Women Money Power: Unearthing the Century-Long Fight for Economic Freedom by Josie Cox
Why, after landmark legislation like the Equal Pay Act and Title IX, does gender inequity still feel rampant? Josie Cox’s Women Money Power is an insightful, impassioned examination of the century-long fight for women’s financial control and personal autonomy. It exposes how deeply entrenched social and political infrastructures inhibit legal progress, making this historical tour essential reading for anyone seeking to understand and dismantle modern barriers to full gender equity.
Who May Benefit
- Leaders seeking to challenge systemic gender inequality.
- Professionals navigating workplace stereotypes and pay gaps.
- Readers interested in the history of U.S. women’s economic and personal lives.
- Activists and policymakers focused on achieving true equity.
Top 3 Key Insights
- Legal victories often stall because deeply rooted social norms and ideals continue to inhibit the law’s power, keeping inequity rampant.
- Economic empowerment is intrinsically linked to bodily autonomy, demonstrated by the fight for reliable, safe birth control.
- Progress requires collective accountability and explicit policy changes, moving beyond vague promises of cultural shifts or individual “leaning in”.
4 More Takeaways
- The burden of unpaid household labor (the “second shift”) remains a critical constraint on women’s career investment and market activities.
- Affluent, white experiences often dominate the feminist narrative, obscuring the compounded challenges faced by marginalized women (e.g., “Jane Crow”).
- Women who exhibit powerful leadership styles frequently face a career “Catch-22” and are pushed onto precarious “glass cliff” roles.
- The value assigned to women’s money and time is a crude, but accurate, gauge of the respect society affords them.
Book in 1 Sentence
This book offers a captivating journey through the historical struggles of women who fought for economic independence, power, and equal rights.
Book in 1 Minute
Women Money Power provides a fascinating and damning account of the century-long struggle for economic and social equality. Through compelling narratives, Cox chronicles how trailblazers fought oppressive legal systems, like coverture, and secured critical rights, such as access to the birth control pill. The book’s core insight is that political progress is constantly undermined by entrenched cultural bias and the tacit acceptance that “some women just don’t want to” succeed. It urges readers to recognize the intangible barriers—from unpaid labor to persistent stereotyping—that prevent women from gaining the financial power and autonomy they deserve today.
1 Unique Aspect
The narrative is structured as a compelling “travelog through the rise and fall” of gender equality, revealing the enduring truth that women’s professional and personal successes are perpetually framed as “privileges” rather than basic, non-negotiable rights.
Chapter-Wise Summary
PROLOGUE: Some Women Just Don’t Want To
“The long-established infrastructures, parameters, norms, and ideals that we live by inhibit the power of the law to an extent that few of us can even appreciate, because it’s what we’ve always known.”
The author opens with a jarring exchange: a Fortune 500 CEO, confronted about his company’s stagnant gender pay gap, deflects responsibility by asserting that “Some women just don’t want to” succeed. This stunning ignorance, authentic or not, crystallizes the book’s central premise: landmark legislation like the Equal Pay Act (1963) and Title IX (1972) is rendered ineffective by pervasive, unspoken social norms and ideals. Driven by this realization, Cox embarks on a chronological journey back in time, seeking to understand who effected meaningful change, how they overcame setbacks, and why progress appeared abundant decades ago yet has stalled so dramatically by 2024.
Chapter Key Points
- CEO blames women’s “choice”.
- Norms inhibit law’s power.
- Book chronicles fight for empowerment.
CHAPTER 1: Was Rosie the Riveter Robbed?
“That little girl will do more than a male will do.”
This chapter explores the foundational economic shift of World War II through the lens of figures like Anna Mae Krier, one of the real “Rosie the Riveters”. During the war, women entered the paid labor market in huge numbers, filling crucial roles at factories like Boeing. They proved women’s competence extended far beyond domestic tasks, excelling at jobs like riveting. Yet, this triumph of female empowerment was short-lived; it was treated as a “short-lived exception to prevailing norms”. As veterans returned, women were abruptly pushed out, with many replacing “Rosie the Riveter” with “Rosie the Housewife”. Despite being undermined, their efforts planted a crucial “seed” in society: the notion that women deserved a role in society beyond homemaking.
Chapter Key Points
- “Rosies” proved female capacity.
- Wartime employment was temporary.
- Stereotypes were chipped away.
