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Why Equal Pay is Still 300 Years Away · Our Pandora's Box

• 0:00
  Maria Eliades: Have you ever had that feeling of self-recognition?
• 0:04
  You're watching something or reading something and suddenly you're struck.
• 0:08
  Time freezes.
• 0:09
  Someone else has seen into your life, they've understood your experiences, and you don't know them, but they get it.
• 0:17
  That's how I felt when I was reading Stefanie O'Connell's book, The Ambition Penalty.
• 0:23
  Hi.
• 0:25
  If you're new here, welcome to Our Pandora's Box, the show for women who want to live lives true to themselves in this hellscape we call 21st century America.
• 0:37
  I'm Maria Eliades, your elder millennial sister and host.
• 0:40
  And on today's episode, we're gonna talk about what is financially holding women back despite how much we've progressed in the world.
• 0:49
  There's a statistic out there, for instance, that says at this rate, we won't get equal pay for another 300 years.
• 0:58
  Let me say that one again.
• 1:00
  300 years.
• 1:00
  And we know we're not just talking about earning the same as men for the same jobs when we're talking about equal pay.
• 1:08
  Maria Eliades: What we're really talking about when we talk about equal pay is having an equal say and equal power in our lives, in our communities, at home.
• 1:19
  Because money gives us the ability to do things.
• 1:22
  It gives us choices.
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  Not like the ones that our grandmothers didn't have because they were stuck in abusive marriages or marriages that weren't that great because they were financially tied and dependent on their husbands.
• 1:35
  Or even thinking about the cases of some of our mothers who couldn't even take out bank loans without permission from their husbands or have their own credit cards.
• 1:46
  So that's why I'm getting into this conversation today with Stefanie, we get into the barriers that we're up against, as well as the solutions so that, you know, we're not dead for three centuries before our
• 2:00
  female offspring many times over actually get equal pay.
• 2:03
  So on that note, let's get into it.
• 2:05
  Episode main Maria Eliades: Today I'm excited to welcome Stefanie O'Connell, an award-winning writer, money expert, and podcast host to Our Pandora's Box.
• 2:13
  Stefanie, welcome.
• 2:15
  Stefanie O'Connell: Thank you for having me.
• 2:17
  Maria Eliades: My pleasure.
• 2:19
  I always start out each episode by asking our guests this question: If you could go back in time to your late 20s, what advice would you give to yourself?
• 2:29
  Stefanie O'Connell: I wish I knew I didn't have to do everything on my own, thinking that whatever barrier to my success or what I wanted had to come from inside of myself, but rather could be secured much more effectively and sustainably in community and in partnership with other people.
• 2:47
  And it's those collaborations that I realized in my 30s that really changed my life in a way that I can almost not even begin to articulate.
• 2:56
  But materially speaking, it led to the book I just wrote.
• 3:00
  It led
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  to so many of the professional opportunities I've been able to secure, a lot of my income and wealth, the fact that I can be a mother in New York City.
• 3:10
  All of that has been enabled through thinking outwardly and in community instead of thinking inwardly as an individual.
• 3:16
  Top 3 money things to learn and master --and where to get the info Maria Eliades: If you were in your late 20s right now, what would be the top three things that you think women should know and learn how to master?
• 3:30
  And where could they find the information about this and get educated if they don't know it already?
• 3:36
  Stefanie O'Connell: Understanding your financial picture is one of the most life-changing things I think you can do.
• 3:42
  This is not to be, like, hyper-capitalistic or individualistic about anything.
• 3:46
  You know, there are so many external forces at play, as we've been talking about ad nauseam already.
• 3:52
  That said, knowing where you stand within that landscape is so, so, so important, and it's really important to have at least a
• 4:00
  baseline knowledge of the tools that are available to you so that when you are in a season of greater abundance, you can really maximize this.
• 4:10
  And I just wanna give a little personal shout-out to the fact that, I understand very well that the old path is broken, and yet people are still holding themselves to this kind of timeline of feeling like they're constantly behind.
• 4:25
  Maybe the other advice I would have given to myself as a younger person is that life can be seasonal, and that's okay.
• 4:34
  I am in a season of non-financial abundance, I will say that.
• 4:39
  I had a baby, I wrote a book.
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  Those are two incredibly time-intensive, labor-demanding things, and they are not financially rewarding in any way.
• 4:48
  However, I was able to do that because in my early to mid-30s, I had a season of great financial abundance, and I maximized it, and I knew how
• 5:00
  to.
• 5:01
  I had savings.
• 5:03
  I had investments.
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  I had set myself up both short and long term in ways that enabled me to be now in a season where I can draw down from savings, and it's not as much of a crisis.
• 5:16
  And there are, of course, other privileges at play here.
• 5:20
  I always wanna acknowledge that.
• 5:21
  You know, I am married, so I'm in a dual income household.
• 5:26
  My family's health insurance is not something I pay for out of pocket, so that, again, is another consideration.
• 5:32
  That being said, our household is still dependent on two incomes.
• 5:36
  And so being able to be in a place where there were more options available to me because I had financial knowledge is probably one of the most life-changing things, not just for me, but for people in general.
• 5:49
  So that was a very long-winded way of me saying learn about money, basic financial foundations.
• 5:55
  A couple of great books are, by Amanda Holden called How to Be a Rich Old Lady, another by Katie
• 6:00
  Getty Tassin called Rich Girl Nation.
