00:00:00.000Hey y'all, Jo here and you are listening to Under the Influence.
00:00:09.440Today I want to talk about something that I've been seeing a lot on social media and also in
00:00:14.360just regular old school media. Lately the world has started using the language of feminism0.99
00:00:20.760to try to sell women a version of the patriarchy, a version of giving up their agency and becoming1.00
00:00:27.460more submissive to men with really, really good branding. And Tradwives, for just one example of
00:00:35.040that, I've been talking about it so much on the road on Book Tour for Everyone is Lying to You.
00:00:40.720Have you ordered it yet, by the way? It is chef's kiss, I swear to God. If you haven't gotten it,
00:00:46.020get it today. You're gonna love it. I promise. I promise. Because that is what we're talking
00:00:51.120about today. We're talking about how the patriarchy has gotten very good at rebranding
00:00:55.200and repackaging both feminism and femininity. Today, I get to talk to Dr. Nicole Mason.0.94
00:01:00.380She is just a brilliant, brilliant lady. She's not just a policy expert and a powerhouse.0.99
00:01:06.960She also coined the term she-cession, which talks about how in a recession, women often0.64
00:01:12.780do much worse than men, and how even in regular times we could be going through a she-cession.
00:01:18.580Today, we're getting into so much. I mean, this conversation really does cover all of1.00
00:01:23.220the things. We're digging into exactly how the pandemic exposed and accelerated the care crisis
00:01:29.420for women, a care crisis that continues to this day. Thought it might get fixed. It didn't.
00:01:35.460Because five years later, not nearly enough has changed. We're also getting into the rise of
00:01:40.620trad wives, soft girl, soft life culture, and the curated fantasy that walking away from equality
00:01:47.580is somehow the answer. That's what this patriarchal branding is doing right now.
00:01:53.820Dr. Mason is so good at breaking down how the right is co-opting the language of femininity0.79
00:01:58.300and choice to push women further and further out of power. And we're going to talk about
00:02:04.620the question that I keep asking all of the time. Why don't we on the left, why don't
00:02:09.060we in the center actually, have a better counter-narrative? This is a conversation about
00:02:15.380work, about motherhood, about policy and power. But more than anything, it is about what women0.97
00:02:20.900are still expected to carry. And how, just how, we might finally be able to stop carrying it alone.
00:02:36.620There's so many things that I want to talk to you about today that I feel like we might be a little
00:02:41.640bit all over the place because you just do so many brilliant things in the world. One of the
00:02:48.320first things that I want to ask you about is the term she-session, which a lot of people attribute
00:02:55.180to you. What is a she-session as opposed to a recession? So when the pandemic happened,
00:03:03.660a lot of economists were really scrambling to figure out what was going on. A lot of male
00:03:08.180economists. They couldn't figure out what they were seeing. And so when you think about a
00:03:12.560recession, it's just a downturn. And most recessions are male-dominated, so men lose
00:03:19.940more jobs. And what we were seeing during the pandemic was women lost a disproportionate
00:03:27.080number of jobs. And that was because we also were responsible for, you know, more than 100%,0.91
00:03:33.140I would say, of caregiving responsibilities. And so we were exiting the workforce in droves
00:03:39.600and a lot of the jobs that women are in, predominantly in, hospitality, leisure, those
00:03:46.680industries shed jobs as well. So I was thinking about, hey, like, what are we seeing? And I said,
00:03:56.060well, why don't we just call this a she session? And, you know, so that's how it came about.1.00
00:04:01.740But it was really trying to name what was happening to women. And I think if we would have just called it a recession, we would have lost what was actually happening and who was being impacted. And it was it was mainly it was mostly women.
00:04:19.040And it also brought together this care crisis as well.
00:04:42.660I mean, we're not in a she-session, and thankfully, that, you know, that is the case.1.00
00:04:48.220But, you know, the things that we thought or I thought would be solved as a result of the pandemic, like the care crisis, women feeling overwhelmed, feeling like they had to do it all, working triple shifts or double shifts.1.00
00:05:00.880I thought we would find some structural remedy or we as women or as a collective would say, we're not doing this anymore.
