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I can objectively say that my life is likely better than my mother's life from the 1970s, right?

In a lot of ways and a lot of freedoms that I have.

But in other ways, what is my actual future look like, and what is the future of other women today look like who have been told that they can be anything they want to be, but at the end of the day, likely they're going to get to the middle of their career, realize that they outperformed everyone, outwork everyone, are still not getting recognized for it.

Intro Music And.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbe.

Welcome to To The Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

In the early 2010s, hustle culture emerged with the rise of the #GirlBoss and a new wave of young, ambitious women and aspiring entrepreneurs taking on the corporate ladder they were promised.

If they work hard enough, success would surely follow.

But women are beginning to see that's easier said than done.

Joining us today is Samhita Mukhopadhyay.

She brings us a critical look at the myths surrounding success in the workplace, especially for women and people of color.

The former executive editor of Teen Vogue and here to talk about your latest book, The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning.

So, Samhita, welcome, first of all, how are you doing?

Great.

It's so good to be here.

Bonnie.

Good to see you.

so start, as you do in the book, talking about, how you got the job at Teen Vogue and, where it left you emotionally and, in terms of sapping all your energy?

Absolutely.

So, you know, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, I received a DM from the sitting chief content officer at Teen Vogue to say that they had been looking for, an editorial lead for their digital team.

And at the time, I had just lost my job, and I swore that I would not work in media again.

And I was burned out.

And but this felt like an upgrade.

And this felt like the definition of success, you know, why did I work so hard if not to, you know, enter the halls of the a storied institution like Condé Nast.

And so I took the job, and before you know it, I was sitting front row in New York Fashion Week.

I was getting my hair and makeup done all the time.

I was in high powered meetings.

I was getting to work on interesting photoshoots, and on paper it looked like I had it all.

But on the inside, as I write in the book, I was 80% faking it with my 100% Gucci bag and realized that despite the fact that I had worked so hard to get to this place, I wasn't where I wanted to be emotionally, physically, or frankly, financially.

And it wasn't until the pandemic when I really had the opportunity to reflect on that.

After the distraction and the glitz and glamor of the nightlife and the Ubers and the, you know, expense account for restaurants faded, I really it was just me and the work.

And I said, what is left?

Is this actually bringing me not just joy, not just happiness, but do I feel that I'm working in alignment with what I believe in?

And also, is this even sustainable?

Is the way that we work sustainable?

And I wasn't the only person that was asking that question.

I think in general, people anybody who had a job where they were expected to overproduce overperform and felt underpaid had a moment of reflection during the pandemic.

And so I really wanted to investigate that and really look at what does that mean for the current state of women and ambition, because, as you know, we've been taught, you know, as feminists, that the best thing you can do for yourself is work twice as hard because you're always going to be paid half as much or get half as much credit.

And what I think many young women started to realize, and I think women of all ages started to realize, was that was a myth that we had all bought into, that ultimately, it wasn't getting us to true equality.

Okay, tell me about the myth.

Why did it turn out to be wrong?

I don't want to say it's wrong or it's right, you know, because I do think one of the things I do in the book is I look back at not just kind of lean in and girlboss feminism, but I really look back at the 70s and 80s, and I was really fascinated by what the what the feminists were saying in the 70s about work and what, you know, the pop culture feminists were saying who I think was, one of the women that I really looked at was Helen Gurley Brown, who was the kind of long reigning editor in chief of Cosmo and prior to that had written a book called sex and the single Single girl.

and then after that, kind of wrote the Bible of, you know, where we get the term having it.

All right.

And so she writes this book in the early 80s, and it's really speaking to this new generation of young women that, you know, really one of the first generations of women that didn't have to get married, right?

They had jobs.

They were starting to earn money on their own terms.

And what she was really talking about was this idea that you can have it all, do not let men hold you back.

You can get the rest.

You can hustle, you can get the job, and you can also still be sexy.

And part of her messaging was feminists were considered largely unsexy.

Right?

And what what an effective way to convince women that they don't want equality, to convince them that no one will ever have sex with them.

And she said, well, you can do it.

You can have it all.

That's what she meant, right?