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  These are books that have come out in, like, the last year or two that take a very contemporary and nuanced approach, not only to what you do individually, but, you the broader economic environment and capitalism and the, the precarity that comes with that.
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  I also like Ramit Sethi.
• 6:18
  He is a great follow, again, for really contextualizing not only what you're doing financially, but within the context of a shifting economic and political landscape that I think money advice that doesn't acknowledge that is not good money advice.
• 6:31
  I really appreciate those three people's work.
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  There are many more people, but, um, those are great starting points.
• 6:37
  What do I wish I knew in my late 20s?
• 6:40
  You know, I did say the thing about building out community.
• 6:44
  I have over the years become much more intentional in my friendships and showing up for people.
• 6:49
  friendships and community building is a lot of labor.
• 6:52
  It is a lot of work, and it is not always convenient.
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  Some of my closest friends now are not people who
• 7:00
  live near me, so that requires a level of intentionality.
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  They also all have young children, which also requires a level of intentionality that is very, very challenging.
• 7:09
  But what we try to do as often as possible is create these lower lift opportunities for connection.
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  So the pandemic was great in a way because we just constantly met online at least once a week, if not more, and we've maintained that schedule relatively well over the years.
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  Actually, they both flew in to New York City when my book came out for my book launch, and they were fundamental in being part of that.
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  So, think creating those kinds of opportunities to build really deep, meaningful connections, and I would say intimacy, friendship intimacy, is something that is really undervalued in a way that I...
• 7:44
  I don't think I understood how important until I got closer to mid-life.
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  And I, I think it's hard in your 20s because everyone's kind of going into, in a season of kind atomization, where they're all going on their own individual journeys, and then maybe
• 8:00
  even coupling up into romantic partnership.
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  But the thing I now see like coming into my 40s, is that like, oh, that model is so much a part of what drives the burnout and the isolation.
• 8:11
  Maria Eliades: 100%.
• 8:12
  Stefanie O'Connell: It's so, so important develop this friendship and intimacy beyond yourself and even beyond your partnership or nuclear family.
• 8:19
  But it's really hard to do that if other people aren't as committed yet to the importance of that intimacy.
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  So you might be in a season for a while of trying to find people who are willing to do that, but it might take a little patience, and it might take a little more effort on your part, and a imbalance in terms of the friendship.
• 8:40
  But I do think it's probably one of the most important things you can do.
• 8:44
  Third thing, my goodness.You know, I am someone who is endlessly curious, and I think that is something I didn't appreciate about myself until, again, as I've been coming into midlife and reflecting more on the things that have really enabled me to go through so many seasons and remain
• 9:00
  flexible.
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  And I think an interest in learning, in perspective-seeking, reading, listening to podcasts, hearing diverse voices, different kinds of stories, I think that kind of lifelong fostering of knowledge and learning across disciplines, across things that seem completely disparate, and just being able to cultivate a taste and a level of interest.
• 9:20
  I think those are the most important things that I didn't really understand before.
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  I always heard this advice of like, "Just be yourself.
• 9:29
  Be authentic," and I always thought that was not helpful advice.
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  As I've gotten older, I know what it means for me to be authentic and have a voice because I've just been able to c- consume enough different perspectives that I now understand what my taste is.
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  And so now that I know that, it feels very clear, what my voice is within those spaces.
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  But I think if you've only been exposed to a certain place or a certain kind of person or a
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  certain kind of style of advice or storytelling, it's just so limiting in a way that you only compare yourself in relationship to, like, that one thing, as opposed to when you're kind of constantly immersed and curious about the people around you, you kind of, I think, wind up absorbing a little bit of everything in a way that creates this unique perspective and pattern and level of interest that, then becomes authenticity Maria Eliades: I can't agree enough or more.
• 10:25
  And also, you have just so nicely proven one of the themes of Our Pandora's Box, which is curiosity, and how valuable it is Stefanie O'Connell: Yes.
• 10:34
  Maria Eliades: To see that there are many ways of doing things.
• 10:38
  Stefanie O'Connell: 100%.
• 10:39
  Maria Eliades: So thank you for proving that right there.
• 10:42
  Stefanie O'Connell: Well, and I will say in this constantly shifting climate we've been talking about too.
• 10:47
  When people are often try to double down on certainty and rigidity in those moments, like lack of curiosity, when the world around them feels uncertain.
• 10:56
  But one of the things, again, I really pride myself on is really being
• 11:00
  able to handle uncertainty very, very well.
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  I think that level of openness in, in this kind of environment where things feel so out of control, I think it's a superpower instead of going into this way of "Okay, well, everything is outside my control, so I have to be very rigid about everything." That's one of the things that, that surprised me when I became a parent of how well I adapted to it.
• 11:24
  I never knew I wanted to be a parent.
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  And so I'm so surprised that not only have I enjoyed it, but that Maria Eliades: I don't have any question or doubt about it.
• 11:36
  That's not me tooting my own horn in a way.
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  I think it's really more about the kind of perspective of, okay, you know, what does curiosity, adaptability free you up to do, and how does that become extremely valuable in a world that is changing so fast?
• 11:52
  Absolutely.
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  And you started off your career in financial journalism because of that.
• 11:57
  Stefanie O'Connell: Exactly.
