation’s economy, and for women themselves—is too great to ignore. She lays out four key steps for creating lasting change: empower working women, educate corporate leaders, revise our narratives about what it means to be successful, and advocate for policy reform. Both a direct call to action for business leaders and a pragmatic set of tools for women themselves, Pay Up offers a bold vision for change as America defines the future of work.

Pay Up

Pay Up

Nine ways workplaces can work for women:

Three policy approaches

RESHMA SAUJANI

CURATED BY

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