And so, yeah, I was interested in how that type of kind of pop culture feminism was really telling women that many of, you know, what feminists were arguing was that we were experiencing structural inequality, that the way that motherhood was structured was oppressive to women, the way that families were structured, the nuclear family, the way that marriage was structured, education, access to reproductive rights, what she was arguing.

And I think what became the more popular mainstream feminism was you can overcome the obstacles that you face in the workplace, no matter how structural they may.

They may be, no matter how much they might be a result of inequality or, you know, gender injustice.

You know, put on the right mascara, eat the right diet, you know, twinkle, you know, twinkle in the eye and a touch on the arm and you'll get that promotion, you know, get what you want.

And and that was you know, that is really outdated advice today.

Right.

And but I think that that advice has evolved into really convincing women the kind of girlboss ethos that we're seeing a lot more criticized today, or what academics called neoliberal feminism, or this idea that you alone are responsible for your own progress and success and everything you can't overcome is because you didn't try hard enough, versus the reality we know, which is that structures are created to keep women paying less, paid less, and as a keeping women as an underclass.

But so much has changed, since Helen Gurley Brown, especially in the economy and economic opportunities of certain sorts for women.

Now, how has that impacted you and what you want to get done in women's media?

I agree that there are so many tools now and opportunity is for people to, you know, speak truth to power to create and produce content on their own terms.

you know, and especially as we've seen, you know, as we were just talking about the kind of, shrinking of newsrooms, the shrinking of outlets that are dedicated to issues around gender and race.

but the reality is, you know, ultimately, to sustain yourself in those environments, you do need to have a certain amount of financial comfort, right?

You know, I'm considered what they call the sandwich generation.

So while I don't have children, I was having to take care of my parents.

And so I was not able to take care of my parents financially without having some kind of stability.

And I think that while we have this, you know, narrative around all of the opportunities, especially around entrepreneurship, most of the success stories are, you know, they're one in a million.

That's they are the exception, not the rule.

And so while I think that it's a really exciting prospect, and I do think a lot of people find quite a bit of success with online marketing and content creation.

I don't know that ultimately they you know, it once again puts the onus on the individual to figure out a financial solution for themselves within a system that does not have enough well-paid jobs, does not have enough investment in people to support them in paying off their student loans and buying a house.

I mean, the two kind of fundamental parts of the American dream have fizzle, right?

The two things that you're told, you grow up and you're going to go to college and you're going to buy a house, and those are just two things that make you broke now.

Right?

And so I do think that, you know, while all of these kind of flashy toys are really exciting, the reality is, you know, a lot of young people don't really know what they're going to do with their lives, and they may not have a name or they may not.

You know, I'm somebody who has, you know, been in this industry for 20 years, and I still struggle to build audience or to have the infrastructure to produce content and actually get paid for it.

You talked about the one in a million success stories.

Is it being ridiculously controversial like an Alex Jones?

You know, some, I mean, seemingly mentally unbalanced person with opinions that are just so far off the political edge on, in his case, on the right side that that is that what gets you, you know, is or is that how they do it or how do they do it?

The one in the million?

I mean, I think it's unclear, right?

That's that's part of the ruse of social media is those are those aren't ultimately sustainable pieces of income.

And I do think that they're you know, I'm always like, who is secretly rich?

Like somebody is secretly rich here because how are they just on Instagram all day?

You know, we are in a moment where polarization and voices that are exceedingly polarizing are rewarded in ways that people that want to say things that are nuanced may not be.

And I always joke about how if I decided to come forward and say, guess what?

I was pro-life all along, never believing in reproductive rights, I'd have a column in the New York Times tomorrow.

I know I would.

I mean, maybe not the times, maybe the Atlantic.

And no disrespect, I even write for these.

I write for these outlets.

But, you know, if I came out against my feminist sisters, you know, as, like, this was all, you know, this was all a lie.

I would get so much attention for it.

Right.

But when I say it's directly but no.

But seriously for a moment, because you and I, before we started dating, did talk about that.

There was a boom period for feminist blogs and, and, you know, feminist opinions and media, back closer to around 2010, that seems to have subsided.

