The Power Code

Power is not working—for women, for men, or for the world. We don’t need to remake women. We need to remake power.

New York Times bestselling authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman are on a mission to reclaim power for women. In the wake of sweeping changes in the way we work, the veteran journalists challenge preconceived notions of what power is and what it’s good for, along with the insidious, mostly hidden structures of the status quo that hold women back.

What started as a straightforward examination of best practices has become a manifesto for a new form of power, a distinctly female version that is already emerging in workplaces, in politics, and on the home front. It’s a version that is more appealing to women (and most men as well). It offers women a blueprint for shaping their own professional futures, maximizing their impact for the benefit of others, and experiencing the real joy that comes from taking the reins and influencing outcomes.

Writing from their own lived experiences, Kay and Shipman interviewed dozens of women of all ages, races, and backgrounds around the world, as well as cutting-edge academic researchers. Taken together, these perspectives offer a clear-eyed and hopeful redesign of the workplace and our relationships at home, one that puts women in a remade and modernized seat of power.

And now is exactly the right moment for women to step into their power. What’s at stake is much greater than the next job; it’s about the need for a new vision of what power can be, for a new code that focuses not simply on hierarchy, on having power over others, but also on purpose, on what power can achieve.

Both a prescription for societal change and a professional guidebook for individual women, The Power Code shows you how to leverage the power you already have, find new sources of power in yourself and your community, and remodel your workplace and your home-life to produce less ego, more joy, and maximum impact.