00:05:09.120And it feels like everything kind of just went back to normal.
00:05:12.240You know, women are still, you know, trying to do it all and managing care and also work.
00:05:21.500But in this moment, we're also having a hard time because of inflation, because of the proposed tariffs.1.00
00:05:29.140You know, many women will have a hard time because of the proposed cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.0.97
00:05:34.480So women are still feeling the kind of economic squeeze that we did five years ago.
00:05:40.500but turns out not a lot of people care which feels unfortunate it does often feel like not a lot of
00:05:48.120people care how do you think we can make them care and this is something that I think about
00:05:52.540every day I think about what topics can I cover on this podcast you know what can I write about
00:05:57.540in my fiction that will highlight some of these issues but I often feel like I'm preaching to the
00:06:02.740choir what else can we be doing to try to make people care about this you know it's a question
00:06:09.500I ask myself often as well. So I think we need to get outside of ourselves and go outside of
00:06:15.860our community and really start talking to people about what's happening, what's going on, because
00:06:20.620there's so many distractions. So truthfully, people are not plugged in. And so it's like,
00:06:26.880did you know this was happening? Or did you know this was going on? So that there's greater
00:06:31.780awareness. I was and am really encouraged by the mass mobilization that happened last Saturday,
00:06:40.980the No King marches and protests. And so what that tells me is that people are tuned in. They're
00:06:48.080just looking to be inspired. They're looking to have a reason. They're looking to be unified
00:06:53.640around a common goal. I think we haven't done a good job at inspiring, talking about the why,
00:07:01.140the big why in a real way. And I'm hoping that we can start to do that so that people can feel
00:07:08.760connected. People feel like instead of worrying about just me, me, me, they can start to again
00:07:16.220turn outward and say, well, no, this might not be happening to me, but it's happening to my
00:07:21.360neighbor. It's happening to people that may not look like me, but that I care about. And so I'm
00:07:26.580really hoping that we're able to get more connected. Yeah, I was really inspired by
00:07:31.480no kings as well in a way that I haven't been by protests in a while, honestly. You know,
00:07:37.620a lot of them were really lacking energy. They felt a lot of it felt hopeless for a while. I
00:07:42.780just didn't see the same kind of let's get out there and fucking fight that I saw during the0.97
00:07:50.400early the first Trump administration and the early Trump years and no kings. It felt like some of that0.94
00:07:55.380energy was back. And I felt very galvanized again. Yeah, I felt as well. And I just had to step
00:08:02.000outside of my front door, literally to like join, you know, protests. And, you know, I really felt
00:08:08.920connected. And it was a very diverse swath of people coming together. And so and so but I want
00:08:15.560to say this, like the DNC didn't do that. No kings. You know, I work with a lot of women's
00:08:22.320groups and I consider myself a part of the women's movement. And, you know, all these other
00:08:27.360movements floating around, they didn't do that. It was people, regular people who decided that
00:08:35.320they wanted to create something broad enough for people to get in. It wasn't about politics. It
00:08:41.540wasn't about an issue per se. It was about like, this is something that we all can agree to and
00:08:49.740care about. And let's get in there. Anybody can join. And that's what I think we need right now.
