Pay up The future of women and work (and why it's different than you think)

Girls Who Code founder Saujani (Brave, Not Perfect) calls for "a full-scale reenvisioning of how we as a society... define 'work' " in this impassioned if familiar manifesto. She makes a case that women "need the system to change" and that equality won't be found via hard work or through more "girlbosses." Rather, it can only be the result of big changes in "workplaces, homelife, culture, and governmental support." She calls for for flexible work, paid leave, and subsidized childcare, bringing political and professional experience to her argument as "the first Indian American woman to run for Congress in New York City." But her claims about "women and work"narrow to focus on heterosexual mothers in traditional homes and jobs, the section that asks "How Did We Get Here?" is a Wikipedia-shallow dive into the history of women in the American workplace, and her "radical reinvention of the workplace" involves pretty standard policy updates regarding time-off boundaries and national paid leave. Even if the manifesto is not as revolutionary as it's purported to be, progressive readers will nevertheless find it worthwhile as a forceful, focused, and cogent articulation of these goals. It's a fine lay of the land, but there's not quite enough to set this one apart. (Mar.)

In the pandemic's first year, women worldwide lost $800 billion in wages, with unemployment among them rising from 3.1 percent to nearly 15 percent. Mothers in particular have reported encroaching anxiety, with almost 70 percent experiencing health problems owing to pandemic-induced stress. Saujani found herself stressed, too--and angered by the ongoing absence of support for mothers. Here she follows up her New York Times best-selling Girls Who Code and Brave, Not Perfect to propose The Marshall Plan for Moms, arguing for structural changes like government payments and workplace and cultural rethinking to help working women. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

The founder of Girls Who Code calls for a "radical reinvention" of the American workplace in ways that would help mothers and other women. Saujani writes that when she wrote Brave, Not Perfect (2019), she "was still in the throes of promoting the feminist propaganda of having it all via leaning in." Her view changed during the pandemic--which exposed social and emotional fault lines in her life and others' and which forced 12 million women from the labor force--and here, she adjusts her course. Expanding an essay for The Hill that called for a "Marshall Plan for Moms," the author proposes a sweeping array of solutions in an uninspired book comprised of part rant, part self-help, and part "call to action" rooted in three "critical public policies": affordable child care, paid parental leave, and cash payments to parents. Many ideas appear on bulleted lists called a "Playbook for Employers" and "What Women Can Do," and while some are worthy, too many are overfamiliar, underdeveloped, or unimaginative. (Managers should "Lead by example," and women should "Get enough sleep," an idea that may seem ludicrously impractical to any mother of a 6-month-old.) The writing is merely serviceable, and many of Saujani's ideas are surprisingly conservative or tame. She never suggests, for example, that working mothers might benefit from joining a labor union or pushing for a higher minimum wage. Worse, while Saujani pays lip service to second-wave feminists' efforts, she slights them in subtle and seemingly ill-informed ways. For example, she writes that feminists "forgot" to work for "equality in the home via compensation for the unpaid labor we do." In fact, they fought for it on many fronts, including, among numerous other examples, the Wages for Housework campaign. Saujani mentions her important work with Girls Who Code only briefly; a more enlightening book would have more deeply explored what that experience taught her. A disappointing take on what America's working women need. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.