• 11:59
  Exactly.
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  Maria Eliades: "Let me be..." No, it's
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  actress or bust.
• 12:01
  You were like, "Let me try this since this is something I am dealing with and everyone around me I see is dealing with anyway." Stefanie O'Connell: Yes.
• 12:10
  You know, all of this applies across so many domains too.
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  You know, of course I'm experiencing it now as a business owner and as a parent, but this has been true my whole career, right?
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  I have seen people who are so afraid of failure that they stand in the way of opening up the thing they didn't even know was possible.
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  And I think if you're curious, you will always find new possibilities.
• 12:35
  As depressing as you know, some of the realities on the ground are, I will say that, I think I have a really wonderful life.
• 12:43
  And of course, some of that is my own privileges, but some of that is also just this more philosophical approach that we've been talking about.
• 12:51
  Maria Eliades: Exactly.
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  Well, to turn to what is a little more depressing, but then also to be curious about the possibilities, let's talk about your book.
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  It looks at the structural issues, and that hits me again and again and again.
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  I wrote down, "It's not you, it's the system." It's really clear that that is the case, that it is sytemically an issue with all of the research that you did.
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  And we're talking some heavyweight academic sources, too.
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  This is not something that's just popularly sourced, which was really impressive to me, and I really respect.
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  So how did you get interested in this specific topic?
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  You didn't start reading through academic journals of like, "Let's see what Journal of Psychology says about this way that women are approaching it." I'm sure there was another way in.
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  Stefanie O'Connell: Well, I did tell you I was curious,and I also, uh, majored in psychology in college as well.
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  So I have a little bit of this academic interest, and I always have.
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  But in terms of, how did I go down this deep dive rabbit hole, I was reporting a podcast for Real Simple Magazine about women's experiences with money, and people would call into the show, and they would share a money story or something that happened to
• 14:00
  them, and then I would interview an expert on what they should do next.
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  And in this one story, a woman called in and she said, "You know, I've been working in tech for all of this time, and I got this great job offer, kind of a dream job.
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  I knew that I wanted to negotiate my salary.
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  I took a negotiation class even in college.
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  I followed all the recruiters on Instagram.
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  I really wanted to make sure I implemented all of the best practices.
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  And when I did, not only did I not get what I asked for, I had the job offer rescinded in retaliation." And so I knew when I heard that story that I needed to dig a little bit deeper past the kind of, well, just find out what the market rate is for your position.
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  What's the compensation in this location for this industry?
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  Talk to people.
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  You know, I knew I needed to go beyond those kinds of best practices because she was really confronting a lot of that personal
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  and financial advice of like, okay, follow best practices, do A, get B, and she's saying, "That's not working." And what I found was that she was not an isolated incident.
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  Certainly it's still uncommon in negotiations to experience that level of retaliation, but women experiencing some kind of backlash when they ask for more is not uncommon at all.
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  Even if they get the raise, even if they get the job, they'll often be labeled ungrateful, difficult to work with, not a team player, not a good fit, even as their male colleague for the exact same behavior will be seen as a go-getter.
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  And so when the next opportunity comes up in the workplace, he's the one who's going to be prioritized and given more of a chance instead of her, even though they did the exact same thing.
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  And so I wanted to understand what was going on, and
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  that sent me down a rabbit hole of empirical data.
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  And one of the things I really became interested in was understanding the research, not just in one discipline, you know, the people who work in economics might be looking down on the people who work in sociology, and they're not talking to the uh, behavioral finance people, and they're not talking to the psychologists, and they're not talking to the public health professionals, and then the corporations who are collecting the on-the-ground data.
• 16:29
  And so what a lot of the process for not just reporting that original story, but what became the foundation for writing this book, was trying to un-gatekeep a lot of this information that is out there, but also to synthesize it, and to take the really valuable research of all of these people across all of these different disciplines and their important perspectives that I think have been completely missed in the conversation around women's work, money, and ambition, and to put them into a book
• 17:00
  so that we could have a more clear, honest, and effective conversation about what women actually need to get more of what they want.
• 17:07
  Maria Eliades: A lot of the research that you cite or the things that you look at are this common advice that we've been given, assiduously.
• 17:16
  I I could see myself checking off, like, you should ask this way, and you should ask for more, and you should put yourself up for the assignments, and you should find a way to have your voice be heard, and like you said, do your market research of, like, how much roughly the person in this geographic area is paid for this particular job.
• 17:37
  And yet feeling like that had not done enough.
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  I'll grant you that some of my experiences, I mean, I spent most of my 20s in Turkey, so it's a different context.
• 17:48
  But my surprise when I came back to the United States when I was 30 was that things weren't that different.
• 17:55
  Stefanie O'Connell: Yes.
• 17:56
  Maria Eliades: Maybe I was in a more overtly you know, misogynistic
• 18:00
  place, but I'd been holding onto this myth for myself when things were bad over there.
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  I was like, "But surely it's not this bad in the United States." And I came back and I'm like, "Oh, no, it's still like this.
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  I'm still facing this.
• 18:12
  But all of these American money experts are giving this advice on how to deal with it, so I'm just going to read more.
• 18:18
  Stefanie O'Connell: Yeah.
• 18:20
  Maria Eliades: And maybe if I do it slightly differently or more perfect next time, maybe I'll get through." And it's back to what you were saying before about the individual blaming themselves.