00:08:55.560We need something that's accessible, where people feel connected and feel like they belong
00:09:03.400at the end of the day. It's true. I do think that people want to feel like they belong. And that was
00:09:07.960the other thing about this protest. It felt more diverse than a lot of the protests that I've been
00:09:13.260to, you know, in terms of age, definitely. I feel like I saw a lot more boomers at this protest
00:09:19.440that I have before. Also economic diversity, racial diversity. It felt like a lot more people
00:09:27.220were coming to the table and and that felt good. Honestly, it really did. Yeah, it felt really good
00:09:33.440to me. And I, you know, I, you know, I had my teenagers there and they were, you know, had signs
00:09:38.620and I said, you know, this is the moment we have to do something. And it's and it's actually not
00:09:43.540a lot to do. You know, we just have to show up and we have to keep showing up and show that we
00:09:48.440care, you know, and again, and then after that, I had to take my daughter to her end of the year
00:09:53.120track meet party for a track team and get into my mom duties. But for that moment, I was able to
00:09:59.520like feel connected to, you know, more than 5 million people across the country. And I think
00:10:04.560that's what we have to keep doing. Right. Hold all those things. Hold all those things in. Yeah.
00:10:10.220While we hold up the rest of the world, literally. Right. While mothers hold up the rest of the
00:10:14.800world. Okay, I want to I want to take a quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk a1.00
00:10:18.760little bit about feminism and female identity. And what's been happening to it lately in the
00:10:25.920media in culture, and and how the right also has been co-opting the idea of both feminism1.00
00:10:33.020and femininity these days. Okay, we are back. I think a lot about feminism and also femininity
00:10:47.580and who gets to use these words, who gets to own these words. The right has been trying very hard
00:10:57.240to take control of the branding of both of these things,
00:11:01.980shockingly, in the past four years.1.00
00:11:05.320I want to hear how you think that women can work0.99
00:11:26.740But one of the things, you know, as I think about it, this moment where, you know, there's a lot of contestation around feminism and gender and women and men, that is a result of progress, you know, the demand for rights or the expansion of rights for people to be included in democracy.
00:11:48.480And what you see when that happens, when there's gains and there's also requests or demands for expansion of rights to groups previously excluded, you see backlash, you see pushback.
00:12:02.700But what's really unique in this moment is some women are trying to figure out how to live with patriarchy, live in a male-dominated or male world where it feels like they don't have a lot of power.
00:12:19.960And so then you see the rise of, you know, trad wives or soft life trends. And I'm thinking that, you know, if we will, maybe if we try this, like equality hasn't worked out and we've, you know, we've regressed. So why don't we try this? But, you know, it's an illusion. It's a mirage. It's not real.
00:12:39.880And so what we really need to be doing is thinking about the unfinished business of0.84
00:12:49.240We still need to continue to expand, to push back.1.00
00:12:53.720One of the things that I think is that while feminism did a really great job at, you know,0.92
00:13:01.080transforming laws and in some ways institutions and asking women to question their identity,
00:13:07.580What is femininity? What is their sexuality, their sexual expression, their relationship to power? We didn't do that same thing for men. We didn't ask them to do that kind of work, to be vulnerable, to think about manhood and masculinity in the same way that feminism asks women to do.0.63
00:13:26.400And here we are in this moment where, you know, masculinity is pretty much frozen in time and defined the same way it was more than 50 years ago. And women, you know, femininity and womanhood is a bit more expansive. And so that's the rub.
00:13:48.360And so we're seeing all of these things and all this tension right now and also calls to, you know, go back to a time that actually is no longer viable.
00:13:58.280And so all these things are colliding at the same time.
00:14:01.480Yeah, I think about the false nostalgia that I see so often online.
00:14:06.620I mean, times that not only are not viable, but that never really existed for the majority of human beings.
00:14:14.320you know when I look at this trad wife soft girl cultural movement and it has become a cultural
00:14:22.340movement I spoke I speak to a lot of young women who are very intrigued by these ideas who are
00:14:27.920like you know I'm only going to go to college to get an MRS and I'm like I haven't heard that joke
00:14:31.420in 30 years and even then it was sarcastic my friends um but they wasn't real it wasn't real
00:14:38.460But they're being tricked by this cosplay of something like Laura Ingalls Wilder Prairie Life, but make it fun, meets June Cleaver, but make it even whiter.
00:14:52.040And neither of those things ever existed as an idyllic existence for any woman, any woman.
00:15:00.700Well, you know, I just have to say, well, what is going on?
