If there is any time in recent memory that has marked working motherhood, it is definitely the global COVID-19 health pandemic of the past couple of years. Not only have working mothers been at the forefront of this crisis, carrying the brunt of it on the work and personal front, what with the advent of remote work, the unequal distribution of household chores and lack of childcare, they are also redefining with their choices the very meaning behind “working motherhood”.
While some working moms are choosing to spend more time at home, others are being forced to give up on their careers to devote themselves to caregiving, leading the way in the phenomenon dubbed as the “Great Resignation”. Others yet are reconstructing their careers after layoffs and business closures brought on by the pandemic, while some are re-imagining their work by launching entrepreneurial ventures or going into different industries. Working mothers are also making their voices heard by shining the light on the challenges they’re facing, calling for increased legislative measures around paid leave for working parents, or the Marshall plan for Moms, consisting in a plan to compensate moms for their unpaid labor.
All in all, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, working moms are setting the bar higher for themselves, organizations, businesses and society at large. As we’re ready to usher in a new year, and so many are setting goals for the future, its only appropriate for working mothers to learn from the past few years, and look forward with a few goals of our own, including:
Define and speak up about what is important to working mothers
While the pandemic did create innumerable issues for society at large, what it also did, is uncover the deep inequalities and inconsistencies plaguing working mothers. As schools closed and childcare resources dwindled to almost nothing, working mothers found themselves stuck at home with multiple jobs, including working remotely, homeschooling the kids, caring for the household and somehow remaining sane and healthy. The silver lining here, above this enormous, unfair cloud, is this situation has prompted many, if not most working moms, to start redefining what matters to them and speaking up for themselves.
Going forward and into the new year, working mothers are committed to defining and speaking what is truly important to them, in terms of family, childcare, elder care, paid leave and work, to cite a few.
Integrate all areas of life
What the pandemic has made obvious is the need to integrate work and life for working mothers. As the future of work is moving towards a remote environment, it’s becoming increasingly important to work at integrating, rather than balancing, work and life for mothers.
In the era of remote work and homeschooling kids, drawing a line in the sand between work and life is virtually impossible. Instead, a more integrated and flexible approach might just be the way to go for modern working mothers.
Be more authentic at work
Working moms are an asset to society in general, and to organizations and businesses in general. From managing multiple responsibilities to negotiating skills, working mothers bring multiple skills that can tremendously improve organizations.
However, these skills are more impactful when working mothers bring their authentic selves to the workplace. Whereas being a working mom might have been considered a career risk in the past, it is now a sign of increased diversity and inclusion, as well as an advantage to the world of work. More importantly, it is a powerful way to open the door for other working mothers coming behind.
Teach kids about what it means to be a working mother
Much of the stigma around working mothers stems from sheer ignorance and lack of education. Much of this lack of awareness starts at home, from the way little boys and girls are socialized, to the implicit and explicit messages they get while growing up. To remedy this, it’s crucial to demystify the misconceptions around working mothers from the onset.
As working moms, we can change these false narratives starting from the way we raise our own kids. From having honest conversations with our children about work, to taking them to the office, we can teach them that not only is it ok to be a working mom, but that there should be more working mothers out there.
Make peace with the guilt
One of the things that is not often talked is the heightened level of guilt felt by working mothers during this pandemic. Spread thin between work, household chores, homeschooling and childcare, most working moms could hardly ever be present in one place or focused on one thing at a time. This in turn caused so many to drop out of the workforce, give in to depression and lower levels of mental health, and generally succumbing to the pressure and massive amounts of guilt.
This coming year, as working mothers, there is a need to make peace with the mom guilt once and for all. Although it may always be present, it can be reframed as motivation instead of an obstacle.
Contribute to gender equality
Working mothers need one another, not just as sources of support, but also as agents of the new Working Motherhood of the future. This also means contributing to gender equality in the workplace by serving as an ally to other working moms, advocating for equal pay, as well as providing women opportunities to advance in their careers. Outside of work, this can also mean participating in local and national politics to promote gender equality.
