This episode is part of our “Black Women at Work” series in honor of Black History Month.
Today, we’re discussing the 7 most common struggles faced by Black women in the workplace. From lack of representation to lack of access to higher levels of management, there are many hurdles in their path. However, shedding light on these allows us to be more educated about these, and also to heal and bring effective solutions and strategies to these issues.
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In this episode, I delve into 3 tips to transition into the New Year as a woman at work. While we discussed setting goals in last episode, here we dig into the work to do to actually effectively cross the threshold from one year to the other at work.
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Thanks for Listening!
Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this week’s episode! If you enjoyed this week’s episode, please share it by using the social media at the bottom of this post!
Also, leave me a review for the TCS podcast on Apple Podcasts !
Making the transition to a new year can be quite a daunting process. Making the transition to a new year in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, school and daycare closures, a general movement of career resignation, in a time riddled with social and political instability, is a monumentally challenging feat. As we step into the next twelve months of what seems an unending crisis, working moms everywhere are gearing up for yet another difficult shift.
From carrying the brunt of the COVID-19 global crisis, both on the home and career front, to continuing to live with the trauma and angst of disease, school and daycare closures, work layoffs and resignations, the challenges have not diminished for working mothers. Quite to the contrary… Adding to it the ever-continuing debate around paid leave, gender equity, and the need for increased diversity and inclusion at work in general, and many are just waiting to wake up from the longest nightmare ever…
Yet, there are ways organizations and businesses can help to lessen the weight on working moms’ shoulders, while providing an incentive for them to keep and strive in their careers, instead of punishing them for what is largely out of their control. Here are a few suggestions, as we’re starting this new year:
Listen more to working mother’s needs
Much of the structural and cultural foundation of businesses and organizations as we know them have been inherited from a fundamental patriarchal setting. This is a setting which has not allowed for women’s voices to be heard enough in order for the needed structural, cultural and behavioral changes to be put in place and implemented. As an increasing number of working mothers are raising their voices, most notably as a result of the recent pandemic, many are realizing the unmet needs, and resulting pressures on motherhood. Something as simple as creating forums and spaces where working mothers’ voices can continue to be heard can bring about more of the much-needed awareness around what’s truly at stake, as well as ways to remedy these issues.
Hire and promote more working mothers
This involves removing barriers, and opening doors of opportunity for working moms to reach levels of influence where their combined experience, knowledge and acumen can create positive change for other working mothers. It’s also a matter of acknowledging the often unconscious bias standing in the way of working mother’s hiring and promotions, including but not limited to the broken rung, glass ceiling, and gender pay gap…
Offer flexible options…
As has been shown during the pandemic, strategic, well-managed flexibility does not hinder employees’ performance, but rather can increase it. Flexibility for working mothers is essential to manage the various areas of their work and life, which makes it important for businesses and organizations to offer these options.
…but don’t punish them for choosing flexibility
However, there is often a negative bias associated with flexible work options, especially when these are taken advantage of by working mothers. The latter are often assumed not to be able to handle the demands of motherhood and work, thus unfortunately in many cases being sidelined for advancement or not considered leadership material. The proverbial “mommy track” has been dubbed as such in reference to the lessened career advancement opportunities offered to working mothers taking advantage of flexible work options or reduced work hours for greater work-life balance.
Review current policies and procedures
Many, if not most, organizational and business policies and procedures are not specific enough to cover the needs of working mothers. Neither do they consider the range of issues that can affect a working mom parenting in circumstances as dire as a global pandemic, such as having to work from home with a sick kid, for instance. Reviewing current policies and procedures, at least on an annual basis, can help identify gaps that can be remedied in the short or long-term.
Revisit the company’s culture
Last but not least, much of the existing gender bias, inequities and inequalities are embedded in organizational and business cultures that have been prevalent for a very long time. While it may not be written or documented anywhere, the organizational culture is an important indicator of the way employees, including working mothers, are perceived and treated. Revisiting it can help in understanding the barriers standing in the way of working moms, especially in the midst of the current pandemic, and devise ways to lessen or eliminate these entirely.
What are other ways for organizations to help working moms this year?
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.
If you ask most working women and moms, time is not only a hard commodity to come by, especially in the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s also a fluid concept that doesn’t necessarily abide by all, or most of the official time management techniques…Not when interruptions are par for the course, and last-minute crisis management becomes a given on any day…
Managing time for working women and moms is far from being an organized, disciplined, scheduled day-to-day sequence of events and choices. Rather, it’s a spontaneous, change-laden, transition-filled and evolving process on the best of days. On the worst of days, it’s managed chaos under somewhat of a sense of serendipitous control.
The reason behind this is the long-lost realization that for working women and moms, time management is less of a choice than it is a constant, regular trade-off between what’s most important and what’s less important, what has to be addressed now versus what can wait another minute, what cannot be planned yet still happens and what happened without ever being planned…The COVID-19 pandemic was a harsh reminder of this fact, exposing the whole world to the fragile subjectivity and utter subordination of women’s time, energy and devotion to unending, unpaid and often un-rewarded, endless caregiving…
In her book “Year of Yes: How to Dance is Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person”, Shonda Rhimes says it well: “That is the trade-off. That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous. Something is always lost. Something is always missing. And yet. I want my daughters to see me and know me as a woman who works. I want that example set for them”. Yet, it’s this constant, often heart-wrenching trade-off, that also teaches our daughters and sons about not giving up on who they are while still giving of themselves. It’s this trade-off that has allowed the world to benefit from the indispensable contributions of women to all fields of work and life. Most importantly, it’s on the harsh yet generous foundational shoulders of this trade-off that so many of us stand today, to accomplish the work of our lives and leave the legacy of our existences.
Don’t get me wrong, time management is crucial. However, the traditional idea of time management, the one constructed around the history, traditions and schedules of a patriarchal system, are no longer reflecting the realities of a working population made up by half of working women and mothers. We must re-think antiquated concepts of time and ways to manage it, as part of the now accelerated process of change and renewal our society is finding itself in the midst of. Part of this, maybe the most important part of this, is the realization that for working women and mothers, time is but a trade-off.
Do you agree that time management is a matter of a trade -off for working women and moms?