00:15:04.520I think what it is, in my opinion, is that younger women have seen the struggles of their mom. They've seen working women. If you read any biography of a strong woman, there's numerous examples and anecdotes where like she's pushed down, she's crying in the bathroom. All these horrible things are happening. And then she overcomes it and becomes like a power CEO or something.
00:15:26.600And so and then you couple that with the loss of rights like Roe versus Wade and a rise in gender based violence and online violence against women.
00:15:35.220And it's like, well, is there an alternative to this? You know, is equality worth it?
00:15:40.460Am I going to you know, I'm going to get a job and still, you know, have to face the pay gap.
00:15:46.200And so I think women, you know, younger women are really looking for an alternative and we don't have one.0.93
00:15:53.200And so enter these like glossy, you know, women saying, oh, my God, this is so easy.0.99
00:16:32.940I just keep thinking that feminism doesn't have an answer because it's not even that0.99
00:16:38.620young women today watched their moms, but I think they also watched their big sisters
00:16:43.240and the generation right above them.0.83
00:16:45.340You know, I know that I came up with girl boss culture and lean in and climb that corporate ladder. And I watched women get treated like shit and rights didn't catch up. Men didn't catch up. And being a woman with a successful career is so fucking hard in the world.1.00
00:17:05.120And then you add kids and a husband who's just essentially another dependent a lot of the time into that mix and juggling it all feels impossible.0.67
00:17:13.760And we haven't given girls something to look towards that feels aspirational.
00:17:19.400We're like, you can have it all. You can juggle everything.
00:17:21.480And they're like, but we see you having trying to have it at all.1.00
00:17:27.440You're really I just I don't want to do this.
00:17:29.720But the other side is offering them, you know, this fomance, essentially, of, you know, if you just check out and just make a garden in Homestead and have babies and get your MRS, then it is all going to be okay.
00:17:45.060And they're winning because it's aesthetically very pleasing to a lot of people.
00:17:50.400Well, it's aspirational, just like people aspiring to be a billionaire.
00:17:57.080The lottery, you know, very few people ever do. It's really selling, you know, wolf tickets. If I, you know, you're not, you're selling a fantasy that's not real, but is real in that many women, younger women are feeling a lot of anxiety, a lot of panic and are really trying to figure out who they are and what they're going to do and how they're going to be and giving up their power in exchange for this, again, fantasy.
00:18:27.080life. We know how that ends. It doesn't end well. But again, we haven't offered up an alternative.
00:18:33.540We haven't offered up another pathway. And so what that tells me is that there's actually still so
00:18:40.140much work for us to do. But when I think about the work that needs to be done, it's not just
00:18:46.300what women need to do. It's also what men need to do and what we need to do collectively,
00:18:51.240because we are in crisis we are in crisis and i i also get sick of hearing that women are going
00:18:57.880to have to fix it but the fact is we're probably going to have to fix it uh because i know great
00:19:03.360men and i know so many great men that are stepping up and they're not the majority right now and
00:19:08.040that's so fucking hard and it's exhausting to think that women are once again going to have0.73
00:19:13.680to be the ones to fix this, but I don't see an alternative. Do you? I do. I think that we're not0.96
00:19:22.260going to fix it. First of all, I've been doing a lot of work on women in power and people, and I
00:19:26.660say, well, you know, there's all this roundabout about like, well, how come we don't have universal
00:19:30.920childcare? How can we, you know, why don't we have paid sick and family leave? And it's not because
00:19:36.480of women, right? But it is because women don't have enough power, at least not enough to like1.00
00:19:43.300beat back harmful laws or pass the legislation that we all need or you know whether it's child0.98
00:19:49.400care or paid sick and family leave so what that tells me is that you do we do actually need men
00:19:55.600because whether we like it or not they're the majority of decision makers in congress in the
00:20:01.040halls of power and so i think we need to expand women's power but we also need to uh bring men in1.00
00:20:09.380or make them responsible and accountable for what's happening.0.98
00:20:16.100So I do think that we have to have a different kind of conversation about the role of men
00:20:20.740because right now we've only seen them as allies, as you said,
00:20:24.600either or hostile to us or women's issues or as like passive bystanders.
00:20:30.660And none of that has worked for us to seeing them in either of those ways, three ways.
00:20:36.200and and so there has to be another way to see men as engaging because right now i would love to say
00:20:43.000women are going to do it but turns out we haven't been able to unfortunately um no we haven't been
00:20:50.680able to and i mean that's why no no we haven't we try so hard we really do what can we be doing
00:21:00.820to get the men because they have the power sadly they still have the power um i mean i've like i've
00:21:07.260really started writing dystopian fiction about when they don't have the power but i don't even
00:21:11.860know if that'll sell at this point but how can we get these men then to work with us to bring about
00:21:18.100the change that we so desperately need well i think i think there are a lot of ways but i think
00:21:25.760one of the biggest ways is to not infantilize men and make it seem as if they don't know what's
00:21:34.100going on and what they're doing, because they do know how power works. They do know that they're
00:21:40.480moving to the side and we're doing all the work, just like if you're, you know, in a heterosexual0.71
00:21:46.720marriage and you're cleaning the house and taking care of the kids and going to get the dry cleaning
00:21:50.780and going to work and cooking dinner. Whoever's in the house with you, your husband, your partner,
00:21:55.760knows what's going on. They know that they're not contributing. But, you know, there's not a lot of
00:22:03.900accountability around that or stopping to say, hey, do you see what's going on here? Do you see
00:22:09.280that I'm caring and childering most of the way? And that's a difficult conversation to have. And
00:22:14.840that's, you know, in the home. But when we blow it out and zoom out to the societal level,
00:22:19.840it's that much harder um and like you like me we're probably like you know what i'll do it i
00:22:26.960know how to do it i'll just do it i'll just take care of it like you're not even going to do it
00:22:30.540right but we all know that you know that doesn't work out either so um i think we just need to go
00:22:36.700back to the basics and really start saying like everybody needs to be in here like this is a
00:22:42.200collective problem this is something that we all need to solve nobody gets off the hook um you know
00:22:48.180i'm nine like oh men don't know how to do this or they don't know anything about child care they
00:22:54.040don't know no they absolutely know because they are you know living in the same society and world
00:23:00.540that we women are living in i mean the easiest thing that i can think for me is i just try to
00:23:07.120do it try to start in my own home right i mean i my husband is held very accountable um and
00:23:14.880And, you know, but we've we've worked, I mean, despite the fact that I have, you know, a man that I think would call himself a feminist man as my husband, it's still not easy to have equality in a household because no one no one is really taught how to make that work.
00:23:31.200And it's taken a lot of hard conversations. And more than anything, I just want to model it for my son. Right.
00:23:37.560So I want him to go into the world thinking, oh, no, like there's a lot of labor that it takes to run a life and it should be equally divided between men and women with also with support from the government, the government, because that would just make it easier on everyone.
00:23:52.960But I like I really I do focus so granularly.
00:23:56.700I focus so small right now because the big stuff feels so big.
