Machiavelli’s guide for women at work

Explicit content warning

09/30/21 • 57 min

Stacey Vanek Smith is the author of the new book, Machiavelli for Women: Defend Your Worth, Grow Your Ambition, and Win the Workplace. She is also Cardiff’s former co-host on The Indicator from Planet Money! The two hosts reunite for this special episode, in which Stacey tells Cardiff about the hardheaded wisdom and encouragement she finds in Machiavelli, the economic data and case studies showing the particular set of obstacles that women confront at the office, and why professional advancement requires an understanding of the world as it is, not as we wish it were.

Links from the episode:

Stacey is on Twitter at @svaneksmith
Machiavelli for Women (https://tinyurl.com/5cun5du7)
The Indicator from Planet Money (https://tinyurl.com/4a8pa2cj)
Cardiff and Aimee are on Twitter at @CardiffGarcia and @AimeePKeane
Send us an email! You can write to us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Links from the episode:

Stacey is on Twitter at @svaneksmith
Machiavelli for Women (https://tinyurl.com/5cun5du7)
The Indicator from Planet Money (https://tinyurl.com/4a8pa2cj)
Cardiff and Aimee are on Twitter at @CardiffGarcia and @AimeePKeane
Send us an email! You can write to us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

The meaning of gentrification

Gentrification is a trend that can be confusing, contentious, and widely misunderstood. Perhaps most surprisingly, gentrification can offer “the promise of integration and sorely needed investment that can increase residents’ quality of life — but only if disadvantaged residents are set up to take part in the benefits of increased investment." Thus argues Jerusalem Demsas, policy reporter at Vox. In a wide-ranging conversation, she takes Cardiff through the research and academic literature on gentrification, explaining the nuances and complexities that are so often missing in debates about this controversial trend.

Links from the episode:

Jerusalem is on Twitter at @JerusalemDemsas
“What we talk about when we talk about gentrification”, by Jerusalem Demsas (https://tinyurl.com/2kpasxn7)
All of Jerusalem’s Vox articles (https://tinyurl.com/3sjvp3dc)
Cardiff and Aimee are on Twitter at @CardiffGarcia and @AimeePKeane
Send us an email! You can write to us at [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

When talent is no longer wasted

In 1960, only six percent of all the doctors and lawyers in the country were either women (of all races and ethnicities) or men of color. All the rest -- the overwhelming majority -- were white men. Fast forward half a century. By the year 2010, women and nonwhite men were 38 percent of doctors and lawyers. A similar integration occurred in other high-paying professions that required college and post-graduate degrees.

According to a paper by economist Chang-Tai Hsieh and his co-authors, this deepening integration accounted for an astonishing 40 percent of the per-capita economic growth in the country during this period. Like much of Chang-Tai’s other work, this paper is about what happens when people are finally able to apply their talents in ways that best take advantage of those talents -- and what a tragedy it is, for all of us, when they can’t.

And that’s why this story is not entirely a happy one. Mainly because there is so much progress that is still left to be made. But also because the progress that was being made appears to be slowing down. And for some people, it might even be reversing.

Links from the episode: