One of the major complaints that I hear from many a corporate sister is that unfortunately commitment is very often measured in terms of “face time” as opposed to real “work time” in the corporate game. “My manager expected me to leave after him every day, which meant staying at work until 9pm every single night”, Z. confided. “I always get the “look” from everyone around when I leave on time to pick up my daughter from school”, S. admits. “Yet not only is my work done, but I’m actually ahead of schedule most of the time.”
What it seems to many, and rightfully so, is that in many an organization, management values face time more than…actual work time. “If you are here before the boss gets here, and after he leaves, you’re golden”, A. says. What happens then to the working mothers, those who are still trying to complete their degree, and also happen o be outstanding, innovative and faithful employees? Do they just fall through the cracks of a sometimes faulty management that relies more on appearance than actual performance? Apparently so…
When Yahoo’s executive Marissa Mayer made the controversial decision to let go of the company’s work at home policy, it stirred an impressive debate about the myth of office face time. Is it just implying, in a categorically dismissive way, that we only work when we’re in the office? And if so, what is the benefit of loading employees with all types of remote connectivity devices that are supposed to make it easier for them to be productive outside of the office?
According to a 2013 CNN Opinion column, employees who have control over where and when they work are actually more productive. Additionally, virtual interactions also have the benefit of making cultural and gender differences “virtually” disappear, which in turn facilitates and increases productive communication, as opposed to the proverbial office “water cooler” conversations that tend to bring together people who think (and happen to look) alike. And from my own experience in Corporate, most times, it is easier for male employees with supportive partners at home to put in extra hours at home, even if the time is no exactly as productive as it should be, than for a working mother whose partner is also employed (or not) to burn the corporate candle at both ends. Hence the increasing working moms’ corporate brain drain….
If organizations and their management really looked at what motivates employees, increases productivity and fosters a healthy and respectful sense of diversity, they would also work on ridding themselves of the elusive face time myth…In the Corporate world, it is definitely not a case of “absence making the heart (or the company’s bottom line) grow fonder…
Are you buying into the “face time” myth of productivity?
Self-care? What self-care? That’s the question many working women and moms ask themselves (and others) when constantly pummeled with the urgency of self-care. When everything else is urgent, from the kids’ school activities to professional responsibilities and household duties, how do we make time for self-care? How do we even begin to care for ourselves when there is so much to do to care for others? And most importantly, how do we maintain a consistent habit of self-care when our schedules are prone to so much change and upheaval, from kids’ sick days to hybrid work?
If you’re reading this and nodding, then you know how setting and keeping self-care habits as a working woman and mom is daunting. It’s all fun and games to read the plethora of self-care advice out there, especially coming from women who are able to hire personal chefs, trainers and assistants? Yet, when you’re busy saving for the kids’ college and catching up on your own retirement, all the while trying to get your sleep on and snatching some childcare on the fly, where do you fit self-care?
Like so many other working women and moms, I have, and still am, grappling with all these questions, plus the undercover guilt of not properly taking care of myself at times. Finding the time, money and resources to practice and maintain proper self-care is no easy feat. So what are some simpler ways, accessible and available to most of us, to do this without breaking the bank, the schedule or losing our minds? Here are three simple ways to get started:
Build small self-care habits into your daily routine
Planning for the monthly spa date with the girls or a solo trip is certainly great for most of us. However, for many among us, it’s not always feasible. Even when it is, it may not be sustainable in the long run, what with the little one catching a cold, an unexpected bill popping up, or a marriage crisis brewing in the background. Besides, what are we to do in between the monthly spa dates and solo trips? This is where building self-care into your daily routine can make a difference. It starts by seeing self-care differently, as just the simple act of caring for oneself, and not necessarily champagne-infused indulgences at the local spa. This can be done by building small self-care habits in the margins of life and work, such as waking up a few minutes earlier to enjoy a cup of coffee alone, or going to bed earlier to read a few pages of your favorite novel before catching some zzz’s. Long commute? How about finding some self-care podcasts to listen to, such as one of my favorites, “The Science of Happiness”.