Advocating for Paid leave
Paid leave is crucial for working moms, and this despite the fact that the United States ranks last among the countries with family-friendly policies. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 requires companies with 50 or more employees to offer mothers of newborns or adopted children 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year. This is compared for instance, to countries like Bulgaria, which offers its new mothers 90% of their salary for more than a year.
Advocating for paid leave by exercising our political rights, speaking up at work or on the platform of our choice, should be one important goal of working moms in the next year.
Consider mental health
The impact of the pandemic has revealed deep, unfortunately often disastrous consequences, on women’s, and working mothers’ mental health. Hence the need to pay more attention to working mothers’ mental state, and general well-being.
Whether it’s engaging in or advocating for more therapy, or focusing more on one’s well-being, mental health should definitely be one of working mothers’ priorities in the new year.
Invest in financial education and empowerment
As working mothers are changing the way they relate to work and life in general, and more structural changes are needed to support them, many, if not most of these changes will require funding and monetary investments. This is where it becomes important for working mothers to harness and leverage the financial knowledge and acumen necessary to do so. Additionally, working mothers are often the ones to determine the education, including the financial education, of their children, and by extension families and communities.
Whether it’s taking an investment class, revisiting one’s budget, or coming up with a new approach to manage money, financial education constitutes an important priority for working mothers.
Building a legacy
Last but not least, working mothers stand on each other’s shoulders. The care, work and devotion of each working mother builds a legacy that the next working mother stands upon. Much of the advances for the benefit of working moms have been achieved by fellow working moms themselves. Hence the importance of creating a legacy as a working mother, through our children, our families, our person and the work we achieve on this plane of life.
Overall, 2022 marks a pivotal year for working mothers, coming out of a global pandemic and re-setting the rules of work and life for moms. Setting goals that can help further the welfare, well-being and fulfillment of working moms can go a long way towards creating a new, improved and powerful working motherhood.
Every year towards somewhere from the beginning to the end of December, the oh so familiar goal-setting, resolution-making dance starts again. From setting SMART goals to building vision boards, it’s all about setting intentions, objectives and/or resolutions for the New Year. Despite these dire statistics, many still believe in setting goals, including many working women. However, nearly 80% of all goals set for the New Year are dropped by the month of February. As studies have found women set goals differently than men, could there be a way to improve the goal-setting process and results by considering these gender differences?
According to one study analyzing gender differences in private and public goal-setting, that is when information about goals is public vs. being private, women tend to choose lower goals than men in general. While men generally tend to outperform women under both private and public goal-setting contexts, women perform worse than women when their goals are made public, as opposed to when their goals are private, in which case they perform better than men. These findings indicate lower levels of self-confidence in women in general, despite the fact that they set more ambitious public goals, which can be explained by the need to socially conform and fit in with the popular opinion. These also confirm higher levels of self-confidence in men, while also supporting gender differences in the attribution of success to external factors such as luck for instance by men, as opposed to internal factors such as skills and abilities for women. Furthermore, the fact that women perform worse under public-goal setting can be correlated with women’s lower performance in competitive environments.
As related to the nature of the goals set by men and women, a 2015 Harvard study demonstrates that while women have more life goals than men, a smaller number of these goals is associated with achieving power in their careers. This is corroborated by earlier studies according to which men and women regard their environments, more specifically their work environments, with different attitudes and expectations, taking us right back to the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, in which females’ position stands at the self-fulfillment level, while males’ position is at the survival level.
What does this mean for women and goal-setting? One thing it could mean is that the traditional ways in which we’ve learnt to set big, ambitious goals was never adapted to the way women set goals. What it could also mean is that if we adapted the goal-setting process to women more, we may obtain more effective and impactful goals overall. If you’re a working woman reading this, then you may want to re-evaluate the way you have been setting goals. Here are three tips to get started:
Start with private rather than public intentions
Goal-setting is a powerful process that requires some serious introspection and self-awareness. As a working woman and mom, it is important for me to set goals that are authentically aligned with my purpose, as opposed to goals imposed by a need to conform to societal or other forms of pressures. Starting this process in a private manner before making any public commitments is a good way to ensure your goals, and commitment to achieve them, are solid.
