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Women are pivotal to the economy

Women’s purchasing power is unrivaled by their male counterparts, which is why it’s so important to make sure we’re doing everything we can, both at the voting booth and in our own homes and companies, to help build up women and make sure they have what they need to succeed.

Our friends at theSkimm recently wanted to better understand how women were dealing with the economic repercussions of the last few years, so they teamed up with The Harris Poll to “conduct a proprietary study that explores the ‘State of Women’ today, understand their visions for the future – and identify what can help them get there. The survey was conducted with 3k women from a wide cross-section of backgrounds and life stages, and provides new data-backed insights on the state of women in society, money, career, family, well-being and brands.”

Read the report: https://www.theskimm.com/stateofwomen

What they found was shocking –– according to the data:

• 87% of women have or want to create more sources of financial stability in their life, and 60% are taking action by taking on a side hustle, shifting to a higher-earning career, or advocating for a promotion.

• Women are concerned the current economic climate will cause further career setbacks. 66% say, ‘I’m worried about the impact of a potential economic downturn on my career trajectory’

• 84% said they have or are looking to set up a more flexible / hybrid working schedule.

• 84% of Millennial women said they wish men would become advocates and partners in the push for women’s equity in society.

OK, maybe some of those starts aren’t all THAT shocking, but we were intrigued by the large swaths of data theSkimm collected, and wanted to chat with the founders, Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, about everything they learned in this report.

What else Tori, Carly, and Danielle dive into:

• How the pandemic affected women across the spectrum

• Why Carly and Danielle believe that even though voting is one of the most important things you can do, it’s only the start

• How men can help by joining the conversation

Links: 

The State of Women Report

theSkimm 

Follow Carly & Danielle on Instagram

Resources:

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Transcript:

Danielle Weisberg:

So we’re talking about a 3.1 trillion at risk to our US economy if we don’t figure out how to keep women in the workforce. It’s one thing to say, of course, I want to feel better. I want my friends to feel better. I want every woman I know to feel more supportive. Of course I do, but that’s not what is going to get change made. Change is going to come because there is a huge risk to our economy, to the size of our population to work as we know it if we do not figure out how to support women.

Tori Dunlap:

Hello Financial Feminists. Welcome back to the show. Hello. I’m excited to see you as always. Today’s guests are incredible and probably don’t need much of a setup if you’ve ever gotten one of their emails or follow their social accounts, we are talking about their state of women poll that theSkimm put together. And let me tell you, it’s a doozy. If you’re wondering what the state of women is and you identify as a woman, it probably is similar to that. It probably feels very similar to your lived experience. So we’re excited to delve into how women are feeling, what issues we’re facing, both as individuals and as women in general society, and what the fuck we can do about it. And today’s guests are the co-founders and co-CEOs of theSkimm, a digital media company dedicated to succinctly giving women the information they need to make confident decisions and help them live smarter.

So today we’re talking to Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg. The former news producers disrupted the media landscape over a decade ago with the launch of theSkimm and have built a brand that continues to be a trusted source for a community of millions today. theSkimm ecosystem includes the Daily Skimm, the Daily Skimm, weekends, Skimm Money and Skimm Your Life newsletters, 9 to 5ish with theSkimm podcast, theSkimm mobile app, and Skim Studios, which creates innovative in-house video and audio content. theSkimms first book, how to Skim Your Life was released in June, 2019 and debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list casual.

Carly and Danielle are incredibly impressive, but we really brought them on to talk about the State of Women Report that they conducted. theSkimm partnered with the Harris Poll to conduct a proprietary study that explores the state of women today, understand their visions for the future and identify what can help them get there. The survey was conducted with 3000 women from a wide cross section of backgrounds and life stages and provides data backed insights on the state of women in society, money, career, family, and wellbeing. We go through what the state of women truly is like today and talk about how we can navigate these challenges while also working together to advocate for the betterment of all women. So let’s go ahead and get into it.

But first a word from our sponsors. Are you in New York? Is that where you’re at? Okay, cool. I lived in Brooklyn for two months last year, and I absolutely loved it.