00:24:00.720it does feel so big but like i think you're right in terms like we have to start like
00:24:06.540in our homes in our communities um you know at the local level at the state level and then
00:24:13.460you know get if we want to do national work or engage there then that's possible but i think
00:24:19.580there are like so many things that we can do you know again in our own homes um to really start to
00:24:27.740chip away at some of the things we've been been talking about. And, you know, again, start having
00:24:34.320the conversations. And even this conversation right now, there's not what has been really
00:24:40.260troubling to me is that there, you know, we think that we're too good to have the conversation
00:24:46.940conversations about trad wives or like what's going on or this soft life trend. Like, you know,
00:24:53.800we have there's not a counter to that there's no counter um to that you know i've been calling it
00:25:02.180the um the feminine spear yeah my friend emily um calls them the girly pops uh i mean there's a lot
00:25:09.240there's no counter to it and that's what i think about all the time i'm like what's the counter
00:25:12.800how do we create the counter i'll make the counter i'll do it i mean because i also don't want to
00:25:16.660burn out and be a crazy girl boss again i didn't like that world i like that world wasn't friendly
00:25:21.960to, you know, succeeding as a woman in corporate America or, or raising a family, having it all0.96
00:25:29.300felt impossible. I want a nice middle. I want a nice middle where I get to have a productive,
00:25:35.800successful career, spend time with my kids, have a government that supports me and have a nice guy
00:25:41.380that cooks me dinner. Like that's, but I don't know how to put that out there in an aspirational
00:25:45.860way on Instagram. Cause I'm like, it just looks like my normal life. But you know what? I think
00:25:51.560that there are not a lot of models for that people don't see that people women don't see that like
00:25:58.280there's it's really extreme so they see either you know um these trap life fantasies or like
00:26:05.680this woman who's like killing herself um to do it all and crying and breaking down there's no
00:26:12.220we don't see that middle ground um at all and uh and i think we need to see more of it i think
00:26:18.820women who have struck a balance, who, you know, who have decided, you know, like I am creating
00:26:29.380a life that looks like this, that looks manageable and demonstrating how do you do it? Like,
00:26:35.700because also you're still, even when you're doing that, I don't know about you, it still feels like
00:26:40.820there's some unspoken pressure that you're still, you're not doing enough or you're not doing it
00:26:45.920right or that you know oh god of course of course i mean i would say like on a happiness scale i'm
00:26:50.640like a nine i'm real happy like i like i like my balance i like my life and i still feel like i'm
00:26:55.880not doing enough and i'm still kind of a shame monster exactly and it's internalized at this
00:27:02.080point it's like nobody even has to do it it's um it's all us it's all yeah it's all you know like
00:27:07.520um and so and but i do think we need to you know broaden the narrative about like what it means to
00:27:14.500be a woman today in modern america modern times and it's not um again trad life fantasies soft
00:27:23.180life fantasies um but it's like well it's it's it looks like this this is what it is this is what
00:27:31.060it feels like we just we're just not doing a good job at that but i think we can again bringing men
00:27:37.020into the conversation and i you know again i've been working you know in feminist spaces for you
00:27:44.040know, my whole career. And I can tell you what, when, uh, if a man walked into our organization0.99
00:27:50.280or whatever, you're like, Oh wait, somebody's husband here, what's going on. And what I
00:27:55.880realized is that's an old way of thinking. Like there's an old, that's an old way of
00:28:01.920seeing things. And, you know, and there are plenty of workspaces where we go that are
00:28:07.220very male dominated. And the same thing would be true if a woman walked into the C-suite0.99
00:28:12.080or into a space and what i'm saying is that like that's not a way to do this anymore like that0.72
00:28:20.360doesn't that's not working for us that model is not working for us and so what i'm looking for
00:28:26.160and hoping for is us working to figure out like a new model of both relating um you know family
00:28:34.440life balance uh in a way that feels you know good to everyone men and women you know it's not a zero