Tie your professional goals with your life goals
There’s a reason why studies are showing that women have more life goals than men. Considering that women are more concerned with self-fulfillment than men, as well as the many personal and community hats they wear, tying professional to life goals can help check both the life and work boxes.
Avoid competitive goals
As research has shown women perform less well when setting public goals, due to the competitive nature of the latter, it could help to set goals more focused on personal improvement than competitive in nature.
All in all, the goal-setting process for women can be adapted to the unique ways women think, as well as how they envision their lives and careers. This can not only help set more authentic, sustainable and purposeful goals, but also improve women’s overall performance. It is also a wake-up call for organizations and businesses to revisit the goal-setting process based on gender differences, fore more impactful, high-performing goals and more engaged, committed employees.
Performance reviews are stressful. No matter how well you did, or how positive your experience may have been, the fact is, being evaluated on your performance can trigger a certain amount of stress. Especially if you’re a working woman, as gender bias, in addition to the stress already induced, also plays a prominent role in the outcomes obtained…
Research has confirmed performance appraisals are indeed stressful, both on the side of the appraiser and the appraisee. While a higher degree of physiological response was found on the part of males in the study, females appear to pay more of a psychological price. In the context of annual performance reviews more specifically, the psychological price paid by female employees is compounded by the existence of a gender bias against women. Content analysis of annual performance reviews demonstrates female employees are 1.4 more times likely to get “critical subjective feedback”, as reported by the Harvard Business Review. Women also tend to receive less constructive feedback, which would target both positive aspects of their performance while also pinpointing areas of potential growth. Instead, they tend to get feedback that is more vague and elusive in nature. Another finding attributes women’s performance to luck or length of time in the office, as opposed to skills, talents and abilities. With all these negative factors embedded in the performance review process, is it then any wonder that the proverbial “glass ceiling” and “concrete wall” still threaten women’s career progress?
As a working woman, you may have already realized the existence of this bias as part of your annual performance review. You may even have pointed it out to fellow colleagues, friends and family, yet may not have had the opportunity to bring it up to your management. Or you may have boldly voiced your concerns about it, without getting a clear or substantive answer to your worries. Despite this, there are ways to go about fighting the pervasive and unfortunately persisting gender bias in performance reviews. Here are three (3) tips that may help:
Suggest more objective performance criteria
Considering the language used in performance reviews is often vague and gender-neutral, suggesting more objective criteria for your performance review can remove some of the bias involved. For example, referring to more specific attributes related to the projects you’ve completed, such as timeliness, results obtained, etc, can provide more objective and constructive information to assess your performance.
Ask for a broader set of reviewers
Being reviewed by one individual with a given work style, personality, and priorities can be limiting , especially if said individual is prone to gender bias. Having a broader set of reviewers can not only expand the range of feedback received, but also contribute to getting more accurate and constructive reviews. The more diverse the group of reviewers, the better, more varied and enriching the feedback.
Request more frequent performance reviews
Annual performance reviews usually occur during one of the busiest times of the year, when most managers are desperately attempting to successfully close the year, and most people are exhausted by the pressure of year-end deadlines and holidays looming near. Requesting more frequent performance reviews spread out throughout the year can help alleviate the weight of an often incomplete and biased year-end review. Additionally, more timely feedback on projects and assignments throughout the year can help adjust one’s performance in a faster and more efficient manner over time.
Yes, overall, performance reviews are riddled with bias, gender bias more specifically. For many, if not most working women, it can be quite disheartening. However, and as more and more companies are re-assessing their performance review systems, working women can also proactively and constructively fight back by demanding more constructive, frequent and diverse performance reviews.
Have you experienced gender bias in your performance reviews?