Set an easy budget
Google the word “self-care”, and you may easily be overwhelmed with glamorous pictures of girls’ trips in Napa valley sipping on some fancy wine, or overpriced spas offering the latest fad in Swedish massages…Even self-care apparently requires money these days. Don’t get me wrong, I can enjoy a fancy spa and gourmet wine too, just not one that adds more financial stress…
If you’re like me, setting an easy “self-care” budget can help. This can be as easy as setting up an automatic $20 deduction a week from your paycheck into an account appropriately called “Self-Care” or “Self Love” (or whichever name will bring a smile of relief on your face). That’s $80 a month, $240 a year, and can take care of some the indulgences you would list under self-care.
Make it a family habit
For the working mamas reading this, we all know how self-care can be daunting. Just getting time on the toilet to gather your thoughts together or scroll through Instagram can be a challenge, never mind a stroll at the local mall or 15 minutes to get your eyebrows waxed without the little one requesting your undivided attention. So how about making self-care a family habit? I get it, the point is to get away from the family, however building family habits around self-care can help everyone understand and respect the need for it. This can take the form of implementing some “quiet time” at home, or teaching kids about the importance of self-care by helping them develop their own self-care habits.
Get a self-care accountability partner
One of the biggest obstacles to taking care of ourselves, is actually maintaining good self-care habits. Often, especially at the beginning of a year or season, we start on a good footing, only to fall back a few weeks or months later, overtaken by other “urgent” tasks and too tired to re-commit. This is where a self-care accountability partner can help. Sharing your self-care goals and being accountable to someone else can go a long way toward ensuring you don’t fall off the bandwagon. And if you do, someone will be there to catch you.
All in all, as attractive as the prospect of self-care can be, the reality is, it can also be daunting for many working women and moms already stretched too thin. However, by building self-care into our daily routine, setting an easy budget, making it a family habit, and getting a self-care accountability partner, it is possible to include more self-care into our daily lives.
When times get a little, or a lot tougher economically, we often start thinking about our finances first. As working women and mothers, many of whom are the primary breadwinner in charge of the finances of our house, or on the other end of the financial spectrum, suffer from not being involved enough in the household’s finances, knowing how to manage our finances and budget during challenging economic times is crucial. Not only does the welfare of our families depend on it, but our own ability to thrive and not just survive is also linked to how well we can maintain and grow ourselves financially.
As an immigrant coming to school in the United States, I had to learn very early on to budget in an effective and often even creative manner. Knowing how to stretch a dollar was a necessity as I grew up into adulthood. Growing up in a one-parent household in SenegaI, I watched my mother budget in an efficient way so as to keep food on the table, clothes on our backs and even private school tuition paid. That’s where the foundation of my financial knowledge started, and continued into my educational background as an accountant and Certified Public Accountant (CPA).
So how do you budget effectively when tough times happen? Here are a few principles I’ve learned and kept on using to adequately handle my finances during challenging economic times:
Don’t wait for tough times to budget for tough times
Budgeting for difficult economic times happens before the challenges even arise. This means getting in the constant and consistent habit of budgeting. One budgeting rule that I often follow is it 50/30/20 rule. According to this popular rule, we are to spend 50% of our income on essentials, 20% on savings including investments, and 30% on everything else. While there are variations of this rule depending on each individual’s situation, the main principle here is to develop a consistent habit of giving your money a place to go, and enforcing the discipline to save resources over time.
Categorize your money
I once heard from someone that money that doesn’t have a name is money unloved. In other words, if you don’t assign your money a qualifier and a job, you have more chances of losing it. In a culture where we’re so used to instant gratification, where we can purchase anything at the click of a button, it’s never been easier to lose track of your spending and hence your money. This is why it is so important to categorize your money as soon as it lands in your bank account.
I like to assign my money at home as soon as I receive it. By home, I mean specific accounts destined for given purposes. While some bank accounts are for general spending or savings purposes, others are for longer-term purposes, creating an investment or dream vacation fund, for instance. I have found the practice of assigning my money a home and labeling my accounts as specifically as possible, allows me to avoid over-spending while increasing savings, especially in tough economic times.
Shift your mindset.
Many of the challenges we face during tough economic times are not just related to money but also, and most importantly, to our money mindset. For many of us, managing our money during tough economic times turns out to be a painful exercise, because we haven’t made up our minds around our finances. Making a conscious decision to save money, or to reach a certain financial goal, is highly dependent upon our mindsets. The good thing about mindsets, thankfully, is they can be changed.
