Rethink is about women who broke into men dominated careers. Andi Simon is a Ph.D. in Anthropology and uses it in this book to observe how the women used everyday skills to become successful. The skills that stuck with me are recognizing opportunity and not feel so humble to not tell of your accomplishments. I didn't know that the fashion industry was so dominated by men before the 1970s. Maybe because I always see more women than men designer in today's fashion world.
Overall, this book was informative in many ways. Much of it was not new information to me. This would be a great book for people who are just learning about the discrimination against women in the workforce. Also for people looking for encouragement to be a female glass breaker or to support women to do so.

Thank you to NetGalley & Greenleaf Audiobooks for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

That women are equal to men is something that still in 2021 causes perplexity to a lot of men. And if we take into consideration the Business field, then that perplexity reaches incredible and shameful levels…

PhD Andi Simon is a corporate anthropologist who has written “Rethink” to debunk some of the myths about women in the working sphere.

The book is divided in 11 chapters, each one centred in a specific myth about working women. The author presents the woman she has chosen as an example of how that particular myth can be tackled and she reaches a sort of conclusion at the end of the chapter.

THE ROLE MODELS

Until here everything is ok. However (and this is the big “BUT” of the book) I failed to connect to any of the stories I heard. So forget about feeling inspired by them!

Most women portrayed in the book (except one, I think) started their career during the 70s or 80s. I think the biggest cause for my disconnection comes from this fact. The business field has changed so much only in the last 10 years (let alone 30 years), that the paths followed by these women and their professional possibilities are simply not working nowadays.

The technologies were quite limited then. The work environments and the companies strategies were totally different to what they are now.

Furthermore, I may recall that only one of them is said to have a humble background. The rest come from upper class families and have access to advantages or possibilities that simply not everyone (including me) has at hand.

In addition, it felt overall as if for every woman role model, the author was just writing a list of these women’s accomplishments: “And she did this, and then this, and then this, etc…”. There was not a complete (nor partial) explanation on how they achieved their success…

FINAL THOUGHTS ABOUT “RETHINK”

It has been MY mistake to have listened to this book. I felt intrigued by the title and the story plot that I read in the description.

I did not realize that all the women included in the book as role models would be all a lot older than me and all of them Americans. These two facts made me feel very unconnected to them and they did not motivate me at all. Of course they deserve to be known and their stories heard but the purpose of the book, in my case, has not been reached.

What is interesting, is when the author talks about statistics related to women in the working field. They are horrendous. Of course I knew that the disparity between men and women at work is huge, but to listen to this in every possible professional field and aspect made me feel furious at times.

Furthermore, the chapter about Black women workers made me reach levels of angriness about their unjust situation that I didn’t know I could reach…

So, would I recommend this book? Perhaps if you are an anthropologist like the author you can find it useful. If you don’t live in the States and have a certain age, I would probably skip it.

One last point: I have to recognize the tremendous effort of the author to collect every single possible statistics about women’ careers. I cannot more than applaud this.

In addition, it has also served me to learn what a corporate anthropologist is. I have never heard of this career and I found it quite interesting. I am happy to have learnt about it and what these professionals do in companies.

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Thanks to the publisher, Greenleaf Audiobooks, the author PhD Andi Simon and NetGalley for providing me with a free audiobook of “Rethink” in exchange for an honest review.

Enclosed in this book are inspirational stories of women who smash myths around women in the workplace. The author approaches from an anthropological viewpoint and I think that is a new take on the subject. The narrator has a positive and professional demeanor.

Thanks Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. It is set to be published in February 2021.

"Rethink: Smashing the Myths of Women in Business" by Andi Simon is an inspiring, very well researched book about the myths that underlie our sexist society.
I admit I'm not usually a big fan of non-fiction literature, but this book is so well written that it reads almost as swiftly as a novel.
The women who are portrayed in these pages come from diverse backgrounds and each and every one of them overcomes all the obstacles that gender-based discrimination has put in her way and ends up succeeding in her field.
Every woman who reads this book will be able to relate to one or more of the protagonists and to the issue they all encounter along the way.
I can definitely recommend reading this to any woman who wants to develop professionally and also to every man who wants to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Whenever I search for books about women's issues (feminism, the presence of women in different fields, etc...), I look for something I have not read before. That is why Rethink, by Andi Simon, caught my attention so easily. And I was not wrong in thinking this book was different from other's I had read.
The topic of women trying to succeed in traditionally male spaces is one I am passionate about since I can relate to it. The stories we have in this book are not necessarily ones I can relate to myself, but I can see many readers enjoying reading about all these incredible women whether they relate to them or not. I loved the variety in the examples shown. Often times, we kind of get the same story over and over again. However, in this book, each story had its own personality, same as the women mentioned.
I appreciate how at the end of the book, the author gives us a list of questions to really try to understand why we liked or disliked this book, which part of it spoke to us the most, etc... I think it is a brilliant way to sort of communicate with the reader.
As someone who is often asked about this type of book, I can already think of a group of people I would recommend it to.

Sadly, I had some tech issues with the app and I could not listen to the audiobook. Therefore I cannot rate the narrator's performance.

The content of the book itself is nice. Women who beat the odds stacked against them, leaves the reader inspired.
I feel that the there was a lot of repetition when bridging the sections together, it made it hard to end the chapter sometimes and I found myself skipping the last minute of the audio book because I felt like I heard the same thing over again.

Dr Andi Simon is an anthropologist who explores in this book, the relationship and the myths that exist between women and business, no matter the industry. Breaking down 11 different myths from women can't be good leaders, to women can't be geoscientists and highlighting the women who were trailblazing and setting these myths on fire. This book is set to inspire younger generations to not accept the inequality between women and men within business and de-establish these myths that hold women back.

The reason this book hasn't received higher praise from myself is probably due to an inability to relate to it's content. Many of the women in these books established their careers in the 1980s and the early 1990s. As a child of the late 90s, I find it hard to relate to these women who worked in a time of more limited technology, in different vocational careers and had completely different paths to the one I have before me as a recent university graduate. I don't doubt for a second these are important stories to share, but I also feel like this book could have benefitted from having a couple of younger voices throughout it's 11 or so chapters. I will read more from this author in the future but as of now, I didn't love this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Greenleaf Audiobooks / Fast Company Press for the ALC of this audiobook.

I requested this book because it was one of the first that popped up when I needed to test an app, but I ended up really enjoying it. Women are constantly challenged on what they can and can’t do, even in our modern times, and this book examines women who have pushed back and done their own thing to great success.

Corporate anthropologist, Andi methodically debunks many myths with real stories from eleven women who have succeeded in blazing trails and breaking down walls, and through these stories and her research, she inspires women to continue achieving our dreams.

This moved pretty quickly, and I enjoyed learning about the women who didn’t let preconceived notions stop them in their pursuits. I have pretty simple dreams, but there are still obstacles to achieving them, so hearing about women who have done it was inspiring to me, and I now have some concrete steps and plans to achieving what I want. A little encouragement never hurt anyone.

This book is out next month, so keep an eye out for it.

Used for NETGALLEY TESTING purposes on AUDIO playback only. EXCELLENT audio. No dragging or problems with live streaming on iPhone device.

Very inspirational! This really gave me insight on things that I myself do that could be redirecting me from success in other's minds. I really loved the stories of these strong and successful women who took their lives into their own hands and made their own path to success!