Performance reviews are no longer what they used to be. Remember when you used to stress out about your review for days, and prepare for the BIG day by putting your best foot (and outfit) forward, and attempting to master your nerves for the entirety of the review meeting… Fast-forward a couple of years, a global pandemic later, and working more remotely than we ever have, performance reviews have definitely changed. The stress and anticipation are still there, yet are enhanced by a different remote format, a changing work landscape and unstable economic outlook. These factors are all the more impactful for working women and moms, who are already impacted by the existing gender bias in performance reviews.
Effectively, research at the Stanford Graduate School of Business has shown biases exist in the way male and female employees are evaluated, the biggest of these being related to individuals’ personalities, future potential, and exceptionalism. Further, additional research demonstrates employees of color tend to be more significantly and harshly downgraded.
As an introvert and non-confrontational individual, as well as a woman of color, I used to struggle with performance reviews. It’s because of my struggles and the questions that came out of these that I started looking into how to do better in this area. As the COVID pandemic turned remote work in a new normal for many, if not most, even more questions came into play around how to be effective at performance reviews. While the same or similar general advice still applies, from being adequately prepared to presenting oneself well, there are additional nuances and criteria to consider in the modern era of remote performance reviews, some of which are presented below:
Prepare while keeping in mind the current context!
While it is generally (and traditionally) advisable to review your performance, in terms of your accomplishments, challenges and growth during the current year, the context we’re living demands that we consider additional criteria. Switching from traditional to remote work during the pandemic, especially for working women and moms who suffered the brunt of this global crisis, was a life and career-altering change for many, if not most. This drastic change, along with the trauma we all underwent, not only transformed the nature of work, but also that of employees’ performance.
As you review your own performance during this very unique pandemic time, keep in mind the context in play is vastly different than the one you’ve been evaluated in previously. The rules of work have changed, and so have those of performance reviews. As such, look at your performance in an evolved and practical light considering the new factors, environment and systems you’ve faced, and asking yourself additional, more evolved questions to gauge your own work, such as:
How did my work change with the pandemic?
What challenges have I faced and how did I overcome them?
How did I successfully manage to adjust to change?
In what ways did I grow?
What new metrics did I have to work with and how did I perform under these?
Work on your presence!
It’s one thing to be present in person, using facial cues and body language to successfully steer and direct a performance review meeting. It’s another to be assessed remotely, in a non-traditional way and environment, without the natural cues which were available in previously more traditional settings. Believe it or not, this can add another layer of complexity, stress and bias to performance reviews, as remote work has been shown to make working women more susceptible to unconscious bias?
This is where it becomes so important to work on your presence. The first step is to turn on your camera, and ensure you are presenting yourself in a positive manner. This does not just include your personal presentation, from the way you’re dressed to your personal demeanor, but also the environment around you. Creating a clean, uncluttered, and distraction-free background will allow you to present a more professional front, while allowing you to focus on the meeting.
Additionally, remote meetings are perceived by many as an opportunity to multi-task and address other pending priorities. As a working woman and mom with so much on your plate, it may be tempting to do so during your remote performance review. However, refraining from multi-tasking (that email can wait!) will also provide you with the mind space, concentration and availability to make your review as efficient and fruitful as possible.
Don’t be afraid to make the ask!
Last but not least, as remote performance reviews can appear to be more impersonal, they can make it more challenging to be more transparent and actually ask for what you actually need. This is all the more important as prior studies have confirmed a gender divide in negotiations.
Considering the different post-pandemic context that has plagued so many working women and moms with issues ranging from lack of childcare to the unequal distribution of household chores, your professional needs may also have changed. Are you in need of added flexibility? Have your salary requirements changed? Has the new remote context added to your responsibilities and requirements, leaving you short of the resources you actually need to perform your work?
The answers to these questions are important fact to bring to the table during your performance review, and use to ask for what you need in these different times.
Along with these, it’s also crucial to ask for current and future expectations based on the new work context we’re under. Last but not least, asking for next steps is a must as you conclude your remote performance review.