So what is it that has developed since then, since the death of the prolification of, you know, blogs that has taken its place?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, there isn't a lot of money in, calling out the patriarchy, right?

Like, that's just not ultimately like, you know, you know Bonnie better than anybody.

I mean, that's not a sustainable business venture.

I think that there have been a variety of things that have happened.

So in the last 15 years, 2014 time magazine dubbed it the Year of Women.

Right?

You had all of these big moments, girlboss came out.

Beyonce's on stage calling herself a feminist.

You know, we're gearing up for Hillary Clinton's historic presidential run.

I mean, anything's possible, right?

you know, the young woman.

And let me point out to you, when I read that in your book, I, I had to chuckle because, Cari, our executive producer in the next room next to me here.

she and I went to the 1992 Democratic convention in Los Angeles, where Bill Clinton won his first nomination.

And, Hillary Clinton was there, and she had several events, as I recall, at least one huge one, because 92 was dubbed the year of the Woman in American Politics.

Now, time magazine may not have sanctioned it, but the fact is, this is not the first time it's been called the Year of the woman.

I remember that I mean, I remember Hillary Clinton being, you know, this feminist icon and, you know, everything like the Monica Lewinsky stuff like that was so defining and my understanding of feminism and as was Anita Hill.

Right.

And this kind of we had a real time example of what it looks like when women actually spoke truth to power within these systems, and when they tried to hold powerful men accountable for what they had done, the consequences were dire.

They were dire.

And that was what I that was what I was raised on.

Right.

and so, yeah, around in 2014, I mean, I was already in my 30s.

And so while I was invested in this excitement, I was like, you know, we all know these kinds of moments ebb and flow.

And it's interesting to see what's happened in the last decade where it's not that women's voices have gone away.

Right.

But I think, as you say, there are certain types of messages that are a little bit more marketable than others.

And so while it can feel like there's been a lot of progress because women can wear whatever they want to, where women can be whatever they want to be, they're outperformed.

Men in colleges and universities, you will still see, socially mothers still do the majority of care work in the home.

Right.

That has not changed fundamentally, does not matter if they work, they are still doing the majority of their work.

And, statistically, I mean, we all have our friends who, you know, have nice husbands or whatever, but like, it's not, just statistically, women are also still paid less, right?

Women are still making $0.83 to the dollar.

And that's even more so true for women of color.

Less than 10% of CEOs in the fortune 500 list are women.

And that's even smaller for women of color.

I mean, you have these egregious statistics.

And so while we're peddled this story about women's success and how successful we are, we still haven't had a woman president.

We're still grossly underrepresented.

And as you said, Roe v Wade was overturned on our watch.

So we are sitting in the middle of a feminist backlash, and we are being told because of the images that we're seeing in social media, because a woman can be anything she wants to be because, you know, she can wear whatever she wants and she has the tools to tell her story that we're having some, you know, renaissance of women's empowerment.

But when you look at the actual numbers while I can, I can objectively say that my life is likely better than my mother's life from the 1970s.

Right?

In a lot of ways and a lot of freedoms that I have.

But in other ways, what is my actual future look like, and what is the future of other women today look like who have been told that they can be anything they want to be, but at the end of the day, likely they're going to get to the middle of their career, realize that they outperformed everyone, outwork everyone, are still not getting recognized for it.

And tell me how you use the term hustle culture in your book.

Tell me about what that means and, some of which you've already alluded to, but please explain it more fully and how that impacts women's ability to get ahead.

and now and in the future.

So hustle culture.

I was interested in, because I think it becomes part and parcel to girlboss feminism and this idea that if you hustle hard enough, you can overcome any barrier that you might experience structural or otherwise, in the workplace.

And any type of success you're not seeing is your own fault.

That's because you're not hustling hard enough.

And so, once again, you know, similar to kind of “lean in” feminism hustle culture, really.

And and it's not specifically gendered, right?

I mean, the word and the origin of hustle culture actually was speaking about the black working class and the idea that if a black working class person was not finding success, it was because they weren't working hard enough.

