Did Women Ruin the Workplace? Try Living in It.
Listen, I am a journalist at heart. I know the value of a killer headline. I love a shocking click-bait grab as much as the next word-nerd. Usually, I can appreciate provocative headlines for the art form that it is. But when the NY Times' now-infamous op-ed last week went live with the title "Did Women Ruin the Workplace?" (before quickly being changed to "Did liberal feminism ruin the workplace?" after some editor woke up from their apparent coma only to make the problem worse), the only thing it achieved was sending me into a blind rage.
It took me until this morning, before penning this reflection, to actually read the damn thing.
Because first off - what. the. actual. frack?
THIS is the question we're posing to society right now? THIS is the thread we're pulling? Right now? THIS is the topic we want to double down on? NOW is when we decide to get nostalgic and assign singular blame for the demise of the traditional 'American workplace'? For the patriarchal institution that has never, ever been healthy or as productive as it could have been and was toxic and dysfunctional looooong before women showed up and made it better?
While our government sits shut down for its 41st day?
While women continue to earn ~85 cents on the dollar compared to men?
With federal grants for Head Start and Child Care programs frozen and >100,000 children on the brink of losing access to care nationwide?
With working mothers most affected and at risk of job loss or reduced income because those care options vanish?
With women's reproductive health programs, access to contraception and maternal health care threatened because of the shutdown?
With our national average birth rate at its lowest in history because women are delaying or forgoing motherhood altogether?
When 42 million Americans - predominantly women & children - will face immediate food insecurity spikes because SNAP benefits will stall?
When at every single level — economic, reproductive, nutritional, emotional — the burden of political dysfunction falls hardest on women and children?
Really? REALLY?
That the NY Times felt this was the right moment to launch a (what they knew would be) full-scale assault on women - who are unilaterally keeping this nation moving despite the safety nets that sustain them being quietly pulled apart and while decisions about them are still made predominantly by men - is mind-boggling. Bewildering. Infuriating. Disappointing. Exhausting.
But maybe what makes me most exhausted isn’t the headline — it’s how familiar it feels.
Because I’ve lived inside that question for most of my adult life. Lived inside the paradox of existence that is being a woman in the workplace. Where I've had to be both the engine and the empathy. Where we were told to bring our “whole selves,” but not the parts that made people uncomfortable. Where we were applauded for being resilient, but penalized for being tired.
I’ve been the dependable one. The flexible one. The one who “just makes it work.”
In the words of a female family member, “I literally took a sick day to clean my house despite my utter exhaustion because this workload is insane — and so is this phase of life. It’s hard not to resent both.”
That one hit hard. Because it’s not just her. It's not just me. It’s every woman I know — stretched between professional competence and personal collapse, trying to perform gratitude while silently negotiating with burnout.
For the last decade, I’ve done all of it while raising kids — toggling between Teams calls and calls from the school nurse, brand refreshes and fresh Band-Aids. Wearing miserable pumps on my way to pump between meetings. Working out during my lunch break so I have the energy to work late. You get my point.
And yes — becoming a parent was a choice I made willingly, gratefully. But I also made it knowing it would become my greatest professional handicap the moment I returned to work.
Imagine that: the instant you’re blessed with a child — one of life’s greatest gifts — your professional stock quietly plummets. You’re feeding your baby while waking up to the harsh realization that your highest-earning years will now require relentless overcompensation just to stay relevant, sharp, and employable.
That being said, you don't need to be a parent to feel this pinch. Women in all phases of life can relate to this grind. We answer emails and respond to messages and host meetings from the soccer field, from the recital, from the doctor's office, from bed, from nursing homes, from the car, from the hospital with a sick loved one, from the side of your parent as they get radiation or chemo treatments, from the beach blanket, from the airplane, from anywhere and everywhere. Because being "offline" is not actually real, not for anyone who takes their career seriously that is.
Except, for Jim - he can take three weeks off, no problem. I'll just pick up all his loose ends and do two jobs at once. Or that guy, Joe, over there - he's not reachable when he's on his catamaran in Italy so don't even bother. I'll just handle all his work and get lectured by him when he's back on all the things I did 'wrong'. And don't forget about Ray, the boss who likes to schedule last minute 5pm meetings despite knowing day care pick up is at 5:30. It's fine - I'll just find another way to get my children home safely.
Working mothers are the canaries in the coal mine of corporate culture. When we start gasping, the system’s already out of air. So it should be no surprise to anyone that the coal mine is on the brink of total collapse.
The truth, no matter how much it is debated in theoretical circles, is not really in question when you speak to those with lived work experience. It's simple: workplace rules aren’t the same for men and women. The playing field isn’t level. So how, exactly, are we being accused of ruining a game that was never designed for us to win?
If anything, women didn’t ruin the workplace. We absorbed it. We carried it. We patched its cracks with our own bandwidth and called it balance.
In response to the thesis statement from the NYT op-ed/podcast discussion, that the workplace became “too emotional” when women entered it. I say, no it didn't - it just became honest. And not for the first time since I started writing these reflections, will I confidently say that maybe that’s what people still can’t handle — honesty in motion. The visible proof that the systems weren’t designed for us, or for anyone who dares to have a body, a family, or feelings that interrupt the illusion of productivity.
Unhelpfully, I am ending this reflection with more existential questions than I started because I do not have any immediate solutions to offer. If "liberal feminism" made work more human, why are we nostalgic for inhuman systems? Or rather, what does it say about our collective comfort with power that empathy feels threatening?
But I don’t need to have the answers yet. Maybe it’s enough to name what so many of us feel — that we’re not broken, the system is. That we’re not “too emotional,” we’re just finally done pretending. Because if honesty is what makes the workplace uncomfortable, maybe discomfort is exactly where the real work begins?
Women didn’t ruin the workplace. We're just the only ones brave enough to admit it’s already burning — and still show up to rebuild it anyway. And that's not ruin. That's resilience.