Carly Zakin:

Wait, where are you now?

Tori Dunlap:

I’m in Seattle. I’m born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and so.

Carly Zakin:

I don’t know if I knew that. My husband is from there. Good amount of time there.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah, it’s beautiful up here. I am thrilled to have you both. I have been huge admirers of your work and of everything you’re doing at theSkimm. Can you each talk a little bit about your background and why you created theSkimm? And Carly, if you could go first.

Carly Zakin:

I’m going to go first, but I think I might take up some of our mutual airtime. I grew up in New York City and was lifelong just lover of news. I just wanted to work in news my whole life, was able to get internships at a young age. Coincidentally, didn’t know at the time, but somebody named Danielle Weisberg was interning for the same people sometimes in the same summer, and I didn’t know her, so we were like ships in a night. Then after college, I worked at NBC full-time. I first started at CNBC, moved over to MSNBC and then moved to Washington DC producing for long form documentaries for NBC and then came back to New York. I came up a producer route. I loved what I did, I loved who I worked for.

My parents used to joke that I wanted to be the superintendent of 30 Rock because I just loved that building and I was not somebody who was like, “I don’t want to be in a corporate environment.” I actually really enjoyed it. For me, I graduated as a Danielle in 2008 at a time where we watched so many people lose their jobs and we were covering that, and I think it’s always important to want to have your boss’s job one day and to have a goal in mind and to have a path in front of you. And all of a sudden there was no path. And we both got to do things at probably get exposed to things at a younger age or younger part of our career because we were cheaper labor and there was so much happening and changing in the industry.

So as I was trying to figure out, well, what does my path here look like? How do I make money? How do I have longevity to what I do? And also I’m interested in the business side, how do I combine that? Ultimately, it led to really the conversation of do I quit, go to grad school, go into debt to go to grad school, and then not really sure what I want to do after that or do I start something? That’s ultimately what led us to theSkimm. But I’ll let Danielle tell her skimmed version.

Danielle Weisberg:

Well, a lot of overlap as Carly said. I think, well, one difference, I’m from Chicago, so I grew up thinking about do I want to go into politics or I want to go into media? And I think ultimately wanted to do a little bit of both, which meant I graduated college, went to work for NBC News in DC and loved the adrenaline, loved being close to, especially in 2008. It was a really interesting time and fun time to live in DC and I think we both in terms of graduating when no one could get jobs, if you did have a job, you were really cheap labor. So you got to do a lot of things way before we probably should have.

And I think what that did is I think really fed this organic hustle that I always had, which is I knew I wanted to have a big career. I knew I wanted to make a big impact. I didn’t know exactly, you know what that meant, but I knew that waiting 10 years for one job to open up probably was not going to satiate me. And that’s really what I found in working at a big company. And I say a big company because sometimes that’s just the life of any big company, whether we’re talking about a media company in one network versus the other. It’s all the same. There are so many positions and you have to make yourself stand out. And I think in the process of doing that, I really learned that I loved and do love writing. I love audience building and I love business. And I don’t think that when we were 25 thinking about our career, it was certainly not, “Well, let me take this hugely because that’s the best way to d
o all of it.”

But it was more like I don’t have enough money to go to, at the time it was law school, I never would’ve thought about business school because if I went to law school, I probably would’ve done a degree in media law and it would not have been to work at a big law firm where you pay back those loans. So that for me just was not going to get my return on investment. I never would’ve thought that I could even get through business school thinking about, “Well, I’m a creative person, so that’s not for me,” which now I would challenge that.

So it’s the process of elimination. I think almost that we got to the point where we were like, we want to do more. We feel like we’re ready to do more. We can’t do that in some of the more traditional ways. So instead we’re going to quit our jobs and start something from our couch. And honestly, it was received as crazy as it sounds, our parents thought we were nuts. I think what’s interesting though is that none of our bosses that we used to work for did they, were very excited for us and we’re huge supporters.

