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Title details for The Myth of Making It by Samhita Mukhopadhyay - Available

The Myth of Making It

A Workplace Reckoning

by Samhita Mukhopadhyay
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We can bury the girlboss, but what comes next? The former executive editor of Teen Vogue tells the story of her personal workplace reckoning and argues for collective responsibility to reimagine work as we know it.
“One of the smartest voices we have on gender, power, capitalist exploitation, and the entrenched inequities of the workplace.”—Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad
“As I sat in the front row that day, I was 80 percent faking it with a 100-percent-real Gucci bag.” Samhita Mukhopadhyay had finally made it: she had her dream job, dream clothes—dream life. But time and time again, she found herself sacrificing time with family and friends, paying too much for lattes, and limping home after working twelve hours a day. Success didn’t come without costs, right? Or so she kept telling herself. And Mukhopadhyay wasn’t alone: Far too many of us are taught that we need to work ourselves to the bone to live a good life. That we just need to climb up the corporate ladder, to “lean in” and “hustle,” to enact change. But as Mukhopadhyay shows, these definitions of success are myths—and they are seductive ones.
Mukhopadhyay traces the origins of these myths, taking us from the sixties to the present. She forms a critical overview of workplace feminism, looking at stories from her own professional career, analysis from activists and experts, and of course, experiences of workers at different levels. As more individuals continue to question whether their professional ambitions can lead to happiness and fulfillment in the first place, Mukhopadhyay asks, What would it mean to have a liberated workplace? Mukhopadhyay emerges with a vision for a workplace culture that pays fairly, recognizes our values, and gives people access to the resources they need.
A call to action to redefine and reimagine work as we know it, The Myth of Making It is a field guide and manifesto for all of us who are tired, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of hustle culture.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 18, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780593448106

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780593448106
      • File size: 1383 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      June 1, 2024
      The former executive editor of Teen Vogue and Feministing considers the nature of ambition and how corporate feminism sets women up to fail. By the mid-2010s, it seemed that America had entered the "girlboss era," when ambitious women could finally have it all: wealth, power, relationship fulfillment, and "feminine chic." Mukhopadhyay, however, argues that "the quest for structural equality and justice asked women to fetishize gender inequality as something you could overcome with quirky personality traits, disarm-ing oppressive men with a twinkle of the eye and a touch on the arm." As she shows, that brand of feminism did nothing to change the basic structural inequality and injustice in the workplace or the misogyny that undergirds society. When, for example, startup founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of criminal wrongdoing, "some felt--despite her company's egregious lies--that Holmes's treatment by the industry and the press highlighted an unfair double standard for women founders." Drawing on both research and her own experiences, Mukhopadhyay shows how the workaholic "hustling" that also goes along with "girlbossing" has helped fuel workplace toxicity, which has led to high rates of burnout and, more recently, "quiet quitting," an ethic that rejects the professional win-at-all-costs mentality for a "politics of laziness." What the author argues for instead is that women "channel our 'hustle' energy" into organizing the workplace in terms that take into account not only gender, but other factors like race and sexuality. She also asks women to reconsider the "false bill of goods" that capitalism has sold them about what makes for a prosperous life and consider embracing the ethos of "having enough." Provocative and intelligent, Mukhopadhyay's book will appeal to both feminist scholars and working women seeking more humane ways to navigate the sexist, racist, hypercapitalist minefield of the modern workplace. An incisive study of the current business landscape.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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