Offices are designed with men in mind. Just take the average corporate climate. Temperatures are typically based on a standard from the 1960s that uses a 154-pound 40-year-old man in a suit as the model office occupant. It’s no wonder that women are so cold at work that Cynthia Nixon’s campaign staff called working conditions “notoriously sexist when it comes to room temperature” during her bid for governor of New York.
But at the three following work spaces, everything from the paint scheme and snacks to the what’s-on-TV policy was designed with women in mind. Read on for more about the female-centric dwellings where you’ll never need a blanket to keep warm at your desk.
When Patrice Banks decided to create a safe space for women to work on cars, she didn’t even know how to change a tire. “I was an auto airhead. And because I didn’t know much, I always felt taken advantage of by mechanics,” she says. In 2016, after dedicating four years to learning her trade, she opened Girls Auto Clinic in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.
So what, exactly, does a woman want when she gets her oil changed? According to Banks, 39, who used to drop her car at Jiffy Lube and then get a manicure to pass the time, they want to get their nails done and find out what’s happening under the hood. “My clients are really passionate. They want to learn how to turn wrenches,” she says. They also want to feel comfortable: “Women don’t want to be hit on, to read Car and Driver, or to have Maury Povich playing on the TV.” So instead the Girls Auto Clinic features a framed drawing of Michelle Obama as Rosie the Riveter (a gift from Banks’s local councilwoman), a borrowing library with books including Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Suze Orman’s Women & Money, plenty of rosé, and yes, a salon aptly named Clutch Beauty Bar.
Creating what Banks calls an “empowerment company” was always her goal. And it’s working. “When I worked at a dealership, I couldn’t have all this,” says shop forewoman Susan Sweeney, 43, whose toolbox and work area are decorated with pictures of her children and a “Don’t be a dick” bumper sticker. “I’m able to bring my son to work,” says general manager Peach Brown, 32. “I’ve never had a job that’s given me that kind of flexibility.” For Banks, it’s not just about creating a healthy workplace for her skilled “sheCANics” to do what they love; it’s also about “the impact on the customers and children who come here and see women working on cars,” she says. “We’re changing people’s perspectives every day just by coming to work.” —Samantha Leach
One step into the creative hub behind PEN15, Hulu’s critically acclaimed comedy in which full-grown adults play their 13-year-old selves among real-life teens, and you’re immediately transported back to Y2K. No Doubt plays in the background. Throwback magazines like YM and Teen People are piled high in one writer’s office. There are all-you-can-eat Doritos and string cheese. It’s so uncannily reminiscent of being a teen in the early aughts, I half worry my adolescent acne will make a cameo.
The no-frills but roomy space in downtown L.A. also happens to be an upgrade. Until earlier this year, series cocreators, cowriters, and costars Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, both 32, were working out of a windowless basement in Hollywood. “It was so low-budget, so bare-bones,” Konkle says. “We didn’t even have a table.” It’s fitting, really, for the former New York University classmates who spent the better part of a decade fighting to bring the series to life. Among the many hurdles: executives who didn’t think audiences would want to see adults masquerading as pervy young people. Still, Erskine and Konkle, who didn’t grow up together but may as well have, refused to compromise on their portrait of horny female adolescence. “These are all subjects that you will never stop dealing with for pretty much the rest of your life,” Konkle says. “There wasn’t the content out there that told those stories in the R-rated way that it really, truly is.”
With a 15-episode sophomore season well underway, the Emmy-nominated writing staff now numbers eight (six women and two men). And Konkle and Erskine are hitting their stride. “It was a constant effort for seven years, but we firmly believe in it, and that’s what kept it going,” Erskine says. “The lesson we always came back to was, Do we love it?” Adds Konkle: “If you love something enough, you won’t run out of fuel. That’s the secret ingredient.” That and Doritos. —Jessica Radloff
Carrie Goldberg, a 42-year-old attorney who represents victims of sexual harassment and exploitation, keeps an ancient Magnavox clock-radio in her Brooklyn office for a reason. It’s a relic from her childhood home, and it’s also a survivor. When Goldberg was growing up in Aberdeen, Washington, one of her parents brought the thing into a sauna. The half-melted device still picks up a signal, even decades later. “It went through hell,” she notes with pride. “And it’s even more beautiful and unique and special than it was before that happened.”
Goldberg specializes in what she deems to be the prosecution of “psychos, stalkers, pervs, and trolls.” And thanks to the internet—with its lawless chat rooms and bottomless appetite for humiliation—she does not lack for clients. Her caseload has exploded, and with it her reputation. This past summer she released her first book, which details her own horrific experience with an ex turned stalker. So when a client meets her for the first time, no one needs to explain what it feels like to be harassed or smeared or disbelieved. Goldberg remembers.
She designed her working space to restore a measure of respect to the women—and it is almost all women—who turn to her for help. She hand-selected plush furniture, installed bronze and silver fixtures, and banned fluorescent bulbs. The rooms are painted in pale pinks and forest greens. The fabrics are sumptuous. And the austere cement floors, like the custom “Sue a Rapist” hats she ordered, mean business. “I think law firms undervalue the importance of beautifully designed websites and business cards and office spaces,” she says. “When you have those things, it’s not just about your own vanity. It’s about showing your clients they’re worth it.” —Mattie Kahn
Click here to meet the 2019 Glamour Women of the Year honorees and get your tickets to the two-day event here.