All in all, as you prepare for your performance review, please keep in mind that while many of the traditional advice applies, the context has drastically changed. Taking a more evolved and proactive stance in light of the current situation you’re in can help in having a more transparent, effective and impactful performance review.
How are you approaching your remote performance review in 2021?
The end of the year is a particularly busy time, especially for working women and moms. Not only are most of the holiday-related tasks, including gift-buying and giving, as well as hosting and prepping, on women’s to-do lists, but work responsibilities also tend to pile up then too. With all the distractions and other personal and family obligations over the holidays, staying on track and on task at work can be quite the challenge. As working moms, it becomes a matter of efficient strategizing to boost your career (without losing your sanity).
In my experience, attempting to do it all over the holidays (and frankly at any other time) is close to impossible. Rather, it forces so many of us to over-extend ourselves, push beyond our limits, and threaten our own mental and physical health, not to mention our sense of self and joy during what is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year.
This is where a solid strategy comes into play, one that does not require piling on more than what is necessary, but rather conducting an honest assessment of where we stand and fill in the gaps where absolutely needed:
Check in with your beginning of the year goals
There’s a famous African proverb that says: “In order to know where you’re going, you must know where you’re coming from.” This applies to all areas of life, but I’ve found it most impactful in the workplace. To close out a year successfully and set out the best direction for the future, it’s important to go back to what was set in motion at the beginning of the year.
What were your beginning-of-year goals? What priorities did you set to achieve when the year started? How did you do with these? This will not only allow you to celebrate what you have been able to achieve and get some much-needed encouragement and motivation. It will also allow you to identify what is missing and may need to get done before the end of the year.
Prioritize impactful pending tasks
As you identify and prioritize remaining tasks that need to be addressed by the end of the year, or have to put out some last-minute holiday fires, take some time to prioritize. Again, not everything needs to be done by December 31! Not everything is a priority.
However, there are some tasks that have more impact on your career and track record, as well as on the short-term welfare of your team, department and/or organization. These are the tasks that should be on your priority list. Anything else that can be postponed, delegated, or even cancelled should go.
Communicate your needs and plans!
As busy as the end of the year may be, it’s also a time when communication with your team and colleagues is of utmost importance. As you set your priorities and to-do’s to attend to, including your personal priorities, it’s crucial to communicate these to those who are also impacted by your work.
Getting on the same page with those you work with will help you avoid many a misunderstanding, and even get you the support, help and encouragement you need to bring your work to a successful close this year.
Say NO
If there is any time when using the power of NO comes in handy, it’s during high-stress, high-expectation times like the holidays. As a working woman and mom, so much is expected of you over this time, from family, friends and colleagues alike. This is the time to know and recognize your own limits, not in an admission of weakness (all to the contrary), but rather in an honest and quite powerful way to preserve yourself and others.
Keeping the lines of communication open and delineating the impact of the tasks on yours and your team’s to-do list, and most importantly being honest and transparent, will save you much trouble and headache. Most importantly, it will allow you to free up time to focus on what truly matters to you.
Recap and learn
One of the most important parts of successfully closing the year at work is being able to learn from the time that has passed. In a haste to get it all done, so many of us miss out on the opportunity to truly learn and grow just by analyzing the patterns of the past year and drawing invaluable insights from these.
What worked well this year? What didn’t work so well? What are impactful areas of growth? What should be kept, and what should be dropped, delegated, or postponed? What can be tweaked or totally changed? These are just some questions to ponder and learn from as we close a professional year.
Set your goals for next year
Last but not least, out of all that’s been done, learnt and worked on during the year, along with our desires and purpose, our future goals should emerge. While they may not be totally clear as we close the year, they should feed off our experience, victories and lessons learning to at least start forming the beginning outline of what we want the future to look like for us.
How do you successfully manage the close the year at work as a working woman and mom?