Throughout the many challenging economic periods of my life, I have taught myself to think about money not as a scarce, but an abundant resource. This has allowed me to feel less powerless in the face of rough economic times, and to keep working at bettering my money habits and mindset.
Another mindset shift that has been really important in my experience has been too learn to distinguish oh between my wants, needs and dreams. By order of impact, I have made it a habit to prioritize essential needs and dreams, and be especially vigilant around wants. Very often, our wants are punctual and not really reflective of what truly matters or has the longest-term impact. Compare wanting a $1,000 brand name purse to a lifelong dream of starting a business, taking a dream vacation, or retiring our spouse or parents early, for instance. Funding our dreams almost always ends up providing a greater return and satisfaction in the long run.
All in all, tough economic times are an excellent opportunity to train ourselves to manage our money more effectively. As a matter of fact, managing our money in difficult times should not be all that much different from managing our money at any time. The same principles apply, albeit with some level of variation, depending on our personal circumstances and environments. As such, learning to budget before tough times arise, assigning our money at home, and changing on money mindsets are the three most essential tools to effectively budget our money when crisis hits.
Now let me ask you, what are the tips and tools do you recommend to manage your money and budget effectively during top economic?
Someone once said, in order to remove the dirt and unwanted substances from a rug, you have to shake it. So it is of society. It often takes a hard shake to first uncover, and then remove the deep inequities and inequalities plaguing our ways of life and work. To clean and refresh existing structures of domination and submission into more equitable places of humanity and growth. Just like we’d clean out a closet filled with antiquated, ill-fitting clothes and shoes no longer belonging to the times and spaces we live in.This year’s Spring cleaning is no exception. Except it’s like no other for working women and moms at this juncture of history and time.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on more than a global health, economic, and political crisis. It has stirred more than a “Great Resignation” movement for businesses, organizations and individuals. Rather, what it has ushered with its great wind of change, shock and dismay, is a great reckoning of the urgent need for a serious refresh of the world of work, especially as it relates to and concerns women and mothers. The reality is, this crisis has been the ultimate straw that broke the camel’s back in the long, sadly still unresolved saga of deep inequities between men and women both on the work and home front. And now it’s time for a good, deep, hard, honest Spring cleaning…
Every year, and also through every milestone, upheaval, or change, I shed a part of my closet that is no longer “me”, no longer adapted to my passionate, busy, imperfect life of woman, working mom, wife, friend, sister, and whatever other hat I, like so many others, wear…As I get closer and closer to the most authentic version of myself, shedding layers of social conditioning, false knowledge, and inadequate influences, as well as reflecting and taking on fashion that literally “suits” me best, my closet is but one of the reflections of the changes occurring on the inside. A mirror to the evolution of a person, a woman, a mother, a sister, a friend, a human…Now this may sound shallow to some…until we all start considering how we’ve replaced polished, uncomfortable work slacks and skirts, with elastic waist sweatpants, albeit hiding under Zoom-ready, professional-looking tops…Or how the fashion industry has been reflecting the world’s crisis through an increased focus on sustainability, comfort, and powerful diversity, equity and inclusion statements on racial justice, voting rights, and female solidarity, to cite a few… I rest my case…
Like many of our ever “transitioning” closets, the world of work, and society at large, has been ill-fitting for working women and mothers for the longest time. While it has been shedding very few of its inadequacies, inequities and inequalities over time, there is still much work to be done. As the pandemic swiftly, violently, irrevocably pulled and shook the rug from under what has been an antiquated society, in terms of gender equity and inequality for quite some time, it has also created a precious opportunity for much-needed change. Yes, research says COVID-19 has sent women’s progress back at least a decade. Millions of women have, and still are, exiting the workforce in droves, fueled by lack of childcare, burnout, and a painful re-evaluation of their values. That, and other similarly hard to fathom facts, are true…Yet, two things can be true at once. While the pandemic has certainly set women and mothers back, it has also brought about the Spring cleaning we all needed, and the beginning of a crucial conversation and work towards gender equity and equality. This has also spurred many “firsts” that, although long overdue, we must acknowledge, celebrate and keep the momentum of going, including the first female head of the World Trade Organization Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the youngest U.S. inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, the first woman of Asian descent to win the best Director Award Chloe Zao, as we await the confirmation of the first Black woman U.S. Supreme Court Justice, among other historical wins…
At the end , it really starts with the realization that some things have changed, yet will need to further change, including:
The world of work as we know it, was not built for women
However, as society shifts through shake-ups like the COVID-19 pandemic, these inequities and gaps are made more blatant and more urgent to solve. No longer can we pretend that all is well in the world of work when gender biases are being so painfully and visibly exposed through the cracks of unavoidable change and disruption.