So fast forward 10 and a half years later, theSkimm is a digital media company dedicated to making it easier to live smarter for women throughout the country who are facing a lot of pressures, a lot of demands, and you need to make good decisions in critical areas of your life, whether it’s what’s going on in the world, what’s going on with your wallet, what’s going on with your career, what’s going on with your health, and all that we have in common, if it’s just one thing is that no one has enough time. So theSkimm makes sure that you are armed with enough of the right information in these key areas of your life to make the decision that is right for you.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. There is so much overlap in both of your stories to mine and entrepreneurship and almost that it’s the only path forward for me. It felt like for me it was like, okay, entrepreneurship is inevitable at this point because it’s the only thing that makes sense with where I’m at in my life, what my goals are, what my needs are, and then also this draw to impact people and to change as much as I personally can, the landscape for women. Which leads me to this white paper. Okay. Let’s talk about this. So the biggest reason we wanted to have you on, in addition to the incredible work that you guys are doing with theSkimm, which myself and my team have followed you for a very long time. Karina’s who our COO, who is acting as our podcast producer today is so excited because she’s been reading this skim devoutly for years.

Danielle Weisberg:

Thank you. Thanks Karina.

Tori Dunlap:

She’s I’m sure crying in the club right now, but can you tell us why you decided to gather the data for this report and what was the hope of this information gathered? What did you want to do with it?

Danielle Weisberg:

So when we think about our State of Women Report, it’s really a data driven action oriented initiative. And why I say that is we felt like how many reports have you read and glossed over? This was not just something to read and put aside or to be like, “Yeah, I saw that headline, but I didn’t remember what it said.” And that meant that the journey to actually doing this report, which we did with Harris because they ran the poll of the thousands of women that we talked to. And that was in combination with years and years of hearing from our audience every single day, of hearing these anecdotal stories of reporting on the ways that women feel just like it’s too much. And we felt like it is so easy to ignore this because as a society we’re so good at that.

And it’s always hard to change systems, but it’s especially easy to put the need for change aside when the systems were never built to support women to begin with. So we recognized that this was going to have to be a combination of quantitative, qualitative feedback, put in a report because you can’t argue with the data. And then also distributed to our audience with the same wit and tone that we do anything and really make it a campaign around the state of women, which to your point, it’s not good. So how it didn’t take a report to suddenly uncover that it’s not good. And that’s what we really want to talk about. I think that the areas and the depth to it is shocking. And that’s really what our hope is with this, is that you can’t ignore it. That once you see it’s impossible not to do something about it.

And that doesn’t mean because of the goodness of your heart. Because I think if that was the case, then there would be so much societal change to begin with, and it’s about the economic impact of this report. So we’re talking about a 3.1 trillion at risk to our US economy if we don’t figure out how to keep women in the workforce. And that is the lens that I challenge everyone to view this report through because it’s one thing to say, of course I want to feel better. I want my friends to feel better. I want every woman I know to feel more supportive. Of course I do, but that’s not what is going to get change made. Change is going to come because there is a huge risk to our economy, to the size of our population, to work as we know it if we do not figure out how to support women.

Tori Dunlap:

Well, can we talk about that for a second? Because I think that’s so illuminating and connects so well to what I do because we should just be able to be, “Women aren’t doing well, let’s fix it.” But instead, we exist in the capitalist society where we have to make it literally a financial issue for people to care. And my work, I talk about how money affects every part of our lives and how if you want anything, whether that’s having children, donating to causes, you believe in starting a business, you need the money to do so.

And it’s very similar to something like abortion access, where people think this is a social issue and it’s 100% a social issue. Women should have the right to do what they want with their own bodies before we even bring the money into it. But then in addition, it is a financial issue. We know that most people who terminate pregnancies already have children and can’t afford another. So does that you off? Because it me off a little bit. I know that this is what we have to do in order to play the game is to say the economic impact of these things, but I’m also just like, I’m a person and my sisters are people and I want them to be able to be taken care of. Does that anger you?

