Journalist and Author Reveals How She Built a Brand Writing

Stefanie O'Connell (0:00)

As soon as women start to speak up, start to ask for more, start to assert their ambitions, they face a lot more backlash in the process of doing so. The problem was that they weren't speaking up and asking for more, and that's why they were underpaid. And now they are doing that, and they're still getting put down. In 2025, the gender pay gap in the United States grew for the second year in a row. When you have to work twice as hard, right, to be treated, to be given half as much, we pretend like burnout is just coming out of nowhere. No, it's coming out of this. So often the answer to burnout is like, oh, I'm just going to like personal care my way into feeling better. But you can't like bubble bath your way out of this, right?

Pat Miller (0:44)

Welcome to From Underdog to Entrepreneur Building Dreams podcast with Pat Miller, the podcast for entrepreneurs who were counted out and still built it anyway. Let's get into today's episode.

Today, I want to welcome Stefanie O'Connell. Stefanie is award-winning journalist and author of her new book, Listen to This, The Ambitious Penalty, How Corporate America Tells Women to Step Up and Then Pushes Them Down. Welcome to my show, Stef. I love that.

Stefanie O'Connell (1:17)

Thank you, Pat. I will say they forced me to put corporate in the title, but I did not want to put it in there because it applies in every industry.

Pat Miller (1:25)

I agree. But it does sound good. A little proper, right?

Stefanie O'Connell (1:30)

Yeah.

Pat Miller (1:30)

It pushes another button a little harder, right?

Stefanie O'Connell (1:33)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Pat Miller (1:34)

But I love it. What a great book.

Of course, we chatted before the show. I can totally relate to that, even though it's not corporate America, it's blue-collar America. But you can't argue that. You know, we chatted. It's happening. It is what it is. Everybody wants you to clap, stand up, and then sit down.

Stefanie O'Connell (1:57)

Talk to me. Exactly, right? I wound up interviewing women who were in a Silicon Valley office, and then I interviewed women who were on-site for the military, or they were on-site in trucking, or in construction, or a trade. I can't tell you how consistently their stories lined up, even in environments that were completely disparate.

Pat Miller (2:24)

Wow.

You just did somebody's job, I think. You did an experiment, right? You took a little bit of everybody, and you figured out that it's pretty consistent, which is interesting. I think that's our society as a whole then, right?

Stefanie O'Connell (2:44)

Yeah. I mean, I think it speaks to the idea that this isn't just, when women speak about their experiences in workplaces, there's often this idea that first that we're all past it, that the discrimination, harassment, that's all in the past, we don't have to worry about it anymore. Then when we experience it, we think of ourselves as the exception because we've been taught basically that whatever barrier we're facing, it's probably because we weren't ambitious enough or asking the right way, or working hard enough.

We hustle harder and we double down more and we speak up. Then we say, well, maybe I spoke up too much, maybe I have to be nicer, maybe I have to be more deferential. Really what I found as I was doing the reporting for this book is that it's a trap. Basically, what you have is a system of teaching women to blame themselves so that no matter what they do, they can be excluded and then not see the fact that their behavior wasn't the issue, but rather an issue with a fact that they can be excluded for being too much or too little of anything.

Pat Miller (3:51)

I agree with that.

Yeah. And then you have another, I'm gonna throw a monkey wrench in that. Then you have when you come across an issue and you can say something, you choose not to in my case, because you don't want to be labeled as that girl.

Stefanie O'Connell (4:09)

Yeah.

Pat Miller (4:09)

Right. So it's like, all right, do I say something and cause a ruckus on the site? Then I got to deal with it for the rest of the job. It's kind of like the lesser of two evils, right? What do I choose? I still have to come back and work here for another eight months.

It's going to be pretty uncomfortable.

Stefanie O'Connell (4:28)

Exactly. There was a woman I profiled in the book who was working on a ship. She was a naval officer and she was assaulted by a superior.