From Jenny Offill’s Department of Speculation, Three things that no one has ever said about me: You make it look so easy. You are very mysterious. You need to take yourself more seriously. In 2003, when I was at Duke, the school released a study about the experience of women at all levels of the […]

My mother-in-law once told me, “No is a complete sentence.” At the time, I mentally filed this pronouncement with other Al-Anon maxims like One Day at a Time, Easy Does It, and I Cannot Give What I Do Not Have. Hard to argue with the helpful vibe, but not clear how to change my behavior […]

I keep a journal. It’s a physical one, usually just a spiral notebook, that I scribble in with a pen. Most of the entries are snippets from books. The journal is where I collect ideas or turns of phrase that I want to revisit. I also sporadically use it to record details from my nighttime […]

Here is one of my favorite memories of one of my favorite people. And, yes, it involves Halloween. I went to college at Harvard. Freshman year, a girl who lived across the hall from me woke up on Halloween, got dressed up as a scarecrow like it was the most natural thing in the world, […]

I saw a poem in a New York Times opinion piece. It was typeset as prose, in-line. But it is most definitely a poem, so I took some liberties with the design to present it to you here: Every day, women across the country consider the risks. That is our day job and our night […]

Yesterday a dear friend told me that I am scary. Or maybe I should say she reminded me of that. She offered that reminder when I was venting about a campus committee meeting. In the esteemed group of faculty and administrators at the meeting, I found myself to be the only person who could make […]

An article in a recent issue of the American Economic Review has a big title: Gender Differences in Accepting and Receiving Requests for Tasks with Low Promotability. In our research we find that, relative to men, women are more likely to volunteer, more likely to be asked to volunteer, and more likely to accept direct […]