Did Women Ruin the Workplace? My take on the NYTimes Article

Every few months the internet gets its little cultural crisis moment — and last week’s came in the form of a New York Times headline asking, “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?”

 It’s giving misdirected, outdated, and absolutely not backed by the receipts.

Let’s talk about it.

A (Fashionably Brief) History Lesson

Let’s sprinkle in some data and a little glamour.

Long before the modern corporate world existed, women worked in textiles, commerce, agriculture, mathematics, and yes, even programming.

Some of the earliest pioneers of computer science were women: Margaret Hamilton literally wrote the code that sent humans to the moon. Katherine Johnson’s calculations saved missions and lives. Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson led entire teams through the rise of NASA’s digital age.

They didn’t “ruin” anything. They built it.

And yet in 2025, we’re still playing rhetorical games about whether their presence destabilized the office aesthetic ?

Please.

What Actually “Ruined” the Workplace

Spoiler: not women.

Here’s what research consistently shows contributes to a dysfunctional workplace:

• Burnout culture

• Rigid, one-size-fits-all policies

• Leadership lacking diversity

• Systems built around 1950s gender roles

• Overwork disguised as ambition

• Lack of psychological safety

• 
  

Women didn’t bring these problems in. They simply pointed out that they exist.

And for some people, that disruption feels like “ruin.”

For the rest of us, it looks like… evolution.

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