So it’s time to re-imagine and create a working world that includes women’s values, lifestyles and priorities.
Change and disruption are not only forcing us to stop, whether out of necessity, survival, exhaustion or burnout. They’re also pushing us against the wall of our own denial of a gender-biased reality that has existed for too long, and can no longer go on as such. In a progressively hybrid working world fashioned by the necessary appeal of flexibility, the urgency of affordable and available childcare, and most importantly the prevailing of true humanity for all, the patriarchal, antiquated norms of the past no longer have a place. Instead, they are to be replaced with the authentic, full, human values of individuals, including working women and mothers. The same values, such as equity of time, labor and pay, that have been overlooked and ignored for far too long…
Truth is, the 9-to-5 grueling rat race, the limiting (and limited) maternity leave and maternal wall bias, all the way up to the corporate ladder, were created as hurdles and limitations for working women and mothers in a world designed for men. As such, it’s high time to re-imagine and finally create a working world including women’s time, priorities and values. A working world where women do not have to choose between motherhood and career, apologize for the flexibility to be their entire selves, or abdicate purpose at the altar of servitude.
It’s time for women to re-evaluate and re-invent themselves
In the same way, as organizations, businesses, companies and society as a whole are called upon to re-imagine their foundations and structures, working women and mothers are also called upon to re-invent theirs. And this time around, to do so with the bold authenticity, the daring truth, the unapologetic presence they were not at liberty to exhibit in times past.
There is a portal, albeit a risky and precarious one, that just opened, by virtue of a global health, political and economic crisis, that is lifting the curtain to reveal a fairer, more equitable, other side to work and life. And we must be willing and daring to cross the threshold of our conditioning and old mindsets, and do the work to get to the other side…
“ Will you be able to resume your functions after baby?”
“ Are you able to effectively work from home with your children?”
“Shouldn’t you be home with your kids?”
These are only some of the questions and assumptions many, if not most, working moms face in the course of their careers. While we hear so much about the glass ceiling, this seemingly impenetrable, gender bias in career advancement separating professional men and women, what we don’t talk about as much is the maternal wall bias. This form of discrimination largely experienced by working mothers in the workplace perpetuates the false perception that mothers and pregnant women are less competent, productive and effective at work. This pervasive stereotype is manifest in hiring practices, promotion processes, and career growth and advancement in general.
According to a 2018 PNAS study, 43% of working moms in the Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) fields dropped their full-time employment after becoming mothers, as opposed to only 23% of men after becoming parents. This statistic, along with many similar ones in other industries, illustrates well how many working mothers are pressured to leave the workplace while, or after having children. The other common alternative for working or expectant mothers is to resign themselves to the more stagnant, less growth oriented “mommy track”, which is especially prevalent in situations where they take advantage of flexible scheduling for family and childcare-related reasons.
The maternal wall bias is embedded in how society traditionally views mothers, whose primary role is assumed and expected to be in the home. This general expectation is also at the root of the deep gender imbalance felt by working mothers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, during which mothers had to carry the brunt of the home responsibilities while quarantined along with their work duties. Whereas pre-pandemic, the pressure of required “face time” in the office left many working mothers stuck between their careers and roles as mothers; during this global health crisis, moms now had to grapple with blurred work and life boundaries, a never-ending cycle of work on the home and professional fronts, and the reversal of decades of feminist progress in favor of backtracking to antiquated traditional gender stereotypes.
As the world of work is increasingly evolving from a more traditional to a more technology-focused, remote environment, some of this bias could be alleviated by leveling the playing field for remote and hybrid employees. However, for working mothers, working from home also means grappling with the unequal gender division of labor, thus multiplying the weight on their shoulders. And as companies and organizations seek to return their employees to the office, working mothers may again face the harsh pressure of having to choose between work and motherhood…
In a society still plagued by the unfair distribution of childcare resources, as well as health, political and economic uncertainty, the maternal wall bias may constitute a much larger threat than the glass ceiling for working mothers…And maybe this should be the one gender bias we should focus more on…
