Book review of The Girls Are Not Fine: The Cost of Ambition, Careers and Becoming

In Career and Family, Claudia Goldin’s research showed that even in the 21st century, educated women on career paths often found themselves ‘sideswiped’ on earnings and promotions compared to men. This was a “problem with no name,” or a “problem that goes by many names — sex discrimination, gender bias, glass ceiling, mommy track, leaning out — take your pick.” 

Harnidh Kaur’s chatty book, The Girls Are Not Fine, attempts to find the language for just such situations when women are shortchanged. She exposes the frustration women often feel, at home and in the workplace, the inequity they face, the multiple roles they have to play and the criticism and scrutiny they are up against. With real life stories, and some data, Kaur goes to the heart of the matter when she writes that most women say ‘I’m fine’ when they are often just pretending to be.

Kaur observes, and this is another relatable fact, that the gap between what women are living and what they are performing can gradually become unbearable. “The pressure to perform ‘fine-ness’ doesn’t appear out of nowhere, it’s baked into how girls are raised, how women are evaluated and how we’re allowed to show up in public. We are taught, before we have language to question it, that our comfort matters less than everyone else’s perception of harmony.”

Why should only women have to be considerate, nurturing and attentive to other people’s needs? Shouldn’t women be prodded to be more competitive, call out bias and negotiate better both at home and at the workplace? Kaur says it’s time to ditch the “log kya kahenge (what will people say?)” mentality and work towards a cultural operating system which doesn’t police women’s behaviour with a force stronger than law.

In her introduction, Kaur candidly admits that her book doesn’t have all the answers; and that she writes from a position of privilege: upper caste, upper middle class, English-educated and well-networked. But even from that position, she observes structural patterns that are stacked against women: workplaces designed by men, families that expect women’s ambition to be negotiated rather than assumed, training girls to be invisible from childhood and other challenges.

In four parts, Kaur goes through the gamut of family and work experiences women undergo. She begins with the ‘unravelling’ and then explains how women have arrived at such a juncture and how more often than not they are forced to lag behind at work, struggle in relationships and even financially.

What’s the solution? For Kaur, the point she wants to make is that the girls are not fine and that they are done pretending. Girls are not fine but they should not take this as a personal failure; the goal, says Kaur, is to stop “performing fineness for rooms and people that don’t deserve it.”

Kaur’s writing is accessible, though sometimes it can seem to be straight out of Instagram posts. But the issues she highlights, about women’s insecurities, their bodies always being under the scanner, and the stereotypical assumptions, are sharp and on point.

She astutely observes that women are often told they are “too emotional to handle money.” Kaur urges women to prepare to be a breadwinner, so that financial responsibility leads to financial independence and they are able to make calls about spending, saving and investing. But this mindset shift won’t be easy, she cautions, and leads an honest conversation around it.

Kaur begins the conversation against women making themselves invisible. It’s a radical book, only because women have been forced to shrink themselves in a room for too long. Does Kaur answer all the questions around gender and women’s rights? Of course not. This is a wonderful beginning, however, to carry on the conversation. As Goldin observes in her book, despite the giant strides taken on gender equality, a lot remains to be done.

“Women have been swimming upstream, holding their own but going against a strong current of endemic income inequality — and other inequalities,” she writes. Till entrenched gender norms that reinforce care and home responsibilities only to mothers, wives and daughters are shed, there needs to be more conversations around gender equality and couple equity. This is just one example; other stereotypes women have to face through their life need to be tackled head-on as well.

Sudipta Datta is a books critic based in Kolkata

The Girls Are Not Fine: The Cost of Ambition, Careers and Becoming

Harnidh Kaur

Penguin Random House

Pp 408, Rs 499