CHAPTER 2: Wonderful Things in Small Packets
“So here’s to my tiny daily dose of freedom, and also estrogen and progesterone. A combination of the three, really.”
The fight for personal and economic freedom hinged profoundly on reproductive control. This narrative focuses on Katharine Dexter McCormick, an MIT graduate who used her vast inheritance to revolutionize women’s bodies and careers. Motivated by her tragic marriage and her fierce belief that contraception was the key to emancipation, McCormick forged an alliance with birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. After inheriting nearly $40 million (about $570 million today), she became the primary financial benefactor, contributing roughly $2 million, to Gregory Pincus’s research into an oral contraceptive. Despite significant moral and religious opposition, the FDA approved Enovid in 1960. This “magic pill” offered women the unprecedented ability to plan motherhood, leading to a demonstrable increase in career earnings.
Chapter Key Points
- McCormick funded the Pill.
- Pill linked to career earnings.
- Reproductive choice equals freedom.
CHAPTER 3: Giving the Problem a Name
“By noon I’m ready for a padded cell.”
Betty Friedan, a journalist and educated mother, felt stifled by the domestic ideal of the 1950s. Inspired by a survey of her Smith College classmates, she challenged the prevailing cultural assumption that women found total fulfillment solely as wives and mothers. Friedan famously articulated the resulting loneliness, anxiety, and unfulfilled potential as “the problem that has no name,” exposing the falsity of the “happy American housewife” myth propagated by mass media. Her subsequent book, The Feminine Mystique (1963), became a cri de coeur that launched second-wave feminism. Simultaneously, legal battles progressed: the Equal Pay Act passed in 1963, and Pauli Murray introduced the term “Jane Crow,” arguing that the women’s movement must recognize and legally challenge the compounded discrimination faced by Black women.
Chapter Key Points
- Friedan named the “feminine mystique”.
- Mystique launched second-wave feminism.
- Pauli Murray pioneered intersectional law.
CHAPTER 4: Progress in Failure
“We, the women of America, tell you that America is not a democracy.”
The quest for permanent, fundamental constitutional equality hinged on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), first drafted by suffragist Alice Paul. Despite successes in smaller legal battles, such as forbidding unequal pay for equal work in 1970, the ERA struggled for decades. Its defeat in 1982 was a massive blow, showcasing the resilience of traditional values. Antifeminist attorney Phyllis Schlafly successfully campaigned against the ERA, warning it would abolish all legal distinctions between the sexes and hasten the “dissolution of the family”. The ERA’s failure was both symbolic—undermining the belief that America was a democracy for women—and practical, necessitating long, costly legal struggles merely to confirm rights that should have been guaranteed.
Chapter Key Points
- Alice Paul originated the ERA.
- ERA failed due to conservative opposition.
- Failure highlighted persistent inequity.
CHAPTER 5: Winds of Legal Change
“[Women] may be cops, judges, military officers, telephone linemen, cab drivers, pipefitters, editors, business executives.”
The 1970s marked a flurry of legal activity aimed at dismantling institutional sexism. Ruth Bader Ginsburg played a pivotal role, eloquently arguing that gender, like race, had been used as an unjustified basis for discrimination. Landmark victories followed, including Frontiero v. Richardson (1973), which addressed the military’s unequal spousal benefits, and the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) in 1974, which finally made it illegal for creditors to deny women financial access based solely on sex. Furthermore, the legalization of abortion through Roe v. Wade (1973) led to measurable economic benefits, increasing female workforce participation and earnings. However, the ERA’s defeat underscored that fundamental equality still lacked explicit constitutional protection.
Chapter Key Points
- Ginsburg dismantled sex discrimination.
- ECOA made credit denial illegal.
- Abortion access boosted earnings.
CHAPTER 6: 1,365 Men and Me
“When I’m right, no one remembers. When I’m wrong, no one forgets.”
Muriel Siebert, a “Wall Street Maverick,” exemplifies the relentless ambition required to break into male-dominated finance. After facing pay disparity, she applied for jobs using only her initials (“M. F. Siebert”) to avoid gender bias. In 1967, she applied to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, where she was the only woman among 1,365 men. Siebert was subjected to unique scrutiny, including being forced to secure a bank loan typically not required of men. Upon acceptance, she provocatively offered to bring a portable toilet because there was no women’s bathroom. Her visibility inspired action, including the establishment of the First Women’s Bank. Siebert later noted the profound deficit in financial education for women, arguing that basic concepts of money management were ignored in favor of prerequisites like dissecting a frog.