Danielle Weisberg:

You know what’s funny? I don’t know if we’ve ever been asked that. And in some ways I feel as a person, of course it angers me, but as a founder and CEO that we’ve been running this brand for 10 and a half years, I just feel like it’s just like I’m tired. So if this is the argument that’s going to get through, then I want that thing that’s going to work the best.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. You have to play the game as much as you can. So you mentioned the shocking piece of this whole report, and as I was reading it too, honestly, it felt very true to my experience. So I don’t know how shocking it felt for me, but Carly, what was the most shocking piece of data that you all uncovered?

Carly Zakin:

I think to your point, why did we do the report? We knew it wasn’t good. We knew the state of women was not going to be like, “Guys, everything is great,” but we’re doing so well. It could not be better. But I think that the overwhelming response of how bad it is and how bad people know it is or articulating how bad it is, floored me. And maybe that was just me being naive, but I think there was two stats that really got me. I think one was that 83% of women are like, “I am so tired of society telling me what my role should be.” And I hadn’t ever thought about it in that phrasing. Just, Danielle just said, she’s tired. You’re expressing your own frustration, Tori. I think hearing 83% of us feel in some way a similar feeling of I’m so sick of this, that is just very jarring. That is a number you can’t argue with.

I think that the other one that really we talked a lot about is actually 71% of her self-identified as Chief warrior officer. When we first saw that response, we laughed, cute name. And then we were like, “Wait, what? This is not funny.” We were like, what is that actually saying? And we have joked, we want to see more women in the C-suite. This is not the C title we want her to have. And chief warrior officer, “Well, what does that mean? It means that she has all the burdens on her shoulders.” She’s not sharing those burdens. So she’s worried about financial stability. 87% of her are worried about that. She is worried about children that she may or may not be having. She is worried about parents that she may or may not have to be taken care of. She is worried about her job, she’s worried about the world. She is worried about future political leaders. She’s worried about social issues that she cares about. She is bearing the brunt of so much on her shoulders.

And then you look at stats that say one in five are dealing with the mental health crisis, whether that’s anxiety or depression, that is really, really, really alarming. And I think those two, the chief worry officer and the 83% to me saying, “I’m sick of this,” just really got me and are the things that I just keep flashing in my head.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. Again, I’m just like, yeah, I worry all the time.

Carly Zakin:

Yeah. We all do have different situations and it’s like I just have always thought, “Well, that’s just what happens. My mom did it. I’m going to do it.” And it’s like that’s why.

Tori Dunlap:

I weirdly feel bizarre quoting my own book. But in the research that I had, I realized that I had written this sentence that was women have to pay for and deal with all of the problems that cisgender straight White men created in their society, but didn’t account for. All of the problems that are exist within society that any marginalized group has to deal with are perpetuated or created by the very people that are like, “I don’t have to deal with this at all.”

Danielle Weisberg:

And I was just thinking because I want to go back to that. I’m thinking about that Meghan Markle moment in the interview where he’s like, “No one’s asked me if I’m okay.” I’m like in a totally different way. No one’s asked me if I’m like, how do I feel about this? And I think it’s like what you said that we should be angry. We should be just like, well, doesn’t it count that it’s just like I’m a person and I contribute to society, so this stuff should be fixed. I think that there is, and I think this comes out really clearly in this report, there is so much of what needs to be fixed that it’s almost like we can’t even waste energy on that anymore. That it’s past the point of screaming. It’s past the point of feeling if we just make this better known, it’s going to happen because we all live on social media. It’s not like any of these things are new.

What I think is new were for our generation is how much women contribute to the economy and how big women are in this workforce. So I think that’s actually the thing that gives me hope here, which is yes, it’s amazing that we are seeing from this, women are getting more and involved in their local elections that they are considering potentially running for office or getting more involved with civic engagement. And yes, we want more of that of course. But I think that at the end of the day, what gives me the biggest hope that there will be change is just because there is too much financially at risk for our country to be competitive if we don’t.

