Hey, fintech fam! 💜

It’s been a wild week of headlines about women “ruining the workplace.” (Meanwhile, women across the country are out here making history — with 14 women governors, the most the U.S. has ever had.)

While traditional media debates whether feminism “went too far,” the real story is happening right here — in fintech.

This week’s column took me back to the early days of building Fintech Is Femme and reminded me why I started telling these stories in the first place. It’s my response to a flimsy distraction of a debate — and a spotlight on the women actually rebuilding our economy.

Because women didn’t ruin the workplace.

We rebuilt it — one fintech at a time.

Let’s get into it.

LEADERSHIP

The Workplace Didn’t Break — It Expired. Women Are Rebuilding It.

By now, you’ve probably heard about The New York Times’ viral question:

“Did women ruin the workplace?”

Opinion columnist Ross Douthat moderated a debate between two conservative critics of modern feminism to dissect the question.

The internet response was swift — outrage, mockery, exhaustion. Yet the fact that this question could still headline one of the country’s most respected publications says something deeper about the moment we’re in.

While legacy media wastes time debating whether women “ruined” the workplace, women are out here rebuilding it — brick by digital brick, transaction by transaction, startup by startup.

And nowhere is that reinvention more tangible than in fintech.

As someone who’s spent years documenting women reshaping fintech — and, by extension, the global economy — I can tell you this:

Women didn’t ruin the workplace.

We revealed that it was never built for us in the first place.

Who Was the Workplace Ever Built For?

For most of modern history, the workplace has been an experiment in control. Built by wealthy men, for wealthy men — designed around a 1950s assumption that someone else (read: a woman) was at home handling the unpaid labor that keeps the economy running.

As I wrote in my book, Fintech Feminists:

“GDP measures wage labor, but not unpaid care work — which adds at least $10.8 trillion to the global economy each year. That’s more than three times the size of the global tech industry.”

When women entered the workplace en masse in the 1970s and 1980s, they didn’t break it. They simply revealed how unsustainable it already was.

The cracks weren’t created by inclusion — they were exposed by it.

History Shows What Happens When Women Don’t Lead in the Workplace

In Chapter 1 of Fintech Feminists, I trace a clear pattern that emerges when you look at how media and major financial moments have shaped our economy.

In 1999, Time magazine featured Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, and Robert Rubin — the “Committee to Save the World.” Less than a decade later, the global economy collapsed under their watch.

By 2010, Time’s cover told a different story: Elizabeth Warren, Sheila Bair, and Mary Schapiro — “the women charged with cleaning up the mess.”

The contrast says everything. When men dominate financial power, we get crises. When women lead, we get reconstruction.

As I wrote in my book:

“If more women had led during the financial crises or the dot-com bubble, we might have seen fewer collapses and more crisis-resilient institutions built on sustainable profitability.”

It wasn’t just my analysis; many world leaders, including Bair, International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, British Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, believed the global financial crisis would not have occurred if more women had held senior positions on Wall Street.

The 2008 financial crash, the 2001 dot-com implosion, the 2022 crypto meltdown — all symptoms of the same disease: homogeneity and unchecked risk.

The cure? Diversity, empathy, and leadership grounded in responsibility rather than ego.

Fintech Is Feminist Infrastructure

Fintech was born from those failures — a rebellion against old systems that excluded and exploited.

While Wall Street was built to exclude, fintech was designed to distribute.

It’s the connective tissue of the modern economy — how people move money, start businesses, build credit, and access opportunity. It’s where economic identity now lives.

When women lead fintech — as founders, regulators, and investors — they’re not just creating new products.

They’re reprogramming capitalism’s core code.

Redefining Risk, Trust, and Power

Look at Lina Khan, former chair of the FTC. Critics called her policies “radical,” but what she’s really doing is restoring balance — cracking down on junk fees, dark patterns, and exploitative subscriptions that siphon billions from working families.

In fintech, her work mirrors what founders like Sallie Krawcheck built: transparency and equity at scale.

In 2014, Krawcheck founded Ellevest not as another investing app, but as an act of financial reprogramming.

As she told me for Fintech Feminists:

“It’s been a journey of challenging conventional narratives and building a business that rejects outdated stories, creating something tailored for women,” Krawcheck said. “In an industry lacking diversity, I would argue our industry was built for him.”

Today, women across fintech are proving that economic power and empathy aren’t opposites — they’re multipliers.

Shivani Siroya, founder of Tala, has issued over $6 billion in loans to 11 million people — mostly women — in emerging markets, with a 92% repayment rate.

That’s what trust-based fintech looks like.