• 18:29
  Stefanie O'Connell: Everything you just said, so many things went through my head.
• 18:32
  First of all, just the way in which women get caught up in this cycle of thinking, okay, when you are conditioned to believe that you are the problem, even when you do face backlash, you internalize that as an individual problem too.
• 18:43
  And so then you think, "Well, if I just do it this way or that way," then, you're too warm, you're too cold, you're too much, not enough.
• 18:51
  And what we're really overlooking is that the problem was never what you were doing, the problem is the fact that, we're in a culture that still punishes women for doing so.
• 18:59
  And to your point, this is
• 19:00
  not made explicit.
• 19:01
  In the United States, there has been a mass gaslighting campaign of how bad gender inequality is, and one of the things that was interesting to me is my aunt Who was born in Ukraine in 1940, so She came to this country as an immigrant.
• 19:19
  She got scholarships to all of these incredible universities, and then entered the workforce and literally couldn't get a job any place other than, uh, as, as a customer service rep for an airline.
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  And she's, the most ill-suited person to being a customer service rep for an airline.
• 19:38
  She's a genius, but people skills like that, not her strong suit.
• 19:42
  And it was only actually working in the United States federal government and working in military intelligence that she was able to find employment because the federal government, for a long time, has been a place with more transparent structures and opportunity for people who are
• 20:00
  excluded from the private sector.
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  That's why, you know, the attack on the federal workforce in 2025 was such an issue, for Black women especially, who have been so excluded from, equitable hiring and pay practices in the private sector.
• 20:14
  The federal government was kind of lifeline, and that's not to say, that the federal government doesn't have issues.
• 20:21
  But there was, so much, more transparency, relative to the private sector that has served as a much more equalizing force.
• 20:28
  But my point being, my aunt was telling me that she was reading my book, and again, 85 years old, has had this wild history, and she just couldn't get over how little had changed.
• 20:41
  And so what this book really, exposes is that gender inequality, racial inequality, all of these forms of bias and discrimination have not gone anywhere, but they are better hidden.
• 20:52
  And because of that, You are made to feel like it's just you, like it can't be illegal to underpay women, so
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  it must not be happening.
• 21:01
  The problem really is that you're not as good or you're not doing it right, why I'm so reliant and heavy on the data in this book is just to cut through the gaslighting, to expose the bias and discrimination for the outright bias and discrimination that it is because we cannot change these systems and hold them accountable unless we have this information and the tools to call out the gaslighting as it's happening.
• 21:29
  I also wanted to clarify that just because negotiation doesn't provide women the same rewards as it does for men, I don't think that means it's not worth doing.
• 21:39
  I still think negotiating, you know, following these best practices is still worthwhile.
• 21:44
  We need to add this collective element, the one that demands accountability, not from within us, but from the environment around us, so that when we do all of the best practices, we get the same rewards and outcomes as our more privileged
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  peers.
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  Maria Eliades: When I was reading actually some of your research for what worked to make things leveling out, I thought, "Oh, this is exactly like the hiring process and the step system within the federal government that I lived through." I started as a contractor for the State Department, and then I had the opportunity to apply for a civil servant position in my office, and I thought, "Why not?
• 22:25
  I'll throw my hat in.
• 22:26
  I'd rather be in charge of my team than someone else." And in the hiring process, there are very strict standardized questions they ask to every single candidate.
• 22:36
  It strove to be fair, and it was transparent as far as what the levels were.
• 22:41
  Stefanie O'Connell: And that has enabled much more equity within that sector relative to the private sector.
• 22:47
  And that's not an accident.
• 22:49
  That is a design, right?
• 22:50
  And that wasn't something that people in federal government are, like, fundamentally different somehow than people who work in the private sector, right?
• 22:58
  So a lot of the myths that I'm
• 23:00
  debunking aren't justthe specific things like women don't ask for more, whatever it is.
• 23:05
  It's also these bigger myths about meritocracy and who gets access.
• 23:09
  Eventhe idea that working hard is somehow connected to the kinds of rewards and wealth and access you seek, and really exposing just how much those outcomes are driven by identity and then processes within the environment that ensure that inequality across identity remains intact even as people from more marginalized identities outperform or are more qualified or are more ambitious.
• 23:33
  Maria Eliades: Yeah, it made sense of those who believed there was truly a meritocracy in place were those who did not see the inequalities and did not fight for things to be more equal.
• 23:47
  Stefanie O'Connell: And they were the most likely to perpetuate bias too.
• 23:52
  Maria Eliades: Right.
• 23:54
  And we all have biases, even those of us who are the most well-meaning.
• 23:59
  Stefanie O'Connell:
• 24:00
  100%.
• 24:01
  And it's not about saying you're a bad person.
• 24:05
  It's about recognizing a reality that we all grow up in a biased world.
• 24:10
  We all, women included, internalize messages that to be a good woman, quote-unquote, is to be self-sacrificing and to not challenge men's authority and to not, try to usurp their power that they are, quote-unquote, entitled to.
• 24:24
  And so even when other women ask for more, women can also punish those women.
• 24:30
  Not always.
• 24:32
  We do see that women's outcomes improve as women are represented in positions of leadership more at scale rather than as an exception.
• 24:41
  but that also doesn't mean that women aren't biased against women too because you know, again, bias itself is not a personal problem.
