Fair Shake

A stirring, comprehensive look at the state of women in the workforce—why women’s progress has stalled, how our economy fosters unproductive competition, and how we can fix the system that holds women back.

In an era of supposed equality, women are falling behind in the workplace faster than before, a trend exacerbated by Covid-19. Even with more women in the workforce than in decades past, wage gaps continue to increase. It is the most educated women who have fallen the furthest from behind. Blue-collar women hold the most insecure and badly paid jobs in our economy. And even as we celebrate high-profile representation—women on the board of Fortune 500 companies and our first female vice president—women have limited recourse when they experience harassment and discrimination.

Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy explains that the system that governs our economy—a winner-take-all economy—is the root cause of these myriad problems. The WTA self-selects aggressive, cutthroat business tactics, which creates a feedback loop that sidelines women. The authors, three legal scholars, call this feedback loop “the triple bind”: if women don’t compete on the same terms as men, they lose; if women do compete on the same terms as men, they’re punished more harshly for their sharp elbows or actual misdeeds; and when women see that they can’t win on the same terms as men, they take themselves out of the game (as if they haven’t been pushed out already). With odds like these stacked against them, it’s no wonder women feel like, no matter how hard they work, they can’t get ahead.

Drawing on rich storytelling often found in legal documents, Fair Shake makes a compelling case for why existing laws fail to protect women. It not only diagnoses the problem of what’s wrong with the modern economy, but shows how, with awareness and collective action, we can build a truly just economy for all.