Chapter Key Points
- Muriel Siebert broke NYSE barrier.
- Faced institutional discrimination.
- Financial literacy neglected for women.
CHAPTER 7: Old Dreams, New Realities
“The task of juggling home and job responsibilities is not always stressful.”
Following mid-century gains, women faced immense pressure from media figures like Helen Gurley Brown, whose book Having It All (1982) promulgated the toxic myth that ambitious women could effortlessly balance careers, sex, money, and motherhood. In reality, women absorbed an unequal workload known as the “second shift,” performing significantly more unpaid household labor and childcare than their partners. This constraint limits career progression and makes women’s time “infinite and unprotected”. Economically, single women faced “singlism”—a pernicious attitude of prejudice and discrimination because their identity lacked a “sexual connection to a man”. Furthermore, no-fault divorce, while offering freedom, often led to dramatic income falls for divorced mothers, demonstrating how marital privileges still pervaded the financial system.
Chapter Key Points
- Gurley Brown promoted “having it all” myth.
- Working mothers faced severe “second shift”.
- Single women and divorcees penalized.
CHAPTER 8: A Bimbo or a Bitch
“An employer who objects to aggressiveness in women but whose positions require this trait places women in an intolerable and impermissible Catch-22: out of a job if they behave aggressively and out of a job if they don’t.”
The 1990s saw progress stall, complicated by persistent gender stereotyping. Women were caught in a “Catch-22” at work: displaying necessary professional aggression led to being branded “macho” or “universally disliked,” as seen in Ann Hopkins’s landmark 1989 Supreme Court victory against Price Waterhouse. The ruling, which recognized sex stereotyping as discrimination, cracked the “glass ceiling”. However, cultural scrutiny intensified, creating the “glass cliff” phenomenon, where women were disproportionately promoted to precarious leadership roles during crises, setting them up for failure. High-profile female failures—like Carly Fiorina at HP—were immediately used to generalize women’s supposed deficiencies. Simultaneously, media mockery of figures like Monica Lewinsky amplified narratives that objectified and diminished women in public life.
Chapter Key Points
- Women leaders face “Catch-22” scrutiny.
- “Glass cliff” appoints women to crisis roles.
- Sex stereotyping recognized as discrimination.
CHAPTER 9: Promises and Loopholes
“Comparative pay information, moreover, is often hidden from the employee’s view.”
Lilly Ledbetter’s struggle exposes the hidden nature of pay discrimination. After discovering an anonymous note detailing that she was paid less than her male peers at Goodyear, she filed a lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court. She lost because the majority ruled her complaint was filed too late under the statutory limit. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s powerful dissent argued that pay disparity often grows in “small increments” and is intentionally obscured from employees’ view. Although Ledbetter did not win her case, her relentless advocacy resulted in the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act of 2009, which reset the time frame for filing pay discrimination complaints. However, pay secrecy persists through “informal discouragement,” and attempts to mandate greater pay transparency continue to fail federally due to political opposition.
Chapter Key Points
- Ledbetter fought pay secrecy.
- Supreme Court ruled against Ledbetter.
- Lilly Ledbetter Act extended filing window.
CHAPTER 10: Cassandra and the Crash
“If it had been Lehman Sisters rather than Lehman Brothers, the world might well look a lot different today.”
Brooksley Born, former Chair of the CFTC, serves as a painful example of the economic consequences of ignoring female expertise. Born relentlessly warned influential men like Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin about the massive, unregulated over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market, correctly predicting it posed an “immediate and pressing need” for regulation. However, Born was outside their established “club” of white male economists. Her warnings were dismissed, contributing to the disastrous lack of oversight that led to the 2008 financial crisis. The experience highlights how “groupthink” and inherent sexism lead powerful groups to disregard information that challenges their existing ideology, causing devastating financial damage that disproportionately impacted female-headed households.
Chapter Key Points
- Born warned against derivatives risk.
- Male leaders dismissed her “Cassandra” warnings.
- Lack of diversity causes economic failure.
CHAPTER 11: The Cost of Silence
“Promises without policies are bullshit.”