Tori Dunlap:

Well, and you mentioned in previous interviews that there are larger financial implications to not helping women stay in the workforce, to not getting proper healthcare to this lack of pay transparency. What is that ripple effect of-

Danielle Weisberg:

Yeah, and this is the thing I talk about all the time, and I’m obsessed with because I feel like it is so glaringly obvious that as a society we have to have people in the workforce. We need them to do a lot of jobs to pay for things like social security. You need a birth rate that is staying or growing in order to support the whole from baby boomers retiring and leaving the workforce. Who’s going to take that up? We are predominantly the children of boomers. So our families, our structure, our ability to have kids that are then going to enter the workforce all works together. So you talk about things like China or you look at Japan declining birth rates like that to me is the biggest frustration I have, which is everyone talks about one day we’ll be able to retire.

Look at what’s going on in France. You cannot have that unless you have people in the workforce. You need young people to make these capitalist societies work and to make young people, you have to have women who are having children. And I don’t understand, this is the part that I think really gets me going. I don’t understand why people are shocked that women are waiting longer to have kids. Kids are expensive and if you’re not part of a society where it is mandated that you are getting healthcare, you are getting time off, you are getting support, then of course you would take a while to think about that decision. So I think to me that that idea of you need a workforce because you needed to take care, those people in that life stage are taking care of all of the other aspects of society is the easiest response and also the one that gets looked overlooked.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. I joke with my partner all the time, if I could be a dad, I would do that in a heartbeat. It’s the specifically about being a mother. And yet we are still the old only “industrialized country” that does not have any federally mandated leave, which is insane. So there’s so many incredible, and just again, eyeopening stats in here. We’ve touched a lot on this season of the podcast about motherhood and families. You were telling me already this stress that women feel of do I have children, do I not? And then of course what happens? Was there anything that else unique you found about when you surveyed women about family or about family planning?

Carly Zakin:

I think there are two things that jumped
out at me. I think one was that 82% of her just felt overburdened and felt like nobody was there to help them. And often usually hear that when life changes happen and what is the biggest life change that can happen in her life is usually starting a family. I think the second that was jarring to me, and I say that as somebody who doesn’t yet have children, that over 60% of her are really sick of the supermom title. And Danielle, you were talking about this yesterday, if you see one more Instagram ad of people being like, thank mom for doing it all, it’s like, why? And obviously that hits you in a different way, but I think what we are hearing is that whether or not she has a family or not, and we should say a very large percentage of her are choosing not to have children. Very much choosing to go child free. And that is a choice.

Again, we support that choice, but to feel that, and no matter what her choices are pulled in a thousand different directions and expected to be, that’s leading to a financial crisis for her, a mental health crisis for her and a career crisis for her. So again, without having this structural support, whether at a local level, at her company or at a federal level to be able to take leave as things come up having a family or going through a loss or whatever that is for you or getting pay equity, all of these things are causing her to drown. And I think what we are hearing from our audience is those especially who have started, families are really feeling it right now.

And again, let’s talk about the audience that we’re referencing here. This is an audience that entered the workforce around or in 2008, not a good time. This is an audience that likely started to settle down or maybe have their first children or have children under the age of five during a pandemic, not a good time. And this is an audience that is getting into the C-suite right now at a time when the economy, are we in a recession? Are we not inflation? All the things, again, not a good time. So it’s not like she’s had any moment of thriving in her professional life since graduating college if she’s went to college. And I think all of those are adding up here. And again, it goes back to why she identifies as the chief worry officer, but I also, I want to call out, these are all really depressing stats and we’re looking at each other on camera, all nodding, and we’re like, yeah.

Tori Dunlap:

This is my next question, which is I don’t want to move through life knowing all of this and worrying even more about all of these stats I’ve just heard. So what do we do about it?

Carly Zakin:

But I actually think this is not meant to be a depressing study and actually it’s not. I think what came out very loud and clear from our audience and from talking to her is she’s like, “I’m so sick of this that I’m going to be the one to change it because guess what? Nobody has come to help change it for me. The government didn’t come, my company didn’t come. My male partners haven’t come. I’m going to change it.” And we have so many different anecdotes from amazing women in our audience that have shared with us everything from small things to I’m now just saying no more and keeping track of that.