• 24:50
  It is something we've all been conditioned into from the moment we're born, just like blue or pink.
• 24:57
  You know, should you play with construction equipment or should you play
• 25:00
  with dolls?
• 25:01
  And that might seem trivial, but it's really fostering that sense of a division of our humanity in ways that set us up to experience completely different things when we violate those, quote-unquote, expectations of how we should behave.
• 25:15
  Maria Eliades: Speaking of ideas of how we should behave, let's talk about the tradwife and the girlboss.
• 25:22
  Stefanie O'Connell: The girlboss era, which was very much during our 20s, and now the emergence of the tradwife.
• 25:29
  How are these two connected?
• 25:31
  I like to say that the girlboss and the tradwife actually share very much of the same ideology.
• 25:37
  Their vision for what they are advocating for is very different.
• 25:41
  What the girlboss doesn't get enough credit for is that she championed a vision of women's ambition that was expansive.
• 25:49
  The idea that not only could women have meaningful personal lives that are idealized by tradwives today, but that they could also have access to public power, professional power, personal ambition in
• 26:00
  addition to, rather than simply in place of.
• 26:03
  That those things could be mutually reinforcing as opposed to mutually exclusive.
• 26:08
  The tradwife, of course, is selling a vision of womanhood in which women should be completely self-sacrificing, pursue, uhbeing married, having children exclusively, and their public ambition should really just be contained to, projecting that ideal of patriarchal, often very white supremacist coded femininity and broadcasting that to the world.
• 26:30
  But ultimately, those visions operate with the same fundamental premise, that the biggest barrier to getting what you want, even if the vision of what you want is different depending on whether you're subscribing to girl boss or tradwife, the ideology says that getting what you want starts by doing something within yourself.
• 26:53
  The greatest barriers to what you want are you.
• 26:57
  In the girl boss ideology,
• 27:00
  it's that you're not confident enough or aggressive enough or ambitious enough, and in the tradwife ideology it's that you're not self-sacrificing enough or feminine enough per these patriarchal standards.
• 27:12
  And in either case, you're conditioned to always blame yourself, to always be in a cycle of self-optimization, all while the environment around you never is challenged.
• 27:23
  The environment around you that is subjecting you to completely different outcomes as your male peers with totally different access to supports and resources relative to your more privileged peers isn't shifting at all.
• 27:38
  And so it's just such a lie in either case that you can self-optimize your way out of where you are to where you wanna be.
• 27:49
  What the tradwife is really selling is a lifestyle of labor that's uncompensated.
• 27:54
  They're selling a fantasy that doing housework and childcare is liberatory and very
• 28:00
  restful and secure.
• 28:01
  But in practice, we know that doing round-the-clock childcare, housework, and, and other caregiving is incredibly labor-intensive, is incredibly exhausting and puts you in an incredible position of vulnerability if you are in a position that you cannot get out of when you want to.
• 28:17
  We also know that in the girlboss fantasy, it's not just power suits.
• 28:22
  It is dealing with the people who are gonna micromanage you, and question you, and undermine you every time you try to access leadership or assert your ambition.
• 28:32
  Even if your goal is corporate power or your goal is to be parenting your children full-time, that's fine.
• 28:39
  But let's be really clear about what actually enables people to do that.
• 28:43
  It's very telling, I always say, that the tradwife isn't out here advocating for universal healthcare and universal basic income, 'cause that would actually enable people to devote themselves to childcare and homemaking full time.
• 28:56
  Maria Eliades: Because if you have universal basic income, if you
• 29:00
  have free childcare, if you have free healthcare, wouldn't you be able to put more money into your family and into the life that you want to grow?
• 29:10
  Stefanie O'Connell: That's exactly right.
• 29:12
  And so that's how you know that their goal isn't for us to be able to do the kinda caretaking or family, uh, care or housework that we want to do.
• 29:24
  What they want is to assert a gender division of labor and a gender division of power.
• 29:31
  And if they had another objective, they would absolutely be supporting universal healthcare and universal, basic income, and things that would actually enable people to engage in the things they perform full-time.
• 29:43
  But the reason that they don't is because if women had access to that, men would too, and that means men could also care for their homes and care for their children.
• 29:56
  So I think we should be much more clear and
• 30:00
  transparent in the discussion around these kinds of trends, and call out the fallacies in this way, because a lot is being basically sold to us, that increasingly opens up a permission structure that enables people to roll back women's rights because we can just say, "Well, they're choosing this.
• 30:17
  They want this.
• 30:18
  This is the life they want to create, and so why don't we let them choose it?
• 30:24
  Why do they need access to reproductive care?
• 30:27
  Uh, why do they need, a vote?" If you can sell the story, that it's not a matter of inequality because it's something women choose, then you get a way of ensuring inequality stays intact, because you can strip away rights and protections as we have currently been seeing.
• 30:44
  Maria Eliades: I think it goes back to what you're saying about a structure and a system that is trying to hold onto its own power, and so this is the latest part of it.
• 30:56
  In a way it feels like the tradwife is a pendulum swing in
• 31:00
  the other direction from the girlboss, because the tradwife, some of the irony is, of the ones who are out there on social media, what they're doing is their business.
• 31:09
  Stefanie O'Connell: Yes.
• 31:11
  They're making a lot of money.
• 31:13
  Maria Eliades: They're making a lot of money, and they are the breadwinners for their families, not their husbands.
• 31:19
  Stefanie O'Connell: That's right.
• 31:20
  Yeah,mean, it's operating on so many levels in that it's a contradiction.
• 31:24
  They're making money off of telling you to give up your financial independence and autonomy.
• 31:29
  There is the whole um solution that they're selling that would actually make it more difficult for accessing the lifestyle they want.
• 31:36
  If you don't have access to economic resources, you actually won't be able to spend your days baking bread for five hours.
• 31:43
  The way you get that is with money.
• 31:46
  They're performing wealth.
• 31:47
  I think it's just so transparent that to advocate for women not having their own access to wealth when everything they perform is enabled by wealth is, it's justtoo ironic.
• 31:57
  The discourse though often overlooks is just the way in which that
• 32:00
  fantasy, even if it's not real, winds up creating this bigger permission structure around the idea that women aren't ambitious and they don't actually care about professional opportunity and access.
• 32:11
  I even have seen this now trickling into mainstream discourses in ways that enable a lot of companies right now scaling back their parental leave policies.
• 32:21
  We've seen in recent years just a lot more hostility around work from home, and if you can sell the story that actually that's not important because women don't wanna work anyway, then people think they can get away with it.I even saw in a 2026 pay gap report the company doing the report reframed women having their careers stalling out in their mid-30s while men's earnings continue to grow for another decade.
• 32:49
  Instead of saying, "Hey, this is a crisis.
• 32:52
  We are underpaying women even as 45% of American mothers are breadwinners in their households.
• 32:58
  They are the primary caretakers
• 33:00
  for children, for elders, for other people in the communities, and their financial precarity is the financial precarity of literally every American by extension." Um, instead of saying, "This is a five alarm fire," the report said, "Women are just redefining ambition." So what does that do?
• 33:19
  It says, "Oh, this isn't a crisis.
• 33:22
  This is a choice." It is unthinkable to imagine men's income stalling out a decade before women and the headline being, "Oh, men just aren't that ambitious.
• 33:33
  They wanna lean into family life." Maria Eliades: It feels like willful manipulation to leave out, "Oh, I wonder why it's in women's 30s," when those have become prime childbearing years, as many women have started having families at a later age because of all the educational requirements and because of these economic fluxes that have forced us to wait that long to feel
• 34:00
  like we're in a good financial place to do that.
• 34:02
  Stefanie O'Connell: Well, and then you get people saying, "Well, that's when women become mothers, so it makes sense." And again, you flip the script, if I told you, "Well, that's when men become fathers, so the fact that their incomes stall out makes sense," it would be completely absurd.
• 34:17
  It actually doesn't make sense that mothers are underpaid by any extension.
• 34:21
  Households depend on women's incomes.
• 34:22
  Almost half of them depend primarily on women's incomes, and we already know that women do the vast majority of unpaid labor.
• 34:29
  So in the context of all the labor that runs our families, our country, it is women who are the providers.
• 34:35
  So the idea that they should be underpaid doesn't make any sense, and we have got to be much more clear and direct about that, I think.
• 34:43
  Maria Eliades: And in fact, it should be the opposite.
• 34:46
  Stefanie O'Connell: Should it would, would make sense Maria Eliades: 45% of households.
• 34:50
  Stefanie O'Connell: Yes.
• 34:51
  Maria Eliades: Wouldn't it make sense if like you want a woman to be able to adequately support her household and raise the next generation?
• 34:58
  Yes.
• 35:00
  You're going to support her.
• 35:00
  And also she's probably really skilled.
• 35:02
  Stefanie O'Connell: And she should be in a leadership position because she actually knows what people need to combine their caregiving responsibilities with their professional lives more sustainably.
• 35:12
  Listener Question Maria Eliades: Exactly.
• 35:14
  So I've got a listener question for you.
• 35:17
  This is from Alexandra.
• 35:18
  Hello.
• 35:20
  My question is, besides calling out inequalities in the workplace, what ways would you recommend for women to care for their mental health to avoid burnouts in workplaces that are inherently unfair?
• 35:31
  Stefanie O'Connell: Oftentimes the conversation around burnout falls into the same individualism trap, same self-care language.
• 35:37
  And that's not to say that there's no value in taking a nap or going for a workout or taking a bubble bath or doing something that makes you feel good.
• 35:49
  But if you do not want to come back into your job or your workplace where you show up every day only to experiencing the same problem over again, what addressing burnout actually
• 36:00
  requires is a shifting of the environment around you.
• 36:03
  Because burnout, again is not internal.
• 36:05
  It's a mismatch between yourself and the environment.
• 36:08
  And so when you're experiencing burnout, if you only turn inward, you're not actually doing anything to address the mismatch.
• 36:15
  And in the book, I walk through, uh, Dr.
• 36:19
  Christine Maslach's framework for understanding burnout and these mismatches between ourselves and our environments that actually drive it.
• 36:25
  When you have that framework, you can really start to identify where those things are showing up for you and what you can do to shift, or, is it time to think about shifting the environment around you?
• 36:39
  So certainly one is the idea of workload, when you have too much to do and not enough support and resources to do it.
• 36:48
  And I will say that all elements of this framework apply as much in the rest of our lives as they do in the workplace.