They fundamentally were not, you know, interested in working and weren't able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

And so this kind of American exceptionalism is so foundational to how we understand success in this country.

And we believe that anybody who needs support in the American dream is, you know, lazy.

They are need a handout, they are unmotivated.

And they, you know, they they lack hustle.

And so I was I thought that was a just a really interesting piece of this bigger conversation because I think that, you know, personally I hustle, hustle really hard.

I work really hard.

I'm promoting a book right now.

Right.

Like that's one of the most ambitious things you can do.

And I can't deny that hustling and working hard has helped me and my career has.

That led to the kind of financial, emotional and physical security that I would like to have in my life at this point?

It has it.

And and that's kind of where I consider hustle culture, another one of those myths that we buy into where if you work hard enough, you will see this payday one day.

Some people do, and those examples are held up as possibilities for us Oprah, Obama, Michelle Obama.

You know, you have these like incredible people that have made it.

They've overcome insurmountable odds.

But once again, they're the exception, not the rule.

And so where does that leave the rest of us that are constantly being made to feel like we're not working hard enough or not doing enough, because we haven't seen the kind of successes that we should be seeing.

And, you know, ultimately, it's not even about success.

Right?

But the thing that I really reflect on at the end of the book that I'm doing in my own life is what is enough, what does enough mean for us and how much how far do we actually have to go?

Because the planet is burning.

We're all burned out.

Everybody's depressed.

Nobody work is no longer sustainable.

So at what point do we say this is enough?

We've had enough, I have enough, I don't need more than this.

But also we've had enough.

Is it possibly a problem to that?

Young women and I don't know that it's men are the same way.

but they have a dream.

They, they think it will get them to a certain place in, in their lives, in society, financially.

But but they're expectations are just not realistic.

I say that, quite frankly, in my own case, too.

you know, I pushed for many, many years to get this program on TV and, at the time there was something called the McLaughlin Group that was on TV, that was on commercial TV.

First of all, not on public television, much more successful.

The salaries that those people involved with that show made were much higher because it was commercial.

It was underwritten sponsored by GE huge company, and put on NBC commercially owned stations.

But when we did not get to the level of impact on society that I saw that the McLaughlin Group had and, you know, it was very tight with Reagan.

He, John McLaughlin, the host, went to white House dinners, had all this clout.

Was I just wrong to assume that when I made it, if I made it, if I got what I wanted to get going, that I would that that would be the ultimate reward?

I think it's I would be very hesitant to tell women that they're dreaming too big, right?

And I think I think it's important to recognize I mean Bonnie, you're a trailblazer.

You were doing work at a time where, you know, it's you had to have lofty goals because there you were creating space in a space that, you know, women's voices in the in a didn't exist in mainstream media in that way.

Right?

I mean, you had a couple of examples, but that there wasn't the the type of, you know, the type of, the comfort with which we talk about feminist issues in the mainstream just didn't exist 40 years ago.

Right.

And and so I think that that's just a fundamental shift that's happened now.

That was, you know, there was what what did they used to call the ladies page or section of the news as that's So I think that that is something that's fundamentally shifted in the last 40 years.

What I do think is true and what you're saying is that I think that younger generations are expected to dream big.

You know, there's been a lot of writing done about millennials and their levels of anxiety and how they were told that they had to be exceptional.

And we couldn't just be normal, right?

Like, just like, you know, grow up, get a job, have a normal life.

Like that was no longer like, it's like we all had to be stars.

We all have to be exceptional.

And I'm kind of a younger Gen Xer.

And for me, it was really like, you work really hard and there's no excuse for you to not get ahead.

You work as hard as you can, you know, you're not going to, you know, get paid the same as the man next to you.

So you have to work even harder.

And it is so ingrained in who I am.

So it's less about, you know, the bigger picture and more that I'm willing to put in the work, even if it means my labor will be exploited, even if it means I won't reach my goals.

I know that that is one way I could get there, even if it's not realistic and what I think is happening right now is that bubble is bursting.

People were told that if I I'm exceptional, I'm exceptional.

And because I worked hard and I got straight A's and now I'm going to get the job of my dreams and and they didn't get the job of their dreams or they did, and they were unhappy in it, just like I was.