And I’m actually using operational software that I use to be efficient at work at home to make sure that I’m not overextending to bigger things of women who have come to us to help them advocate for their paid family leave policies at work. And we’ve created this amazing database called Show Us Your Leave of over 600 companies that have actually published their leave policies and in many cases changed them because of this movement and she is helping to lead that. So I think what I want the takeaway to be when we talk about the state of women is it’s not good and she is the one changing it.

Tori Dunlap:

What is something that each of us can do with this information now that we have it? So if somebody’s listening from the perspective of individuals, but also the perspective of businesses, I’m thinking both as Tori Dunlap, but also the CEO of Her First $100K, how can I take this information and actually do something with it?

Danielle Weisberg:

So the biggest thing that I see is even though this is entitled the State of Women, I think that this should be entitled, must read for men. I don’t think that any real change happens if we are just sharing this within women who feel the same way. And I think that that is biggest… My biggest fear in this and in a lot of the times what gets shared or talked about is with people that feel the same way. And I think that that is actually where, and I’ve felt this anecdotally in my own life, where when I sent this to my friends, they were like yeah. When I talked to it with different men in my life, they were like really, and I actually think that that is something that if there are people that you think would be surprised by this, those are the people that you need to share it with. And those people are not like there’s no male intent, it’s just that they may not see it actually. So part of this is everyone needs to see it in order for change to happen.

Carly Zakin:

You just had a great Freudian slip. You said no male intent.

Danielle Weisberg:

I like that. No male intent. I love that. We should trademark that. But I think that if what we are looking at here is split up by categories to help women in the workforce and to help women in terms of what’s going on at home with your families, men need to take leave. They need to take family leave, and they need to show that as an example for a myriad of reasons. And that goes a really long way. I think it is thinking about pay gap and pay transparency, if you are a man push for those policies. Just because it’s not targeted at you, you are seeing where this is leading to. You are seeing because you’ve read this report, because you understand what’s at stake in the economy, there is a vested interest in keeping women in the workforce.

So stepping in, making sure that if not… It’s like I don’t need you. It would be nice to have emotional support, but we’ve all got places for that. This is like, you got to focus on this stuff. And this is about how you look at where your money goes, how you look at who’s supporting your local communities and what your companies that you work for do.

Tori Dunlap:

And not shockingly, this report also highlights that women of color are doing worse than White women or queer women are doing worse than straight women. So I would say also as a White woman, we have an obligation to advocate for our women of color, friends, colleagues, in addition to men advocating for women.

Carly Zakin:

Absolutely. And I think it’s a really important point around pay transparency, which is how we know these women are getting not what they deserve is because actually of paid transparency and in the more paid transparency we have, the more parody we have. So what we have seen is that companies that… There’s actually a great external study that we quoted in our own State of Women Report that basically said that women and men who worked at companies that had
paid transparency, women made either a dollar for every man’s dollar or a dollar and 1 cent for every man’s.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah, it’s the pay scale study. They’re actually located in Seattle. We’ve worked with them before. They’re great.

Carly Zakin:

Yes, exactly. So it’s a really important point because I think it’s like, well, what can you do? Well, one, if you are a man in a position of power, especially at a company, making sure that there is pay transparency, making sure that your female colleagues and directs are getting paid fairly, and especially if you are a man or a woman who are White or identify as White, making sure that your colleagues that are people of color are also getting that transparency. And this is how we actually start creating the change.

Danielle Weisberg:

The other thing I would say too is there’s no easy fixes, but this is a simple one is during the pandemic, we all had to get flexible on how we worked. We all had to get really good at this hybrid environment, and we are seeing it switch overnight. So it was like we all had to figure out how to work remotely. We did. We realized that in some ways that’s actually a much better system to support working parents that today’s modern work environments were not set up to have two working parents and definitely not set up to have women be working full-time out of the home. So let’s look at what has worked about that and let’s keep those things. I feel like when people and companies get scared, the easiest answer is like, well, we’re going to go back to what worked before. And recognizing that what worked before didn’t work for most people.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. I have another question about policy change, but I think it’s pretty obvious. It’s advocating for paid family leave, advocating for gun control, advocating for increase in minimum wage.