00:28:40.380game you know it's not a zero-sum game it's not no amen to that let's take one last quick break
00:28:45.080and then i want to talk about the wage gap and the work that you've been doing with future forward0.99
00:28:51.680women i really love the women's power and influence index and i want you to just break that down for
00:28:57.060me okay okay we are back your work with future forward women is so brilliant you released the
00:29:14.240u.s women's power and influence index of 2025 i love a map i love a colored map okay talk to me
00:29:21.080about what this is. Oh my goodness. So I, you know, started, founded Future Forward Women because I
00:29:28.440really wanted to figure out how we win big for women, how we've been big for families, how we
00:29:34.260really do this work differently. And one of the things I thought was really important to do was
00:29:40.840to like really understand what was happening with women across the U.S. And so the Power and
00:29:46.700Influence Index was really trying to get at and measure where women have power and influence
00:29:51.500and where they don't. So it's a set of looking across 18 indicators from poverty to the wage
00:30:00.320gap, to health, to political power, and then also looking at a set of about nine family-friendly
00:30:09.120policies and really putting that all together, mastering it up, and coming out with bottom
00:30:16.260top and bottom states. And some of the things that you find in the index, you know, it's not
00:30:25.000going to surprise you. You know, the states that are doing the worst in the index are states that
00:30:29.800have paid family leave. You know, women earn the least. They have low levels of education and1.00
00:30:36.580education and attainment. And they're also horrible in terms of their politics. They're
00:30:41.160hostile. Their, you know, policies are hostile towards women. And at the other end, the states1.00
00:30:45.480are doing really well. They have really great policies. They have a really great political
00:30:50.360culture for women. Women are in power. So that's, you know, you know, it doesn't take us, you know,1.00
00:30:56.640genius to see that. But one of the things that became really clear to me that I find frightening,
00:31:02.920actually, is that your rights, you know, your well-being, how much you earn, your educational
00:31:10.040attainment, your safety right now in the U.S. is determined by your state's borders. You know,
00:31:18.860literally where you live determines your rights. And you can drive 40 minutes and be in another0.51
00:31:25.540state and have a completely different set of rights. And I think that's problematic. And we
00:31:30.840haven't seen that kind of disparity in about 400 years. And then it wasn't okay. And absolutely now
00:31:38.800it is not okay when it comes to women. It's crazy. But so you've got all this data.1.00
00:31:47.100What can we do with it? How can we share it? How can we amplify it
00:31:51.080to use it to our advantage to increase our power and influence?
00:31:56.360So first of all, you can go there and look at your state. Look at what's going on in your state.
00:32:01.080Where does your state rank? How much, you know, are women earning in your state? What's the medium1.00
00:32:05.960income, you know, how are women doing in terms of their health and their well-being, their1.00
00:32:14.040I mean, I was, you know, some states don't even have basic like sexual harassment laws
00:32:18.380or, you know, you know, low levels of health insurance, you know, rates for women.
00:32:24.440And so those that's where you can start, like knowing what's going on in your state
00:32:28.820and then figuring out how you might be able to, you know, engage, get involved.
00:32:35.960you know, have conversations, small kitchen table conversations about like, did you know
00:32:41.200we don't even have, you know, paid sick leave or we have no child care. But just have starting to
00:32:49.140build awareness, I think, is really important and understanding.
00:32:55.360Yeah, I agree. And doing what we can to create a counter to the messaging on the other side. I
00:33:01.340I mean, my biggest concern about the Trad Wife soft girl trend is that when women check out, we stop pushing for these things.0.99
00:33:09.780If you think that you don't want to be in the workforce anymore, despite the fact that you have to really just to survive in this world, it's I've run the economics of Trad Wives.0.99
00:33:18.200I'm like, it doesn't work unless you have generational wealth.
00:33:21.340But you think that you don't have to fight for equality.
00:33:24.480You think you don't have to fight for equal pay.