Welcome to this week’s News Roundup, where we chat about what happened in the news around working women and moms’ careers, businesses, parenting and lifestyles. Read up…
· Entrepreneur shares 3 communication errors that negatively impact women leaders;
· Using Linked In resume builder? Lifehacker tells you when to use it and when not to use it;
· Mamas, want to enjoy more time with your kids? Working Mother suggests spending less time with them;
· Got Imposter Syndrome? Forbes Leadership says the best antidote is knowing your value;
· Hello Black Friday! Corporette shares Nordstrom’s Black Friday sales;
· Starting your Christmas shopping? Black Enterprise lists 8 must-grab books for kids;
· Ready for some Thanskgiving pies? Joy The Baker shares 6 best pie ideas for Thanksgiving.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has been a hot topic in the recent years, as companies and organizations have been striving to being more inclusive, equitable and diverse. However, there is obviously still much learning and work to do around ways to advocate for more DEI.
While there is a large misconception around the fact that DEI work has to be done at the highest levels of management, the reality is this work can be completed at all levels of the organization. DEI work is not just the responsibility of management or leadership, although much of its outcome is heavily impacted by the “tone at the top”. At the core, DEI work is the responsibility of each and every individual making up the fabric of an organization. In this sense, everyone can contribute to and advocated for increased diversity, equity and inclusion at work.
Here three major ways in which you, and all of us really, can advocate for increased DEI in your organization:
Start by educating ourselves and others in the process
DEI is still a relatively new concept, especially in the realm of organizations and companies. Its meaning has been evolving over time, yet there is so much most of us need to learn about it, both in terms of what it truly encompasses, and what the best ways to implement it are. This is why it’s crucial to start by educating ourselves and others in the process.
Educating ourselves on DEI can be done in many ways, from reading books to consulting related studies. Some interesting books to consider include The Memo by Minda Harts, So you want to talk about race by Ijeoma Oluo, or Yellow by Frank H. Wu. Studies such as McKinsey’s 2015 Why Diversity Matters report on public companies, Morgan Stanley’s 2016 research on “Why it pays to invest in gender diversity”, or “The Other Diversity Dividend” report by the Harvard Business Review, are also valuable tools to gain more information on DEI and its positive impact on productivity, innovation and creativity. These educational tools not only help understand the concept and history behind DEI better, but also allow to make the business case for DEI.
What you can do: Read and share books and studies about diversity, equity and inclusion in your workplace, department or team. Educating yourself and others can bring about a real difference in how you work with others, as well as how your direct professional environment deals with DEI.
Promote sensitivity and anti-bias training
Many, if not most people, are not aware of what constitutes micro-aggressions, or micro-inequities. Even more people are unaware of the struggles faced by minoritized communities, and how individuals, as well as organizations and communities, can help. This is where anti-bias and DEI training can help.
While training and practice cannot (and should not be expected) to eradicate injustices and biases of all kinds, it does contribute to helping educate, sensitize and inform people of these issues.
What you can do: If you’re in a position to include or recommend DEI training as part of your team’s required professional development, please consider doing so. You can also join Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which are voluntary, employee-led groups devoted to fostering inclusive and diverse workplaces, and recommend bias and diversity trainings if they are not already being offered.
Contribute to Changing Your Organization’s Culture
Ultimately, diversity, equity and inclusion must be reflected in the organization’s culture in order to truly have a positive impact. A diverse, equitable and inclusive culture is one where everyone can freely contribute, show up as their authentic selves, and be treated equitably. Changing an organizational culture towards increased diversity, equity and inclusion is a monumental endeavor, which requires everyone’s input and collaboration.
It starts with assessing where the organization stands in terms of DEI, and be honest about the culture of the place. This can be done by asking for feedback and being open to individuals’, teams and units’ assessments of the organization. It also requires displaying empathy and being open to differences of opinion and even virulent disagreements and conflicts in the process. Yet, as challenging a process as it can be, it also has the potential of identifying the blocks and obstacles, such as the proverbial “glass ceiling” for instance, standing in the way of a more diverse, equitable and inclusive culture.
What you can do: Be part of the culture change at your organization, in whatever capacity you can.
How are you advocating for more diversity, equity and inclusion in your organization?