Carly Zakin:

I think one of the things to note about theSkimm is, and we actually have a very politically diverse audience that we’re really proud of, and I think it’s something that we worked really hard to do, and it’s a very geographically diverse audience. I think what is really important about all of this, well, what can you do? How do you advocate? Number one is you have to get informed. But number two, and this is obviously where I’m going to say theSkimm comes in, but number two, and I wouldn’t have said this 10 years ago, but I’ll say this now, if you can just be informed, you’re really lucky. If you got to just read something and be like, “I feel really informed, talk about this topic.” You’re at a point of privilege if that is not something that you’re getting informed about affecting your day-to-day.

So how do you then turn that into action? And really what theSkimm is about, how we have evolved is like we are helping her navigate all of these big unsexy topics of her life, like personal finance, talking about health and mental health, talking about news and voter and civic engagement. And we need first and foremost to vote. First and foremost, we will never tell you at the scheme who to vote for, but we will say you have a responsibility and a right and duty to vote. And that doesn’t just mean voting every four years. It means voting in local elections. I mean, look at the issues that we’re talking about now as a country that have been so divisive. They come down to school board elections, they come down to the most local of local elections that many of us have taken for granted and honestly didn’t pay attention to for a lot of our lives.

And the first step is to get informed. The second step is to take action. And I think that is where we come in. I think the other part is the government and many levels and on both sides of political spectrums have failed. Women specifically when it comes to paid family leave, they have not supported women in the workforce. So we can sit here and debate, well, what’s the best way to get a bill passed and all of that. But to be honest, I don’t know. And I think the other thing that we have seen overwhelmingly from our audience in previous studies we’ve done is 80% of her don’t have faith that the government will solve things for her, don’t have faith that the government is going to solve paid family leave. So that’s when I say, “Then let’s create the change ourselves. Go to your companies, go to your bosses, go to your employers,” because we will change this one company at a time.

Tori Dunlap:

My politics are very clear in my work and what we do. It’s really interesting to hear that people who might identify as conservative, again, it’s probably not shocking, but I don’t know why it’s shocking to me. Also feel all of these issues as intimately as I might as a self-defined liberal person. So it’s really interesting, and I really value that you were intentional about getting data from everybody, not just coasts, not just blue states. So yeah, it’s really interesting to hear that everybody, every single woman seems to be struggling with this regardless.

Danielle Weisberg:

Yeah. I think that there are a lot of ideas as there should be about how do you fix the problem? And I think that that is a different issue than understanding that the problem exists. And I think that State of Women Report highlights the problems that exist. I think also, and I hate that I’m saying this, but I do think it’s true if you’re looking at it, a Republican hasn’t fixed this, a Democrat hasn’t fixed this. There has not been significant change. So why do we spend our time arguing about that when instead it’s like, okay, well what are other things we can do to fix it? Because even if you think that it’s because the Democrats are wrong or the Republicans are wrong, that change is not coming anytime soon. It’s either an election away or a totally different control system away.

So I feel like that’s where we have seen a huge shift, I think in our own thinking and why also we feel so passionate about what we view our role at the company as being is informing people of the issues and thinking about different things to consider in terms of how we fix these problems. I think sometimes it’s almost too simple if you’re saying it’s a political issue, and so I’m going to vote this way. If that was the case, then we’d be completely fixed every four years and then broken before. But that that’s really not what we’re seeing with these issues that we’re talking about.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. And it’s this level of we want to see policy change because of course that’s how stuff gets done. But even some of the policy change or the legislators that you support, they have to go through different channels to get things passed. I think about student loan forgiveness as a financial educator. There are plenty of people who believe in student loan forgiveness, but there are plenty of people who are not interested in having that pass or happen. So to your point, again, it’s not that we don’t vote, it’s not that we don’t advocate for that. It’s also what can we do at an individual level? What can we do in our businesses to start changing things? Yeah.

So my last question for you, if I’m a listener, and again, probably a woman,
probably someone who cares about a woman thinking, okay, this is a lot. This is exactly how I’m feeling. What is one thing that they can do today to feel a little bit better about the state of women in the state of the world?

