The No Club

Putting a Stop to Women's Dead-End Work

By: Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, Laurie Weingart

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

In this “long overdue manifesto on gender equality in the workplace,” (Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit), The No Club offers a timely call and an action plan to unburden women from work that goes unrewarded.

The No Club started when four women, crushed by endless to-do lists, banded together to get their work lives under control. Working harder than ever, they still trailed behind their male colleagues. And so, they vowed to say no to requests that pulled them away from the work that mattered most to their careers. Their over-a-decade-long journey and subsequent, groundbreaking research reveals that women everywhere are unfairly burdened with “non-promotable work,” a tremendous problem we can—and must—solve.

All organizations have work that no one wants to do: planning the office party, screening interns, attending to that time-consuming client, or simply helping others with their work. A woman, most often, takes on these tasks. In study after study, the original “No Club”—professors Linda Babcock (bestselling author of Women Don’t Ask), Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart—document that women are disproportionately asked and expected to do this work. The imbalance leaves women overcommitted and underutilized as companies forfeit revenue, productivity, and top talent.

The No Club walks through how any woman can rebalance her workload, empowering individuals to make savvy decisions about the work they take on. The authors also illuminate how organizations can reassess how they assign and reward work to level the playing field. With hard data, personal anecdotes from women of all stripes, self- and workplace-assessments for immediate use, and innovative advice from the authors’ consulting with Fortune 500 companies, this book will forever change the conversation about how we advance women’s careers and achieve equity in the 21st century.

Great book a must read for anyone in the workforce.

I loved it. I think everyone in the workforce should read it, but especially anyone in corporate type jobs!

Mostly good - need time to implement

This is probably one of those books you need to read a few times. The first time just to get an understanding of what you can do to stop dead-end work - then another time to actually implement it. I think this would be most useful at the organization level - so it’d prob be useful as a company book club book so you can change your org together.

A must read for every woman

This book not only documents common problems faced by many women in their daily work, but offers solutions at the individual and organization level. I plan to form a No Club at my organization soon. I am also going to write a list of all non promotable tasks I am doing and decide what to do about each. I highly recommend this book.

Important and practical tips for anyone who’s an advocate for women’s advancement

This book was very eye opening in helping me identify the work tasks that I was doing that aren’t helping me reach my goal. It’s so valuable I can see myself referencing it many times in the future

Fantastic perspective!

I read an article recently that referenced this book, and it sounded interesting. The material was extremely engaging and offered me helpful perspective on an ignored issue. I highly recommend everyone read this.