What’s it like being a woman in America today?

On the one hand, it’s very different from what it was like fifty years ago. But on the other hand, it really isn’t.  

We’ve made great strides in terms of economic empowerment, labor force participation, and rights, and yet, scratch the surface (or…you know, go on the internet) and you’ll find that structural inequalities are as present, pernicious, and pervasive as ever. 

Let’s start with some good news. 

Today, more women are in corporate and political leadership positions than ever before. In America, the share of women who earn as much as—or significantly more—than their husbands has approximately tripled over the past 50 years. Women can’t legally be paid less than men for doing the same work, and they can’t be fired for getting pregnant or married. They can have their own credit card, get a loan, and a mortgage without a male co-signer. They can vote, serve in the military, and sit on juries. Hell, they can even run for president. 

And yet, it’s complicated. 

In ways that we frequently don’t see — perhaps because we choose not to? — the playing field remains grossly uneven. The law (for the most part) has caught on to the importance of gender equality. Society, culture and many other realms of life seemingly have not. 

As a writer, my mission is to shed light on the inequities that still, after all this time, hold us back. And this newsletter is a means of doing that. It will be a place for discourse, debate, discussion, and maybe—very occasionally—celebration, so that we can collectively start to tackle the all-important question of why, despite so much progress during some periods of the twentieth century, gender equality still runs so deep.

Over the past few years, cultural and institutional misogyny that has always lingered has been supercharged by politics and the pandemic (we’ll get into that). As Michelle Harrison, global CEO of Kantar Public,  said to me in the aftermath of  the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, “If you’re going to have a national conversation about whether women should even be allowed to take control of their own healthcare, then what do you expect?” 

She is, of course, absolutely right. Women are facing a trust crisis and an autonomy crisis, but too many of us are in denial. Perhaps that’s just because everything is too overwhelming.

We need to understand the reality. We need to shed light on how urgent and how terrifying this is, and we need to start doing so now. Leaning in and aspiring to have it all, never worked and won’t work now.

Who am I?

I’m Josie and I live in New York City. I was born and raised in Switzerland by Czech-British-Swiss parents. I started my career at Reuters in Berlin and Frankfurt before working as a corporate debt reporter for the International Financing Review, and then as a European markets correspondent for The Wall Street Journal in London. Between 2017 and 2019 I was business editor at The Independent.

I’ve been working as a freelancer since having my daughter, at which point I started writing much more about gender, power, and inequality in the workplace and beyond. Since then, my work has appeared in many publications including The Washington Post, Guardian, Fortune, Forbes, New Statesman, The Spectator, Huffington Post, and Quartz. I’ve been a commentator on many broadcast outlets and am a regular guest on the BBC. You can find more of my work here.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia Journalism School in the city of New York. I have a BA from the University of Bath in the U.K. and an MBA from Columbia Business School. I’m also an Associate Instructor within the Strategic Communications program at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies.

I’m represented by Dan Mandel at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates.

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