Danielle Weisberg:

I’ve got two things. I think there’s been a ton of ads around Mother’s Day right now, and I think that the biggest gift is like, don’t reward the women in your life for how much they do. Nothing frustrates me more than that. If you want to honor the women in your life, take something meaningful away from them, give them more sleep. That is the biggest thing. It’s not like, “How do you do it? I’m so in awe of you, but do less.” That should be the gift for any moment in the year for the women in your life.

And I think the biggest way to do that is instead of… It’s great if you take this and you hear this podcast and you talk about it with your friends, talk about it with guys, talk about it with people that don’t see this issue, that disagree with you. Those are the people I want you to share it with. I want you to put it in front of people who don’t think this is an issue. Get into those awkward social media fights about, we can disagree on how to solve it, but you actually see that it’s an issue. To me, that is a win.

Tori Dunlap:

Amazing. Carly, anything to add?

Carly Zakin:

I was going to just say that one actually, which I think is, I would go to theSkimm.com/native women. I would download that report and send it to the men in your life.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. And I think there’s plenty of men that I love who are progressive and who are supporting of women in their life, but just like anything, sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know and your own experience. And there are plenty of times my friends of color will come to me and be like, “Hey, this is what’s going on in my brain, and I’ve never had that experience.” So the empathetic version is like, “Shit, I’ve never thought of it that way. Thank you for for telling me. Let’s move forward.”

Carly Zakin:

And I think that’s a great point. And I think when we say forward it to the men in your life, we’re not yelling at them. We’re saying, “We need your help.” And if there’s literally one thing that a male counterpart or colleague could do for you, it is arguing for pay transparency in your office. One thing asking for extended parental family leave benefits. So it’s not just maternal leave, but it is family leave. If they have direct reports, making sure that they are advocating for pay transparency, making sure that they’re not cutting off the women, especially the women of color who work for them in meetings. These are small things that add eventually to the stats that we started this conversation with, which is 83% of her are like, “I’m so sick of this shit.”

Tori Dunlap:

We will drop the reports in the show notes. Where else can people find out about theSkimm?

Carly Zakin:

theSkimm.com.

Tori Dunlap:

Amazing. Thank you for being here.

Carly Zakin:

You can also follow us on Instagram @theSkimm.

Tori Dunlap:

Perfect. Yeah. We’ve been following you for years. Thank you for your work, and both as individuals and founders, such an incredible movement that you’ve built, so admire you both very deeply. So thank you for being here.

Carly Zakin:

Thank you. Well, likewise. You’re amazing. So thanks for having us.

Danielle Weisberg:

Thank you. Thank you very much for having us. We really appreciate it.

Tori Dunlap:

Thank you again to Carly and Danielle for joining us for this episode. We’re going to link the full report in our show notes. It really is fascinating. Make sure to check out theSkimm across their various platforms. They have a fantastic mailing list. Their brand is incredible, and it was so great to connect with Carly and Danielle. They’re doing really incredible things. Thank you again for being here at Financial Feminist. If this episode connected with you, please feel free to share it. I know for me in reading the report and talking to them both, I felt very seen and heard and also angry.

And if we turn that anger into action, we are fucking unstoppable. So feel free to share this episode with another woman in your life as well as we talk in the episode about sharing this with the men in your life. A lot of men need to know all of the things we’re dealing with as women. So if you are a man listening, we appreciate it. If you have a man in your life who would benefit from this information, feel free to send it to them. Thank you for being here. As always, thank you for supporting the show Financial Feminists, and we’ll talk to you soon.

Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, marketing and administration by Karina Patel, Cherise Wade, Alena Helzer, Paulina Isaac, Sophia Cohen, Kahlil Dumas, Elizabeth McCumber, Beth Bowen, and Amanda Leffew. Research by Ariel Johnson, audio Engineering by Austin Fields, promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe and theme music by Jonah Cohen. Sound a huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K team and community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com or follow us on Instagram @FinancialFeministPodcast.