For Women Who Refuse to Be Underestimated, Underpaid and Undervalued

I still remember the moment I met Gloria Steinem in person. I could not reconcile it. How could someone with that smile, that warmth, be one of the most powerful forces for women this country has ever produced? I expected a fighter to look like a fighter. She looked like someone's favorite aunt, and she had already helped rewrite what an entire gender was allowed to want for itself. I had the privilege of celebrating her 85th birthday alongside a room full of extraordinary women in music, and I remember thinking, this is what quiet, relentless power actually looks like up close.

One of her lines I use constantly: the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. I think about that sentence more than almost any other, because I do not love being the person who keeps telling women the uncomfortable stuff. Take one example. Even one year out of graduate school, controlling for identical hours and identical productivity, men still earn at least 2.9 percent more than women right out of the gate. Before a single performance review. Before anyone has proven anything about anyone. That is one data point among many, pregnancy discrimination is still rising among younger working women too, but the pattern is the same everywhere you look.

Here is the truth, and yes, it might piss you off. Women are still underestimated, undervalued, and underpaid in the current workplace. And it does not stop at the workplace. Walk onto a car lot, and you are the majority buyer in the room, yet the industry still was not built with you in mind. Crash test dummies were modeled on the average male body for decades, and women are still significantly more likely to die in the exact same collision as a result. Try the negotiation move every business book tells you to use: name your price, refuse to leave until you get it, and you are not admired for your confidence the way a man would be. You are treated like a problem. That is not a workplace issue. That is a woman-tax, and it shows up everywhere, from the dealership to the doctor's office to a system that was engineered around a body that is not yours.

Gloria spent sixty years making sure we had the language for this. The least we can do is keep saying it out loud. This week's guest on Takin' Care of Lady Business, Tamara Warren, spent decades as an automotive journalist watching that blind spot up close before she built Le Car to do something about it.

With Love & Lady Business,
JJ 

In today’s edition:
1. The Auto Industry Has a $500 Billion Blind Spot with Tamara Warren
2. You Can’t Fix What You Won’t Name
3. TJD Power List
4. Lady Bits

1. The Auto Industry Has a $500 Billion Blind Spot with Tamara Warren

Tamara Warren spent decades test-driving thousands of cars and covering the automotive industry as a journalist for outlets including The New York Times, Car and Driver, Elle, Esquire, and The Verge. She served as a juror for the World Car of the Year awards. Across all of it, raised in Detroit and steeped in cars her entire career, she kept watching the same truth play out. Women make the overwhelming majority of car-buying decisions in this country, and the industry building, testing, marketing, and selling those cars still was not built with them in mind.

That gap is not just frustrating. From crash test standards modeled on male bodies to dealership experiences that treat confidence in a woman as a problem instead of a strength, it is costly, inefficient, and in some cases dangerous. So Tamara built Le Car, a company designed to hand women the actual information and leverage they need before they ever set foot on a lot, instead of another company asking them to trust a system that was never built to earn it.

This episode is for anyone who has ever walked into a negotiation and felt like the rules everyone else got to play by didn't apply to them.

In this episode you'll learn:
— Why women's purchasing power still is not reflected in how cars are designed, tested, or sold, and what that costs us
— Why crash test standards still miss critical safety gaps for women, and what that gap has actually cost lives
— Why the negotiation advice in books like Never Split the Difference was never built with women's safety in mind, and what to do instead
— How representation in leadership changes the actual products a company builds, long before a single ad ever runs
— Why Tamara turned down the standard business model every investor pushed her toward, and what she built instead to protect her customers' trust
— The worst business advice Tamara ever received, and why she ignored it

🎧 Listen here: Spotify | Apple | YouTube
Explore Le Car: lecar.co

2. You Can’t Fix What You Won’t Name

As a lawyer, I never win a case by arguing the version of reality I wish were true. I build it on the facts as they actually are, even when those facts are ugly. A case built on denial falls apart the second someone competent looks at it closely.