00:33:29.620where is the wage gap at these days um for for women generally and then also we know
00:33:35.020intersectionally it gets so much worse so the pay gap i mean it's just it's just you know
00:33:41.860and people gloss over because this you know every year we talk about oh it's 84 cents on the dollar
00:33:48.460you know for women of color it's 64 for black women it's 53 for latino you know so we have
00:33:54.540all these stats that, you know, we like to throw out. And, you know, a couple, you know, the year
00:34:01.020before last and went down by two cents. And I'm like, it's getting ridiculous. Like it's only
00:34:06.160closed, you know, 20 cents in the last like 50 years. So, you know, none of that really matters
00:34:13.380until you really start talking about what that means for women. That means women lose about a1.00
00:34:18.500million a year to the pay gap in earnings, career earnings. That's crazy. And then when you think1.00
00:34:25.880about what that means, like that's less money to like, you know, pay off student loan debt. Women1.00
00:34:30.200have the most student loan debt, you know, delays buying a house, delays being able to pay for1.00
00:34:36.300college for your children, you know, all of these milestones. And so you can't even go on a girls0.94
00:34:41.640trip. You can't do any of those things because you have less money. And so to me, the material0.73
00:34:47.920loss. And women have fewer dollars in retirement as well. So it's just the pay gap, all these1.00
00:34:58.760things that we've been talking about, they're very, very stubborn in terms of making movement
00:35:06.040and progress around it. It feels very slow and gracial. And so my work is really trying to figure1.00
00:35:12.360out how do we accelerate it? How do we do this work differently? What are the strategies? Who do
00:35:17.020we need to be talking to? And I think younger women is one of those groups of people we need1.00
00:35:23.700to be, you know, engaging more fully. Yes, yes. And yes. I mean, right now, I was just watching
00:35:30.400videos from Turning Point USA's Young Women Conference, and they're engaged. They're being
00:35:37.320engaged. And so, yes, I do want to be engaging young women in a new and different way. I think
00:35:43.100I think we have to be willing to experiment with with, you know, new kinds of conversations, new kinds of branding around what do young women want in the world right now?0.91
00:35:53.140Because it's not the same as what the generation literally right above them wanted.0.82
00:35:58.540Right. It's not even that hard. Like we do need to tap in.
00:36:02.160There are, you know, young people are energized. Young people have ideas about the world and the way it should be.
00:36:08.780they have ideas about who they are and we're like what do you know i don't know what do the young0.83
00:36:14.000people want what are we doing now like well it's not that hard let's go find out you know like you
00:36:19.440just said turning point usa um are galvanizing young women around a set of ideas um you know
00:36:26.380maybe they're not the ideas that i might align with but they are not my ideas you know but you
00:36:32.220know what they are their ideas yeah they're i watched i watched these videos their reach is in
00:36:37.300the millions okay and like it looks like a fun party to be honest and then you listen to the
00:36:43.800words and you're like oh no no but if you look at it with the volume down you're like you girls are
00:36:49.460having so much fun and then you listen to it and you're like oh my gosh we need a counterpoint to
00:36:55.140that we need a counterpoint to that yeah we do we need a counterpoint to that we need to be0.74
00:37:00.060mobilizing younger women we need to be bringing them in we need to be listening you know we don't
00:37:04.780need to be poo-pooing like um you know um you know like oh you're in the trad wives or oh you
00:37:11.420you'd think like this oh no that's not how you should think about it no that's that's not how
00:37:15.980you engage people you don't think so i agree i think it has to be like why what's attractive
00:37:20.440what's attractive about that for you it took a lot about the ideas of you know presenting the
00:37:26.560fact that feminism no matter what you think about it you know and there's a lot of opinions0.99
00:37:32.660I mean, I'm all for it, but, you know, other people have opinions.1.00
00:37:37.480It's giving you the ability to be a stay-at-home mom if you want to be a stay-at-home mom
00:37:41.180because it's giving you a social safety net.0.67
00:37:43.700And it's giving you the ability to go to the workforce and make the same amount of money as a man
00:37:48.240if you choose not to get married or if your marriage falls apart, right?
00:37:51.560Right. Making that connection for people is really important.
00:37:55.200And we started off this conversation about how conservatives or the right is really bent on reframing feminism and what it is and what it is doing to women, to men, mainly in harmful ways.
00:38:09.440And so also having a counter to that and saying, no, that's actually not true.
00:38:23.940So we're not doing that in a real way. And we're not controlling the narrative. We're not fraying, but we're also not bringing people in and inspiring and giving younger people a vision or like, you know, what do you want? What do you say you want? And saying, OK, well, this is how you can get it, you know, by aligning with feminism or, you know, principles and values that are inclusive rather than exclusive.