Angel Rich, founder of The Wealth Factory, made financial literacy fun — turning it into a global game that’s reached 200,000 users in 60 countries, all while becoming the first Black woman to partner with Experian and build a neobank with Visa.

That’s what representation in financial education looks like.

Amy Nauiokas, CEO of Anthemis, built a multi-billion-dollar investment platform where 50% of founders are women or people of color — and her portfolio is outperforming the market.

That’s what inclusive capital allocation looks like.

And a new generation is following:

Stephanie Ferris, CEO of FIS, who led one of the largest fintech transactions of the year — a $24.25 billion deal — proved that scale and innovation can coexist when guided by conviction, not fear.

Anam Lakhani and Eve Halimi, co-founders of Alinea Invest, built a Gen Z–driven wealth platform that now serves over a million users — 92% of them women. They’re redefining what investing looks like for the next generation: accessible, community-led, and unapologetically inclusive.

And Shanthi Shanmugam, founder of Casap, is reimagining how payment disputes are resolved. What most banks see as a compliance cost, she saw as an opportunity to build empathy at scale.

“When someone disputes a charge, what they’re really saying is, ‘Do you have my back?’ That’s not a workflow — that’s a relationship,” she told me.

Shanmugam’s vision is as personal as it is systemic:

“I want my daughter to grow up in a world where she doesn’t even know what a dispute is.”

They’re not asking for space — they’re building it.

Why It Matters

The data is unambiguous:

• Companies with 30%+ women leaders are 6% more profitable.

• Fintechs with women executives see a 12% increase in female customers and launch 30% more inclusive products.

• Closing gender gaps in entrepreneurship could add $5 trillion to global GDP.

Yet, less than 1% of VC funding goes to fintechs founded solely by women.

That’s not just a diversity gap. It’s a capital misallocation.

As feminist economist Julie Nelson once said:

“Economics has mistaken efficiency for intelligence and ignored care as a source of value.”

Fintech — when built by women — brings care back into capitalism. It’s empathy made scalable and profitable.

From Repair to Reinvention

The question “Did women ruin the workplace?” assumes there’s a workplace worth preserving.

The truth? The workplace didn’t fail because women entered it.

It failed because it was never built for any of us to thrive.

Women didn’t ruin the workplace. We exposed its cracks, rewired its foundations, and are rebuilding the economy from the ground up — one API, one regulation, one startup at a time.

And if you want to see where the real innovation is happening, look past the clickbait headlines — the real work isn’t being framed as “men vs. women” debates.

It’s being rebuilt, brick by brick.

Stop doom-scrolling think pieces from legacy media desperate for your clicks.

Start building in fintech.

That’s where the future is being written — and this time, women hold the pen.

WTF ELSE?

• Upward raises $8 million seed+ to expand fintech infrastructure

• Judge delays effective dates of CFPB’s Open Banking Rule

• Venmo launches cash back rewards program for debit cards

• Yodlee and JPMorgan Chase amend existing data access agreement

• Visa unveils 2025 Creator Report, introduces Creator Agent Pilot with Karat

I WANT IT, I GOT IT

• 🎧 Today’s Listen: In honor of Veterans’ Day, here’s a throwback to one of my favorite Humans of Fintech episodes with Brandis DeSimone of Nasdaq. We talk about career evolution, purpose-driven leadership, and how Brandis found her voice in an industry that doesn’t always make space for authenticity. Listen here.

• 🚀 Today’s Read: Vogue’s viral article, “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”, reflects how modern womanhood, autonomy, and identity are evolving. Beneath the cheeky headline lies a real cultural shift: women are publicly redefining what partnership, independence, and fulfillment look like. It’s not about rejecting relationships — it’s about rejecting the idea that a woman’s success or self-worth must be validated through one. The piece feels like a mirror to the broader movement we’re seeing across business, media, and fintech — where women are no longer waiting for permission to build, lead, and define their own paths.

• 🧘‍♀️Today’s Self-Care: Family time is my favorite kind of recharge — especially in the middle of this nonstop season. My big brother finally came to visit me in NYC (a rare event!), and we scored a resy at one of my go-to spots: Bar Moga. Think Japanese bar food, perfectly crafted cocktails, and that cozy, old-school charm that instantly slows life down. Honestly? That’s self-care in my book.

_FINTUNES

🎶 Mature — Hilary Duff

Hilary Duff released new music for the first time in ten years.

_{LET’S CONNECT}

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📚 The holidays are coming, in charge of purchasing office gifts? Grab my book, Fintech Feminists! It looks nice on the coffee table 😉

That wraps up today’s edition—thanks as always for reading! Until next time, keep innovating and challenging the status quo. 

See you Thursday!

Love,

Nicole 💜