• 36:57
  Th- Also, there is autonomy, having control
• 37:00
  over not only what kinds of tasks you can do, but also when you can do them, having flexibility.
• 37:07
  Having access to that really matters, autonomy.
• 37:09
  We know, uh, that community is very important as well, so making sure that when you do work in partnership with others, those people value you, they support you, they show up for you.
• 37:22
  If you're in an environment where people are actually always undermining you, if they're always questioning you, if they're always harassing you or threatening you, that's a driver of burnout.
• 37:34
  We also know that, issues of bias and discrimination are a driver of burnout, so that one's pretty explicit.
• 37:41
  Fairness, that's that one.
• 37:42
  Hopefully those are kind of the ways we can reframe burnout, of looking across those dimensions and seeing, okay, is there a way I can either shift this environment to be more in alignment with getting the support I need, getting the autonomy I need,
• 38:00
  getting the recognition and community I need?
• 38:02
  And if not even if it's in this environment, can I build in other aspects of my life?
• 38:08
  So maybe In my workplace, it's not going great.
• 38:11
  But, um, if I can get more connected to community in my industry, in my personal life, that will help me a lot, not just reduce the burnout, but also to build out my thinking beyond this workplace such that maybe I'll get access to another one entirely where those things match up a little bit better.
• 38:29
  Maria Eliades: So I hope that is a helpful way of thinking about this in, a way people don't talk about burnout enough.
• 38:37
  Yeah, because usually the conversations around burnout are, are you doing enough self-care?
• 38:41
  Are you moving?
• 38:42
  Are you eating?
• 38:44
  Are you hydrating yourself?
• 38:45
  And you know, I've read a lot on burnout too, because I've, I've experienced it myself, and I came to the conclusion that it wasn't me.
• 38:54
  Stefanie O'Connell: Yeah.
• 38:55
  Maria Eliades: It was me reacting to a system that I could not change, and so ultimately I
• 39:00
  left.
• 39:01
  Stefanie O'Connell: Yes.
• 39:03
  I also say, I'm very wary of anything that always turns you back into yourself.
• 39:08
  Obviously, this has been a, a theme throughout our conversation, but if the only solution you're being offered from people is self-care, it should really be a red flag.
• 39:18
  And it's not to say that there's nothing important about self-care, but self-care does not change the conditions that require your need for self-care in the first place.
• 39:28
  And so that is what this book is really fundamentally about.
• 39:32
  How can we all move towards fundamental change?
• 39:34
  Maria Eliades: So speaking of fundamentals and fundamental change, what are some of the ways that we can all move the system towards change, towards pay equality, towards equal conditions for women in the workplace?
• 39:47
  Stefanie O'Connell: So in each chapter of this book, I talk through some of the things that are statistically proven to enable more equitable outcomes, more supportive workplaces, more, equal environments where everyone across identity is better able to thrive.
• 40:00
  So
• 40:00
  I'm not gonna talk through anything in terms of like specific policies because, you know, there's just a lot of data to go into, and I wrote a whole book for that.
• 40:11
  But what I will give is a real framework, not just from going from individual to collective, but also understanding that when we talk about systems, systems aren't just federal government.
• 40:21
  Systems operate throughout all areas of our lives, And so we have a lot more ability to interact with systems and reshape systems than I think people think we do.
• 40:32
  So one of the things I break down in the book is that systems operate in our interpersonal environments, they operate in our institutional environments, and then they operate in our political and cultural environments.
• 40:44
  And so politically and culturally, yes, there's federal government, the policies, the practices, the culture.
• 40:49
  That can feel inaccessible.
• 40:51
  It's not saying there's nothing we can do about it.
• 40:54
  Obviously, we see that system is changing constantly.
• 40:57
  They can and do change all the
• 41:00
  time, and right now they are being changed in ways that harm, but they can be just as quickly changed in ways that help.
• 41:08
  So politically, we also should think much more expansively.
• 41:11
  You know, your local school board is also part of a system.
• 41:16
  Your local government, your town, your community groups, these are all part of these systems, too, and they matter a lot.
• 41:23
  Again, a lot of the backlash movement that we are currently seeing manifest at the federal level started at that hyperlocal level.
• 41:31
  We started seeing this backlash happening in school board meetings in the aftermath of the pandemic, and that momentum built that systemic change of power through the federal government.
• 41:42
  So let us use that playbook for better means and for better ends, then I will say that you have your institutional system, so beyond your political bodies, your cultural bodies, you have your workplace.
• 41:54
  You have your educational environments.
• 41:56
  You have things like, pay transparency policies you can advocate
• 42:00
  for.
• 42:01
  If they already exist, you can advocate for more better enforcement mechanisms, for better accountability structures.
• 42:07
  Again, the specific policies I talk through quite a bit in the book, but your workplace, your institutions, all of these are also systems that are shaped by policies, by culture, by practices that we interact with every day that we can uphold and reinforce or we can challenge and work to reshape.
• 42:25
  And I think we should think a little bit more about where we have the power to do that.
• 42:32
  And then finally, the element I think is often most overlooked and yet offers some of the most accessible opportunity for change is in the interpersonal environment.
• 42:42
  We often think about our relationships either romantically or as parents or as children or as siblings.
• 42:48
  We think of them as these very individual things, and they are, but they are also shaped by ideas of what it means to be a good wife or mother or daughter.
