The Fix
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
'A passionate, practical roadmap for addressing inequality and finally making our workplaces work for women' – Arianna Huffington
Foreword by Gillian Anderson and Jennifer Nadel
For years, we’ve been telling women that in order to succeed at work, they need to change themselves first – lean in, negotiate like a man, don’t be too polite or you’ll never succeed (like a man). But after sixteen years working with major Fortune 500 companies as a leading gender-equality expert, Michelle P. King has realised one simple truth: the tired advice of fixing women doesn’t fix anything. The reality is that workplaces are gendered; they were designed by men for men. Based on King’s research and exclusive interviews with major companies and thought leaders, The Fix reveals the hidden sexism and invisible barriers holding women back at work every day.
Women are passed over for promotions, paid less and pushed out of the workforce – not because they aren’t good enough, but because they don’t fit the masculine ideal. In this fascinating and empowering book, King reveals the barriers that inhibit women – and men – at all stages of their careers and provides readers with a clear set of takeaways to help them thrive as they fight for change from within.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
King, head of the UN Women's Global Innovation Coalition for Change, debuts with a welcome addition to the growing chorus of voices calling out the system rather than individual women for workplace gender inequity. She asks why people are obsessed with the idea that women need to be fixed, despite being more likely to have the characteristics commonly associated with good leaders being collaborative, communicative, and well-educated. To her, the answer lies in an outdated expectation of what constitutes the "ideal worker": a stereotypically masculine, aggressive, and family-deprioritizing man, an ideal she associates with Mad Men's Don Draper character. King writes about how privilege and denial keep inequality going, how men are also harmed by gender assumptions, how feminism hasn't gone far enough, and how working mothers and female leaders still struggle with stereotypes and institutional barriers. The challenge, she shows, is in getting people to understand there's a problem at all, but King is there with strategies for taking action she calls "for breaking up with Don" and critically reexamining how ideas about masculinity play out in the workplace. This thoughtful, thorough, often enraging look at a broken system delivers a resounding and memorable message: "Women are not the problem."
