Empower-Educate-Revise-Advocate Model
Pair personal boundaries with workplace, cultural, and policy change
- Difficulty
- Expert
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 97%
The host identifies four principles from Saujani's book—empower, educate, revise, and advocate—and Saujani explains them as action at multiple levels. Empowerment starts with tangible boundaries, such as an explicit division of caregiving that prevents one partner from being continually pulled back into unpaid work. Employer education and pressure shift childcare, paid leave, flexibility, and remote work from private inconveniences toward workplace and economic issues. Revising culture means parenting openly, not apologising for children or presenting idealised motherhood. Advocacy organises working women and mothers to seek durable government support. The model's central mechanism is layered change: personal boundaries provide immediate protection, but workplace practice, public norms, and policy must move too.
Origin
Saujani presents this model in Pay Up after concluding that her earlier focus on helping women become braver still centred on changing women. Her later argument is that equality also requires changing workplaces, cultural expectations, and public policy.
Core principles
- 01Individual tactics cannot repair a structural problem alone
- 02Boundaries make unpaid labour visible at home
- 03Employers shape whether caregiving and paid work can coexist
- 04Honest cultural visibility challenges the expectation of hidden care
- 05Government policy is necessary for durable system-level change
How to run it
- 1
Empower with boundaries
Create a visible, tangible division of time or care so responsibility does not default silently to one person.
Pro tip Use a boundary that can be observed in practice, not a general promise to help more.
Watch out A household boundary must account for safety, capacity, and the needs of everyone affected.
- 2
Educate the employer
Frame care as an economic and workforce issue, then show how current policies transfer its cost to employees.
Pro tip Pair lived experience with evidence relevant to retention, attendance, or participation.
Watch out Do not present episode statistics as current universal facts without checking the underlying sources.
- 3
Change workplace practice
Seek concrete supports such as childcare assistance, equitable paid leave, flexibility, or remote-work options suited to the organisation.
Pro tip Ask for a specific policy and accountable owner rather than a general commitment to empowerment.
Watch out Not every role can use the same flexibility; design around the actual work.
- 4
Revise the culture
Make caregiving visible, stop apologising for its ordinary presence, and tell truthful stories that challenge idealised expectations.
Pro tip Leaders can reduce stigma by modelling the behaviour first.
Watch out People should control how much personal information they disclose.
- 5
Build collective voice
Connect people affected by the same structure so the issue is not treated as an isolated personal failure.
Pro tip Organise around a shared, concrete demand.
- 6
Advocate for policy
Pursue government action where workplace changes alone cannot provide broad or durable support.
Pro tip Translate personal stories into a policy outcome people can support.
Watch out Policy claims and comparisons should be verified against current law before public use.
In the wild
Saujani says she and her husband divide nights and mornings. At six in the evening she physically leaves for time alone or with friends so that she is not automatically pulled into additional caregiving while still present at home.
→ A stated division of labour becomes a boundary that can operate in daily life.
Saujani urges parents not to apologise automatically when children interrupt a video call and not to hide ordinary caregiving from colleagues. She contrasts this with idealised family images that conceal the difficulty and conflict of real life.
→ Visible, truthful caregiving challenges a workplace culture that expects parenthood to remain hidden.
Common mistakes
Fixing only the individual
Saujani criticises approaches that tell women to meditate, pose, organise, or delegate while leaving the structure intact.
Stopping at corporate messaging
Celebratory programming does not substitute for childcare, leave, flexibility, or other concrete workplace policies.
Treating care as a private exception
The model reframes caregiving as a recurring workforce and policy issue rather than an isolated employee inconvenience.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for leaders, organisers, and working parents seeking change across home, workplace, culture, and government rather than through self-improvement alone.
Not ideal for
It is not a quick personal productivity fix and cannot guarantee policy or organisational change without collective support and authority.
From the transcript
“empower educate revise and advert advocate”
“the need to create boundaries for all of us that's really critical”
“we have to really start parenting out loud”
From the episode
How I Taught Millions Of Women The Most Important Skill: Girls Who Code Founder: Reshma Saujani