Stefanie OConnell

“When Tiffany Tate put the wheels in motion to buy her first home, it felt like a win – until a date’s response stopped her cold. “If you buy that house, what’s a guy going to do for you?” he said. [...] “It was pretty jarring,” Tiffany said of that date. “Why would me buying a house be a deterrent for a guy? Wouldn’t that be a positive? He went from seeming really nice to kind of aggressive. Like, ‘Good luck finding somebody as good as me when you’re Miss Independent.’ While theories like the 6-6-6 rule have gained popularity in the manosphere – claiming that women are only interested in dating men who are 6ft tall with six-pack abs and six-figure incomes – in actuality, many women are facing the fallout of being financially independent.” So thrilled to share my first feature for @guardian_us which is FULL of many more fascinating interviews like this one. Read it at /lifeandstyle/2026/may/13/women-home-buyers-men-dating And what a dream to see this piece illustrated by @linesbyher 🎨

HELLO NEW YORK CITY 📣 Join us May 21st at 7pm @bnupperws to celebrate release of THE AMBITION PENALTY: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up — and Then Pushes Them Down (RSVP required, link in bio) For women who are tired of being told they want, ask for or are “too much” join us for an evening of seeing and supporting women’s ambition. Featuring ambition (horror) stories behind the successes of our special guests, a Q&A witH THE AMBITION PENALTY author Stefanie O’Connell, and a room full of women who don’t want to wait until the year 2325 to have their ambitions celebrated 🎉

You can’t out-hustle inequality when the rewards for the same behaviors change across identity. In fact, hustle culture can widen the gap between performance and rewards across identity even further as it uses the amount of hours worked as a proxy for commitment and productivity — a flawed assumption that, like most myths of meritocracy, privileges men. Sources: Gender and the Disparate Payoffs of Overwork, Dr. Christin Munsch Why Women Can’t Overwork Themselves Out Of Workplace Inequality, Michelle Travis, Forbes Preorder your copy of THE AMBITION PENALTY now wherever you get your books 📚

Stefanie O’Connell, author of The Ambition Penalty, had been reporting on personal finance for a decade when she started to notice how many myths about women’s ambition persisted. ⁠ ⁠ “What became very clear to me was how many inequities were explained away with claims like, well, it’s just that women aren’t competent enough, or they’re more risk-averse, or they’re less interested in advancing into positions of power in high-paying careers,” she says. However, those explanations did not fit the reporting she was doing – she found it was quite the opposite. ⁠ ⁠ It occurred to O’Connell that this might have been anecdotal, a product of the professional New York City bubble in which she lived. But then she started reporting more broadly, interviewing people from ‘all over the place’ and digging deeper into the research. ⁠ ⁠ At the link in bio, she shares some of the lies we’re still told today about ambition – and why it’s so important to stop these myths in their tracks. Tap to read.

The more we buy into the story that women—and especially mothers—are freely opting out of their professional ambitions, the less likely that our underpayment, underadvancement, and underempowerment will ever be treated as a true crisis. Thank you to @read_thepurse for having me on to chat THE AMBITION PENALTY and the recent obsession with reframing systematic gender inequality as a “feel-good personal growth story” Read the rest at thepurse.co

There’s a difference between trying to take away your workload and trying to take away your paycheck. Thanks @amandalitm for having me on to talk about my new book ‘THE AMBITION PENALTY: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up — and Then Pushes Them Down’ Get your copy at ambitionpenalty.com (or wherever you get your books 📚)

I loved @stefanieoconnell ’s new book and I really loved asking her a bunch of questions about her process, working thru the contradictions, the right’s full-court press to kick women out of the workforce, and what advice she’d give to a young ambitious woman today. Read the full Q&A at amandalitman.substack.com

Women’s ambition is not the problem. The problem is what we do to ambitious women. If you’re over being told otherwise, you’ll love my new book “THE AMBITION PENALTY: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up — and Then Pushes Them Down.” Grab a copy at ambitionpenalty.com

Women are often told that if they work harder, negotiate better, and become more confident, success will follow. But what happens when the system rewards the same behaviour differently depending on who is doing it? In this clip from The Wallet, Emilie Bellet speaks with Stefanie O’Connell @stefanieoconnell about the hidden dynamics behind ambition, inequality, and why progress for women can still be perceived as a “loss” by others. Because these conversations are rarely just about individual choices. They are about power, expectations, and systems. 📚Stefanie’s new book, The Ambition Penalty, is out now! Make sure you order a copy, it’s fab! 🎧 The Wallet is available now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube ✍️ Links in bio and vestpod.com #WomenAndMoney #TheWalletPodcast #GenderEquality #WomenAtWork #CareerGrowth FinancialIndependence Vestpod

“O’Connell noticed a self-fulfilling prophecy. “It’s not true that women aren’t confident,” she says. “But it is true that when people believe, for example, that women aren’t confident and that’s the reason theyre underpaid, they become less likely to promote women. “They also become less likely to support systemic changes - policy interventions that would actually address gaps in pay. So, for example, if people believe women are underpaid because they don’t negotiate, they become less likely to support pay transparency legislation and pay equity legislation.” O’Connell put her findings into her book The Ambition Penalty. Here, she shares some of the lies we’re still told today about ambition - and why it’s so important to stop these self-perpetuating myths in their tracks.” Thank you to @jessica_burrell and @stylistmagazine featuring my new book “The Ambition Penalty: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up — and Then Pushes Them Down”. Read the full story @stylistmagazine (link in stories)

@stefanieoconnell joins us to talk about her new book “The Ambition Penalty”! From our latest episode, Are Ambitious Women Being PUNISHED? - out everywhere now! #feminism #forwomen #decenteringmen #patriarchy #women feminism forwomen decenteringmen patriarchy women

“Be it a beer-filled office in Silicon Valley or a military base overseas, a lack of accountability and absence of oversight lead to workplace environments where gender-based harassment and abuse can flourish. Women get pushed out—then blamed for leaving. As one 2017 paper found: · Roughly 80% of women who experience sexual harassment in the workplace change jobs within two years (6.5 times more than women who do not experience harassment). · These women are also more likely to move industries or reduce work hours following instances of harassment.11 · They’re also more likely to withdraw from staying late or engaging in informal networking (like after-work drinks) to avoid further unwanted sexual interactions, a behavior researchers call “trajectory guarding”. · All of these shifts can inflict long-term damage on women’s career advancement and their economic security. By making workplace environments overwhelmingly hostile to women, by undermining their personal safety, and by depriving them of equal access to benefits like respect and recognition, a clear and purposeful message is reinforced: these roles are not “for them.”” - “THE AMBITION PENALTY: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up — and Then Pushes Them Down”