I think women are constantly asked to do the opposite in our own lives. We are told not to focus too much on the pay gap because it is discouraging. Not to talk too much about bias because it sounds negative. Not to name the ways systems were built without us because somehow acknowledging the problem means admitting defeat.

But pretending something is not happening does not make you more powerful. It just makes you less prepared. Here is where it gets complicated. Naming the problem correctly also means being willing to admit when the story we have been told about ourselves is wrong.

Take negotiation. Women have been told for years that we are worse negotiators. We do not ask. We lack confidence. We leave money on the table. Except new research is challenging that story. Women can achieve economic outcomes on par with men in negotiation and, in some settings, are invited back to negotiate more often.

That matters because there is an enormous difference between saying, “Women are bad at negotiating,” and saying, “Women are negotiating inside systems that may respond differently to them.” One tells women to fix themselves. The other tells us where the actual problem is.

Bad news is useful. A bad diagnosis is dangerous.

If the pay gap is real, name it. If a product was designed around a male body, name it. If a woman is being underestimated, name it. But do not take evidence of an unequal system and turn it into evidence that there is something wrong with you. That is how the wrong diagnosis becomes its own limitation.

So before you build your strategy around any story about women, including one you have heard a thousand times, ask three things:
1. What do I actually know to be true? Separate the fact from the interpretation. “Women are paid less” is a fact. “Women are worse at asking for money” is an explanation. Those are not the same thing.
2. Is the diagnosis still accurate? When better information comes along, update. Precision is not weakness. Being willing to change your mind when the facts change is power.
3. What does the correct diagnosis tell me to do next? Do not build your next move around a story that was never true. Build it around what the evidence actually tells you about where the leverage is.

That is the work. Name the right problem. Then solve that one.

REAL TALK
The truth may piss you off. But the wrong diagnosis can cost you years. Name the right problem before you try to fix it. Know a woman who has been blaming herself for a problem that was never actually hers? Send her this. Have a decision you're navigating and need a second set of eyes? Reach out to The Justice Dept.

3. TJD Power List: Stacy Moscatelli

She Knew Nostalgia Wasn't the Product. Belonging Was.

Stacy Moscatelli is the CEO of OGX Productions, where she has spent the last five years building large-scale immersive experiences in an industry still overwhelmingly run by men. Before that, she spent decades in brand and consumer marketing, which may explain why she understood something a lot of companies miss: people do not just pay to look at something they love. They pay to feel like they are part of it.

The Friends Experience is probably the clearest example. OGX recreated Monica’s apartment and the show’s most recognizable sets with what Stacy calls a “forensic” level of detail because, as she says, the fans know. The experience traveled around the world and sold out well beyond its original run.

That attention to detail is not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It is understanding your customer well enough to know what she will notice, what she will care about, and what will make her feel like you built something for her instead of merely selling something to her. That is a business lesson I will take every time.

Welcome to the TJD Power List, Stacy Moscatelli.

💋💋 Lady Bits

🕶️  World leaders, actresses, and a former Secretary of State all tried to find the right words this week for what Gloria Steinem meant to them. One of them landed harder than the rest.

🎤 A stand-up comedian built an entire career, and a small international incident, on one six-word observation about men.

🚬 In 1908, there was a law on the books in New York that applied to exactly one gender and exactly one bad habit. One woman decided to test it.

🗳️  When Congress told an entire state it could not join the Union unless women lost the right to vote, the state sent back a reply that ended the conversation almost instantly.

Hi, I’m JJ

Since starting the Justice Dept, we have increased women's wealth by over $100MM in just over 5 years. Want to know what inspires me to do this work, other than making women money? My clients' surprised reaction when we manage to get them much better terms for themselves and their companies, whether via talent agreements, employment, severance, partnerships, asset sales or investments. They often admit that they never thought they could get that result. Not even hoped. This blows my mind. As we know at The Justice Dept. you are all worth everything you ask for and more. Reach out and we’ll show you how!
x TJD