• 42:59
  And a lot of
• 43:00
  those ideas reproduce this inequality.
• 43:02
  The idea that a good mother is entirely self-sacrificing and has no needs, and hands over all of her economic autonomy, her personal autonomy to others, not a system I wanna reproduce.
• 43:15
  So as much as my relationship to my child or to my partner is very personal and individual, what I also am doing constantly is challenging the system of good motherhood, of what it means to be a good wife, and to remake that system in an image that not only works better with me and is in alignment with my values, but to operate in that way of my expectations of others.
• 43:45
  And so, you know, not just expect, putting my daughter's father on all the school forms, but calling the other dads to participate as well, you know?
• 43:56
  And I think, again, this kind of interpersonal shift
• 44:00
  is something that it doesn't require a legislation to shift.
• 44:03
  Things I'm always really struck by is the fact that men have more access to paid leave in the United States than women, and yet they still do not do anywhere near the level of caretaking.
• 44:17
  And even in cases where we're talking about adoption or, um, non-biological, you know, where,not a breastfeeding situation, inequality that men are perpetrating in their personal lives is something they can be held accountable for in a much more meaningful way.
• 44:32
  Maria Eliades: And some of it starts with awareness.
• 44:36
  Stefanie O'Connell: 100% and literally shifting these conversations in a way.
• 44:40
  And recognizing that the way women are treated in relationships is exploitative, and it's not romantic, and it's, not excusable.
• 44:47
  I wanna give a lot of grace that statistically the vast majority of couples wind up in this situation, even though most don't intend to.
• 44:57
  And so again, I want this book to
• 45:00
  really contextualize what they are experiencing within the broader experience of what all women are being subjected to.
• 45:06
  Maria Eliades: In all of the diverse identities we inhabit, we're still having this very shared experience, because it's not about something that we're lacking individually or doing right or wrong, it's about the way in which the environment is subjecting us to completely different constraints, lack of supports, or penalties for doing the exact same things or having the same ambitions as our male peers And your book does such a great job of laying down all of the information so we can be informed to know that it's not just us and to look at it and say the progress yes, might have stalled out, but this could be a rallying cry to say, "We will not let this go backwards, let's push it forward since we're now aware that we have not gone as far as we thought we did in order to get closer to it," instead of one of the depressing statistics of, at
• 46:00
  this rate it'll take 300 years for us to get to equality.
• 46:04
  Let's push so it isn't 300 years.
• 46:06
  Stefanie O'Connell: Yeah, and that's really the incentive for, for me writing this.
• 46:10
  If we want to have effective solutions, we have to start by correctly identifying the problem.
• 46:16
  And we have been stalled out because we've been running in circles chasing our own tails thinking we were the problem when we weren't.
• 46:24
  Maria Eliades: Stefanie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and having this conversation.
• 46:30
  I think it'll be really helpful to the listeners.
• 46:33
  Stefanie O'Connell: I hope so, and I do want everyone to walk away with hope, even though it feels bleak sometimes, just to circle back.
• 46:41
  Like, my kid is going to universal pre-K in the fall.
• 46:45
  That's a huge win.
• 46:47
  That fundamentally sh- reshapes not only my life, but the opportunities available and the economic security and the wellness of every single parent who has that access where I live.
• 46:57
  And that is not something that is impossible,
• 47:00
  even though we've been told it was for so long.
• 47:03
  It's happening, and it can happen more if we really come together around these kinds of collective mandates and reshape the environments around us.
• 47:12
  Maria Eliades: Exactly.
• 47:14
  Thanks so much, Stephanie.
• 47:15
  Stefanie O'Connell: Thank you.
• 47:17
  Outro ​ Maria Eliades: I hope you all enjoyed today's episode, if enjoy is the right word.
• 47:23
  No, but seriously, this episode, as you can probably tell from the intro, hits at something that makes me really angry, which is when I or women around me are not paid what they're worth because of sexism.
• 47:37
  As you heard from our conversation, the changes we're talking about are at a group level, not an individual one.
• 47:44
  And, you know, learning that made me feel a lot better about the future.
• 47:49
  ' Cause if I know anything about women, it's that we're really good at gathering.
• 47:55
  We are hearth makers.
• 47:56
  We bring people together, especially when there's someone else suffering.
• 48:00
  So in this case, what if we gathered together to help each other get what we deserve, an equal shot at making the money that fuels the lives we all want to live?
• 48:11
  And if you can't do that for yourself, do it for your sister.
• 48:15
  Do it for your best friend.
• 48:17
  Do it for the daughter who isn't born yet, but for whom you will go to bat for so much.
• 48:24
  In the end, though, I really hope you do it for yourself, too, because you also deserve it.
• 48:31
  So that's it for today's episode.
• 48:33
  If you like this conversation and want to check out the resources Stephanie mentioned, including her book, come to the Our Pandora's Box Substack for these resources and more to leave a voice note for future episodes.
• 48:45
  And if you like this episode, make sure you subscribe to Our Pandora's Box wherever you get your podcasts.
• 48:52
  Our Pandora's Box is a Pantelic Productions podcast that was created, hosted, produced, and edited by yours truly, Maria Eliades.
• 48:59
  Thanks again
• 49:00
  for joining us, and don't forget to stay hopeful and stay curious.
• 49:04
  I'll see you soon on Our Pandora's Box.
• 49:07
  ​