A Wharton economist’s radical framework for empowering women to design a life that goes beyond the work-life binary to create true joy, balance, and fulfillment.

To be a woman in America today is to be chronically tired. We face unsustainable demands on our time and efforts in every sphere. Traditional advice urges us to work harder, optimize better, and, when all else fails, “self-care.” The implicit message is that it is our fault that we are overwhelmed, that we must be doing something wrong.

In the same way that behavioral psychologists like Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely have sought to understand the hidden factors and biases that cause people make mistakes at the bank or the grocery store, economist Corinne Low investigates how the most significant decisions in women’s lives are shaped by overlooked internal and external factors. The result is a book that offers readers a guide to getting the best deal for their lives and careers in a world full of constraints. It is also a call to action for firms, policymakers, and anyone else with an iota of power to get to work on the tough job of changing these constraints instead of the easier one we seem to default to: criticizing women.