And I think that is the contract, the social contract that's breaking right now.

The idea that, you know, we are exceptional, we are special.

And then you get out to the world and you're like, well, maybe I'm just regular, maybe I'm just ordinary.

And that reality, I think is hitting people very hard.

and I also, you know, I think we really encourage young women to dream big, right?

Like we're like, what do you want to be when you grow up?

You know, we don't tell them, well, sweetie, it's going to be really hard for you to be on the Supreme Court.

It's gonna be really hard for you to be president because we've never had a woman president.

We tell them that they should absolutely dream to be the president.

And so we're not on his payroll.

Sorry.

Yeah, but is there not a way to frame it?

Where?

Go after your dreams.

Dream big.

Hope you'll get there, but realize you're not failure if you don't.

I think the normalization of how we talk about failure, is a really big missing piece of the broader conversation around neoliberal feminism, which is very much like, here's all the flowery, rosy, great things that will happen if you work hard enough.

I think the other piece of this is what we're seeing is a bit, you know, the book is called A Workplace Reckoning.

Right?

And what we're seeing is this reckoning with the workplace that we as a collective are frustrated with the conditions within which we have to navigate in many of these workplaces.

And so it's less about, I think, a lot of advice books around business and women's empowerment are really about what you can personally do.

And one of the messages that I really was trying to get across in this book is that there's only so much we can do in our own personal lives, and an overemphasis, I'm just our personal lives actually leads us away from linking in to broader collective movements for change, and that includes gender injustice and gender equality in the workplace.

And so that doesn't mean that every place you work, you can unionize.

That's just not realistic all the time.

Right?

But that doesn't mean there isn't always an opportunity to think about not just you and your career and what's happening in your career, but how is it connected to everybody else that you work with?

How it how are you experiencing the workplace similarly?

And what are the things you can talk about with each other?

Ironically, this is the advice that Sheryl Sandberg had right and lean in, right, that the whole premise of Lean in Circles.

But what's interesting is there's new research that just came out, from the University of Exeter, and it's basically saying that lean and feminism and what they call neoliberal feminism has not just alienated women.

It has convinced them that their successes are rooted in their own success and failure, and it has turned them away from connecting with other women around gender justice, because they internalize the idea that any injustice they experience is their own fault.

And that is a piece of evidence that I think has been missing up until now, where all of us felt a discomfort with the advice that we were always told you could be whatever you want to be.

Work hard, get to the top, you know, don't let him get you down like you know.

Don't let him talk down to you.

Always ask for more money.

All advice that I would give to a young woman who's entering the work world, right?

But what we're actually seeing is a lot of that advice has pushed people away from connecting with each other and actually building a movement for fair labor rights.

You they women internalize their own failures and blame them.

Explain that to me.

Yeah.

So the research basically found that messages like Lean in or what they call neoliberal feminism, the idea that if you work hard enough, you can overcome any obstacle you face in the workplace.

So say you had a child and you were overlooked for promotion.

Just figure out how to meet with your boss.

Figure out how to overcome that issue personally.

Right.

Whereas we know that that's an issue of gender discrimination in the workplace.

Discriminating against mothers, discriminating against pregnant people is a form of gender discrimination and is, you know, there is legislation that supports you in overcoming that.

Right?

Or there's an opportunity for you to talk to other women about you know, what the experiences you've had as pregnant people in the workplace.

And so, basically, what the researchers found is that when you individualize progress in the workplace, you turn your back on the opportunity to connect with other women around gender injustice.

And so you're less likely to organize your workplace.

You're less likely to link in to broader movements for for social change.

And that is an interesting piece of evidence.

Very interesting.

And I'd love to hear what Sheryl Sandberg has.

To say about that.

But, thank you so much for joining us, Samhita Mukhopadhyay.

Good.

Best of luck with your new book, The Myth of Making It a Workplace Reckoning.

And that's it for this edition of To The Contrary.

Keep the conversation going on all our social media platforms and visit our website, pbs.org/tothecontrary and whether you agree or think, To The Contrary, See you next time.

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