The Wing's 'Feminist Utopia' Is Made Up of Asshole Members
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The Wing, a social and networking club created by and for women, has dodged many controversies in the past few years: accusations of racism, strict and lightly transphobic admission policies, idea stealing, the list goes on. But a new report from The New York Times Magazine pops the Wing’s “feminist utopia” bubble to reveal that the co-working space’s members, along with CEO and co-founder Audrey Gelman, often treated employees terribly.
In interviews with 26 former and current employees, writer Amanda Hess documents how staff hired to work the front desk were instructed to also clean after members and women of color were tokenized. “It was only so that they could exploit my presence and my image for their own purposes,” a former employee who worked the front desk named Vei Darling said, “to make it seem like they were more inclusive than they actually were.” Women who were hired to work at the Wing were given membership privileges and sold on the networking opportunities, but were relegated to scrubbing toilets, washing dishes, and lint-rolling couches, all of which they were supposed to do out of sight from members so as not to disrupt the illusion that the space was perpetually perfect. Hourly Wing employees were paid $16.50 in New York but said they had trouble being approved for enough shifts to make a living wage.