Let’s be real: “gender equality in the workplace” isn’t about getting an invite into a boys’ club and learning to keep our heads down. The truth is, most of us are still walking into workspaces that were never built for women—and sure as hell weren’t designed by us. If you want to know why everything still feels off, start there.
The NYT Blame Game: Who Ruined What?
Not long ago, The New York Times dropped a debate that set the internet on fire: “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” Helen Andrews argued that feminism “feminized institutions, pushing men away.” Leah Sargeant countered that liberal feminism forces women to adapt to male-centric workplaces without accommodation. Both had pieces of the puzzle, but here’s what they both missed: the workplace was never neutral ground. It was built by men, for men—and we’re all still living in that blueprint.
What “Gender Equality” Actually Looked Like in My Corporate Reality
Early in my career, I worked in the legal department of a major Fortune 500 company. We’re talking over a hundred attorneys—almost all white men—and maybe two or three women with some power. Walking into that office, you could feel the weight in the air. You could feel yourself shrinking.
The hierarchy wasn’t subtle. It was parent-child, full stop. Women—secretaries, paralegals, support staff—were managed like we couldn’t be trusted to make adult decisions. Attorneys could sit at their desks and talk to their wives all morning long. Meanwhile, the women? If you needed to call your kid’s school, you had to sneak it in when your boss wasn’t watching. Some secretaries literally couldn’t contact their families during work hours. These were women with small children at home, but somehow checking in on them was “unprofessional.”
And let’s talk about respect—or the lack of it. I had to address every attorney as “Mr. So-and-so” or “Sir,” but they called me by my first name. No title. No formality. Just a casual reminder of where I stood on the food chain. The secretaries were also expected to be personal assistants to the attorneys’ wives—making travel arrangements, running errands, or whatever the wife needed. That was the culture. Two completely different sets of rules depending on position and gender.
When DEI finally came knocking, it took years of mandatory classes just to get these men to treat their female colleagues like adults. Years to teach them that secretaries weren’t children who needed to be parented. That’s how deep the parent-child dynamic ran.
And you know what? Even with all those policies and training sessions, changing a rulebook is not the same as changing a culture. Real gender equality in the workplace isn’t just about pay gaps—it’s about who holds power in a meeting, whether you’re treated like a valued professional or an unruly kid, and yes, even the damn temperature. (Why are offices always set to arctic? Walk into any workspace and you’ll find women huddled over space heaters at their desks. That’s not an accident—that’s design.)
Who Actually Designed This Place? (Spoiler: Not Women)
Here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud: if women had designed the workplace, would we have picked a 40-hour week that pulls us away from our kids, our homes, and everything else we’re still expected to manage? Would we have built a system where “commitment” means sacrificing flexibility, where “professionalism” means freezing in silence, and where success looks like pretending half your life doesn’t exist?
Of course not.
But that’s exactly what happened, because the workplace wasn’t designed for productivity—it was designed as a space for men to escape. If you’ve ever watched Mad Men, you’ve seen it: three-hour boozy lunches, golf outings, and shooting the shit with the boys. Work? That got pushed down to the “peons”—mostly women who did the actual labor while the men took credit. The 40-hour workweek made perfect sense for them. They weren’t juggling childcare or housework or being on call for a second shift at home. They had wives handling all of that.
So yeah, of course it takes 40 hours if you’re spending three of them drunk at lunch and another two on the golf course. But for women? We inherited a structure built around someone else’s life entirely—and we’ve been breaking ourselves trying to make it fit ever since.
Gender Equality in the Workplace Is About Design, Not Blame
This brings us back to the NYT debate. Helen Andrews wants to paint “wokeness” or just women’s presence as institutional poison. Leah Sargeant rightly critiques how women are forced to conform to male standards just to survive. But here’s what both of them underestimate: women didn’t just have to “adapt”—we had to stop being women entirely.
We didn’t ask for a system that required us to leave our identities, our emotions, and our realities at the door. We didn’t design workplaces where being human was a liability. The system demanded we shrink, obey, and perform a version of ourselves that fit the mold. That’s not equality. That’s erasure.
And this isn’t ancient history. During the pandemic, I experienced what it was like to work on my own schedule—when my brain was sharpest, when my energy was highest. I crushed my metrics and still had time for my family. But when companies started demanding everyone return to the office, rigid schedules and all, it felt like progress slammed into a brick wall. The old rules came roaring back, and it became clear: the system hasn’t evolved nearly as much as we like to think.
The Bullsh*t Myth That Equality Means Acting Like a Man
Here’s where it gets personal. Not long ago, a friend of mine went after a promotion she’d earned. She did everything right—delivered results, built relationships, and asked her mentors for support. But when it came time for them to back her? Silence. They weren’t going to support her, and when she got emotional about it—because, you know, she’s human—they told her point blank: “See, that’s why you’re not a leader. You’re too emotional.”
Let that sink in. She was denied the promotion and then punished for having feelings about it. The message was crystal clear: if you want to lead, you’d better act like a man. Suppress your emotions. Don’t care too much. Don’t react. Just shut it all down and perform a version of leadership that has nothing to do with who you actually are.
That’s the double standard we’re still living with. Women are told to “lean in,” but the second we show up authentically—with passion, with emotion, with our full selves—we’re “too much.” We’re not “leadership material.” We’re the problem.
Stop Fixing Women—Start Fixing the System
Andrew mourns the loss of neutrality in the workplace—that the second women stepped in, we invited “wokeness,” and the #metoo movement shut down critical conversations. And you might agree if you take that at face value, but ask yourself, where were those “critical conversations” even happening? How do you shut down something that didn’t exist?
Reality? The workplace wasn’t neutral to begin with. The workplace was broken from the start because it was never built for us. Real gender equality in the workplace won’t happen by asking women to change, adapt, or perform better. It happens when we burn the old blueprint and build something new.
If you’re a leader, if you run a team, if you have any power to shift culture: Stop asking women to leave themselves at the door. Build flexibility into schedules so people can actually live their lives. Design offices for everyone’s comfort, not just the people who built them. End the parent-child management style for good. Value authenticity—yes, including emotion, motherhood, intuition, and all of it.
We’re done shrinking. We’re done performing. Gender equality in the workplace means every one of us gets to walk through the front door as our full selves and be valued for exactly that. Because if we’ve come this far fighting a system designed to keep us out, just imagine what’s possible when we finally get to write the rules ourselves.
The workplace wasn’t ruined by women. It just finally met people who refused to disappear.
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