Following the 2008 crisis, cheap money fueled corporate growth, particularly in Silicon Valley, which replaced Wall Street as a nexus of power. This environment enabled widespread misconduct, often shielded by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), which morphed into “contracts of silence” protecting perpetrators of abuse and discrimination. Ifeoma Ozoma, a former Pinterest policy manager, famously broke her NDA after experiencing pay discrimination, leading to California’s Silenced No More Act. While this legal victory was progress, Ozoma notes that business leaders use the term “culture” as a screen to avoid codifying real policy changes and dismantling “networks of complicity” that enable abuse. Furthermore, the gender equity gap, involving lucrative stock ownership, reveals a deeper, less visible form of economic exclusion.
Chapter Key Points
- NDAs enable corporate abuse.
- Ozoma fought pay discrimination.
- Culture change requires policy.
CHAPTER 12: The American Fever Dream
“When an hour in the pediatrician’s office is as valuable as an hour in the boardroom, that’s when things truly change and no sooner than that.”
Despite gains in representation, true meritocracy remains an “elaborate myth”. Women’s careers are constantly inhibited by subtle biases and microaggressions; computer simulations show women must achieve nearly twice as many successes as men to reach the executive level. Crucially, the structural barrier of unpaid labor persists: America’s childcare crisis is rooted in the historical notion that care is a personal, maternal responsibility, not a governmental concern. This forces working mothers into the debilitating “second shift”. Economist Eve Rodsky argues that until women’s time is viewed as “diamonds”—finite and protected—they will lack time-choice, freedom, and power.
Chapter Key Points
- Microaggressions inhibit careers.
- Childcare crisis is structural barrier.
- Unpaid labor undervalued.
CHAPTER 13: Hope, or Something Like It
“It’s perhaps hard to speak of outright hope amid everything that’s going on, but I definitely think there are reasons to be optimistic.”
Hope stems from collective action, exemplified by Ashley All’s successful bipartisan campaign to block an antiabortion amendment in deep-red Kansas, emphasizing common values like medical privacy. Although polls show waning trust in female leaders and the “authority gap” remains deeply entrenched, awareness is rising. Recent legal shifts, like the PUMP Act, address previously ignored physical realities of being a working woman. Furthermore, major settlements—like the $215 million paid by Goldman Sachs for gender bias—hold powerful institutions accountable, however inadequately. The ultimate challenge is shifting from framing inequality as an “us versus them” battle toward demonstrating how equality, driven by personal responsibility and scrutiny of our own biases, benefits all genders collectively.
Chapter Key Points
- Kansas vote showed renewed activism.
- “Authority gap” remains entrenched.
- Collective action ensures progress.
10 Notable Quotes
- “The long-established infrastructures, parameters, norms, and ideals that we live by inhibit the power of the law to an extent that few of us can even appreciate, because it’s what we’ve always known.”
- “The gender pay gap has many causes, Josie… Some women just don’t want to.”
- “I ask no favors for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is, that they take their feet off our necks.”
- “By noon I’m ready for a padded cell.”
- “If it had not been for the persistence and extraordinary beneficence of Katharine McCormick, the birth control pill might never have been born.”
- “We are beyond the day when an employer could evaluate employees by assuming that a woman should only be feminine.”
- “Comparative pay information, moreover, is often hidden from the employee’s view.”
- “Promises without policies are bullshit when they’re coming from organizations.”
- “Money and, by extension, power, remain stubbornly gendered.”
- “The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself…”
About the Author
Josie Cox is a passionate journalist and insightful author who dedicated years to reporting on gender in the workplace. Her book, Women Money Power, stems from a desire to understand why progress toward gender equality has stalled so dramatically since promising legislative wins fifty and sixty years ago. Cox’s masterful storytelling weaves personal narratives of countless trailblazers—many of whom are unsung heroes—with political and legal history to create a compelling picture of persistent gender inequalities. She brings her own vantage point as an educated, financially stable white woman living in a dual-income household to bear on the discussion of privilege and systemic barriers. Cox’s work is recognized for providing a superb framework from which to understand the plight of women today, urging readers to scrutinize mistakes made in the past to ensure they are not repeated.
How to Use This Book
Use this book as a practical framework to understand the historical context of gender inequality. Apply its lessons to recognize and challenge subtle biases, dismantling institutional barriers in your own life and workplace.
Conclusion
The fight chronicled in Women Money Power is not just about equal laws, but about confronting the deep-seated, invisible norms that define women’s worth. To honor the sacrifices of trailblazers, we must transition women’s economic independence from a perceived privilege into an unassailable right. Seize your collective responsibility to call out biases, seek common ground, and actively ensure that the hard-won victories of the past translate into true equity for all future generations..