Reese Witherspoon and Emma Grede have recently come under fire for remarks they made about women and the workforce. In a recent appearance on Baby, This is Keke Palmer, Emma Grede, the British businesswoman who cofounded SKIMS and Good American, shared her thoughts on the ways remote work acts as a ‘career killer’ for women. And over on Reese’s side, she recently had to respond to backlash after saying that women who don’t learn AI face the risk of being ‘left behind’.
Here’s the thing – both women are absolutely correct. In Emma’s defense, it is true that as a woman in the corporate world, visibility is crucial to climbing the corporate ladder. And in Reese’s defense, she is correct in her assertion that the roles women tend to fill in the workforce are susceptible to becoming automated by AI. And one way of adding more security to our position in our careers is to understand the mechanisms of AI. But if they’re both right, why the backlash?
Judging by the reaction online, people took issue with Emma ‘promoting’ return to office mandates because of the implications office work has had on marginalized women, historically. I’ve written before about the microaggressions Black women deal with in corporate (and non-corporate) settings. There is a particular pressure put on women, and women of colour, specifically, when it comes to the spaces in which we work. So working from home temporarily and partially sheltered us from this. Based on the reaction online, it looks like work from home advocates are hoping people, particularly those with a platform as massive as Emma’s, shout from the rooftops that work from home or hybrid options are the way forward in order to help shape the future of work. But Emma’s declaration did the opposite of that.
And with Reese, she was taken to task for glazing over why so many women are resistant to AI. Social media users cited their concerns over data centres, intellectual property theft and the detrimental environmental impact AI is having on our water supply. People even insinuated she was being paid by AI companies to post online – a claim she refuted in a follow-up post addressing the backlash, without reference to undisclosed investments in AI companies.
“I’m aware of the impact this could have on jobs across so many industries. I understand environmental concerns. I care deeply about local communities. And I have concerns about impending AGI. I don’t believe computers should replace humanity,” she said. “I’m planning on learning as much as possible so that I’m educated about this technological revolution. If you want to learn with me, great, let’s do this! If you don’t, that’s okay too.”
Despite making an attempt at not necessarily an apology but perhaps an explanation, or offering of more context, it fell flat. And the reason for that is because Reese does not share the typical workday or workplace experience with the very people she addressed in her initial video – women in corporate settings. None of this is to say that Reese doesn’t work, but her work and the power she wields within that work is very different from the work that most of us, the ones actually at risk of being replaced by AI and automation, do.
In both cases, it’s a classic case of right message, wrong messenger. In sharing her thoughts, Emma is speaking to a very specific type of woman. She’s speaking to the type of woman who aspires to be like Emma, or at least some iteration of her. At just 43, her resumé exceeds what most accomplish in an entire lifetime.
From being the cofounder of denim company to the CEO of perhaps the largest shapewear manufacturer in the world, both of which are fronted by members of one of the wealthiest and most powerful celebrity families there are, to becoming the first Black Shark on Shark Tank to hosting a hit and profitable podcast, it’s no wonder she describes herself as a three-hour mom.
And while I’m not one to judge a woman for prioritizing her career while still trying to balance family life, I do think it’s an important nuance for women who are not three-hour moms and even women who are not moms at all. Because they have every right to prefer remote work and not pay such ridiculous corporate consequences over it.
Work from home gave people the flexibility to not be swallowed whole by life’s tasks. Whether it was giving people two hours, or more, of their day back thanks to no commute or an extra couple hundred bucks that’s no longer going to workplace coffee and lunches, perhaps opening up the possibility of being redirected to savings or a cleaning service instead, it kept resources like time and money more in our control.
So with return to office mandates hanging over some businesses like a dark cloud comes all the nuances that have always been deeply embedded into corporate culture. The racial dynamics, the power dynamics, the office politics and for so many of us – the struggle of trying to juggle it all. And the latter doesn’t just apply to parents, it applies to anyone who does anything outside of work. An adult tap dance class, FFS. Laundry. Cooking. Anything.
For women looking to achieve Emma’s level of success, it’s probably not news to them that they’re going to have to put in more face time and be way more hands on in the businesses they touch. But Emma’s main thought doesn’t quite consider these nuances and the blanket statement applied to women is a bit frustrating to hear, because there is a huge swath of women who are completely content with moderate success. We have jobs, we earn a decent living, but we’re not looking to become the head of a company. We want to turn off at a certain point in the day. And that begs the question of whether, we, too, face the threat of career death in the name of our preference for a bit more work-life balance.
And Reese’s reminder about AI is, more than anything, frustrating. Because it’s another example of this thing that’s coming that we all better prepare for. But it’s here and it’s already having an indescribable and exhausting impact on women. And the fact that it’s happening at the same time as so many of us are returning to office on a full-time or at least more frequent than recent basis is overwhelming. Because it completely shifts the dynamic we’re re-entering into.
Yes, AI can be a fantastic tool to make life and work more manageable. From the automation of tasks to helping draft important documents, process AI has the power to take away some of the daily stresses of not just work, but those never-ending items on our personal to do lists, too. But with companies dead set on their bottom line, they’re hardly willing to invest in the type of AI that can actually improve our daily lives – and tend to stick to generative AI, which is easy to use with much lower costs (for now).
Rogers, a longstanding and prominent Canadian telecommunications company, announced this week that they were offering 10,000 of their 25,000 eligible employees voluntary departure and retirement buyouts in a measure to ‘reduce capital spending’. They’re looking to lower capital spending by a whopping 30% in 2026.
Despite their claims that this is a way to address ‘business realities’, it builds on previous stories from last summer where employees shared that they were unknowingly being used to train the new AI chatbot that would eventually replace them. It was reported last year that the company let go of 400 employees, mainly in customer service departments across Canada. So in March, when the company was proud to announce it added 1,000 jobs, it was all just smoke and mirrors leading up to this week’s doozy of an announcement, which, as you can imagine, will undoubtedly affect women.
This is why so many women are resistant to learning AI and especially to using it. No to mention the detrimental use of AI in deepfake p-rnography and AI-generated image-based sexual abuse. It’s no wonder people were peeved with Reese over her overzealous call for women to join her in her attempt to learn AI. But not being in a position like Rogers employees were, being used to secretly train the tool that’s going to run you out of a paycheque, is what makes that kind of oversight easy. The same way that Emma’s career prioritization and hunger to climb to the top of the corporate ladder makes it easy to not consider women who are happy where they are.
This is why so many of the messages celebrities send to us never hit the way they’re intended to. It’s not because they’re wrong or factually incorrect. It’s because these issues are nuanced. And nothing ruins nuance more than the simplistic outlook of the world you have when you’ve got the privilege, comfort and security of money and resources that other people simply don’t.
Here is Reese on the set of The Morning Show in LA on Tuesday and Emma on This Morning in London today
Reese Witherspoon on the set of The Morning Show in LA, April 28, 2026/Emma Grede on This Morning in London, April 30, 2026
Photo credits: Dsanchez/CPR/BACKGRID, Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock