A Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug: The Working Woman's Guide to Overthrowing the Patriarchy
Written by Sarah Lacy
Narrated by Gabra Zackman
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
A rally cry for working mothers everywhere that demolishes the "distracted, emotional, weak" stereotype and definitively shows that these professionals are more focused, decisive, and stronger than any other force.
Working mothers aren’t a liability. They are assets you—and every manager and executive—want in your company, in your investment portfolio, and in your corner.
There is copious academic research showing the benefits of working mothers on families and the benefits to companies who give women longer and more flexible parental leave. There are even findings that demonstrate women with multiple children actually perform better at work than those with none or one.
Yet despite this concrete proof that working mothers are a lucrative asset, they still face the "Maternal Wall"—widespread unconscious bias about their abilities, contributions, and commitment. Nearly eighty percent of women are less likely to be hired if they have children—and are half as likely to be promoted. Mothers earn an average $11,000 less in salary and are held to higher punctuality and performance standards. Forty percent of Silicon Valley women said they felt the need to speak less about their family to be taken more seriously. Many have been told that having a second child would cost them a promotion.
Fortunately, this prejudice is slowly giving way to new attitudes, thanks to more women starting their own businesses, and companies like Netflix, Facebook, Apple, and Google implementing more parent-friendly policies. But the most important barrier to change isn’t about men. Women must rethink the way they see themselves after giving birth. As entrepreneur Sarah Lacy makes clear in this cogent, persuasive analysis and clarion cry, the strongest, most lucrative, and most ambitious time of a woman’s career may easily be after she sees a plus sign on a pregnancy test.
Editor's Note
Be a part of the change…
Tech is one of the most male-dominated, sexist fields, but it’s also leading the way to breaking down gender barriers. You may be shocked by the statistics on working mothers in this book — and you’ll certainly be inspired to change the stigmas and stereotypes.
Sarah Lacy
Sarah Lacy is the founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of the investigative tech news site Pando.com. She has been covering technology news and entrepreneurship for over fifteen years, with stints at BusinessWeek and TechCrunch before founding her own company while on maternity leave in 2011. She lives in San Francisco. Most importantly of all, she is the mother of two young children.
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Reviews for A Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug
8 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5There are some good parts about this book, but it isn't enough to justify the time I spent on it. Only about a third of the book relates to the topic at hand, which is the fact that women are not unfitted for work by being mothers. The narrative rambles through the author's marriage, childbearing, and divorce, and spends much too much time on venture capitalism, tech journalism, and other rather esoteric things that are at best only tangentially related to the topic. If I had picked this up as a memoir or an autobiography, that would have been fine, but that is not how it was sold to me. In addition, the author is really only talking to high powered women, especially those who found start ups or get into venture capitalism or journalism about start ups and venture capitalism, even though she occasionally does take time to remember that not all women can drop everything and found a start up. Narcissism oozes out of every page. In addition, the relentless pro-natalism is off putting in a world that is already heavily overpopulated. A disappointment.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Best for: Men (because you need to be told); mothers working outside the home who are looking for some support.In a nutshell: Tech journalist Sarah Lacy makes the case that motherhood is an asset to the workforce, not a detriment.Line that sticks with me: “It was the men — not the kids — that had proven to be a net negative on many of these women’s careers.” (p 206)Why I chose it: This is another book by someone in the tech world that my husband thought I might find interesting. He’s recommended a lot recently!Review: In the first few pages I thought I would love this book. By the middle, I’d almost give up because I thought there was a whole lot of unintentional shaming of people who aren’t mothers. But the last third brought it back around to the point that I think I can give it about three stars (would probably be 2.5 if I did half stars).The writing itself is fine - Ms. Lacy is a journalist and so knows how to write. But she doesn’t seem to entirely know how to put together a long-form piece. Sometimes this book feels like a memoir, sometimes it feels like a researched piece. Some chapters start with a vignette from her life that then illustrates the content that will be explored on a broader level later in the chapter; others have unrelated vingettes, or none at all. There’s no consistency to the book, so I found it challenging at times to really dive in.The content, however, is interesting for sure. Ms. Lacy makes a very strong case for all the ways that motherhood is an asset to the workforce, and I appreciate the research she does into this. She sometimes veers into just examining sexism without the connection to motherhood, looking at how marriage (regardless of having children) affects women in heterosexual relationships.The main problem I have is that, perhaps due to some inartful writing (or perhaps because it is her opinion), much of this book reads as though women who are NOT mothers are somehow incapable of the same achievements of women who are mothers. I don’t think that’s what she’s saying, but as a woman who works outside the home and will never have kids, I’m clearly more attuned to that kind of coded language. On the one hand, I would expect that major life changes would have affect people, and hopefully in a positive way (including motherhood). But I also think that experiencing life in general helps us to grow and make different choices.I’m not sure how to best articulate this, but there is a way to discuss how life events (having children, getting married, getting divorced) can be seen as a way to improve your life without suggesting that not going through those things means you aren’t improving your life. And I don’t think Ms. Lacy does that very well. There are times where she discussed how mothers can just focus better because they have so many competing priorities they *have* to, and this leads to better productivity. I’m not sure how productivity is defined her, but the way Ms. Lacy discusses it, it sounds like that focus and productivity is only available to women who have kids. That seems disingenuous.The book is also very gender essentialist - I don’t think how this affects trans men even crossed her mind. For her, uterus = woman. And I know that it is a shift in thinking for a lot of people, and that so much of the sexism and misogyny that exists is based on expectations of cis women; however, I think we’re at a point where our discussions aren’t as rich as they could be when we completely cut out our colleagues who don’t fit into this woman=uterus dimension. Sure, it might complicate the book a little, but I think Ms. Lacy could have figured out a way to work it in. I’m glad I read the book and, as I said, I think there are lots of folks who will read it and enjoy it; it’s just probably not a book I’ll be recommending to folks like me.