Beyond "Lean In" - Part II
Beyond "Lean In" - Part II
More thoughts on how to *actually* shatter the glass ceiling
👋 I challenge conventional thinking to help people craft well-rounded lives that blend career, caregiving and self-care.
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Welcome new Rule Breakers who joined us for the “Success According To You” session. This is where we’ll continue the learning and exploration towards well-rounded lives.
Two weeks ago, I kicked off my new corporate feminist manifesto – a response, an evolution, to the whole 'Lean In' era.
In Part 1, I tackled Sheryl Sandberg’s “sit at the table” advice. If you missed it, check it out for background on my perspective.
Today, we dive into the trickiest tenet: “make your partner a real partner.” Buckle up... I have a lot to say!
Honestly, this is my least favourite tenet because it's sneaky, disguised as pro-women advice but so so so misses the mark.
Ready to unpack this together? Let's dive in!
What “Make Your Partner A Real Partner” Is Intended To Say
The message behind this slogan urges women to demand equal involvement in caregiving from their partners.
In Sheryl's book, alarming 2009 stats revealed mothers shouldered 40% more childcare and 30% more housework than fathers. Even with dual-earner couples, only 9% reported a truly equal division. Sadly, a 2020 Gallup poll confirms little has changed, with younger men no more likely to share housework than older generations.
So even today this advice seems like common sense, right? But the reality is far from a simple 50/50 split.
If you're up with the kids at dawn, your partner should handle evenings. If you cook, they should clean. At least in theory... but theory falls short when we consider individual preferences, skills, and the demands of modern work.
Let me explain.
Why “Make Your Partner A Real Partner” Fails Women
The "Lean In" philosophy presents two flawed solutions.
First, it places the burden on women to demand equal effort from their partners. Just like with “sit at the table” where women had to work to adapt their own behaviour to fit into the masculine corporate world, in this scenario they have to train their husbands to fit the bill at home.
To rectify this, Sheryl proposes women get out of the way. As she puts it: “I have seen so many women inadvertently discourage their husbands from doing their share by being too controlling or critical”. Sociologists call this “maternal gatekeeping” or as Sheryl puts it in the book: “Ohmigod, that’s not the way you do it! Just move aside and let me!”.
But this ignores a fundamental issue: men often haven't been socialized from childhood to take equal ownership of caregiving tasks. The skills of organizing, nurturing, and practical care are traditionally instilled in girls. Simply expecting men to step into a 50/50 role without that foundation is unrealistic. (I’ve shared my take on how to do that - tea sets for male toddlers!)
Second, even if we assume women can get men on board, there's a bigger problem: the best-paying, most powerful jobs are inherently at odds with caregiving responsibilities.
I’ve talked a lot already of Claudia Goldin's Nobel Prize winning research - but I’ll repeat it again: higher earnings demand longer hours and inflexibility, which is a model incompatible with the daily needs of caregiving.
Aiming for a true 50/50 split with traditional caregiving won't propel women to the top. It's outsourcing – nannies, chefs, etc. – that fuels advancement. Yet, even that model relies on an underpaid caregiving workforce (often women of color), highlighting the inequality it perpetuates.
To illustrate this incompatibility, think of a high-powered lawyer with unpredictable court dates and late nights – no amount of 50/50 division can accommodate that schedule with caregiving needs. This flaw reveals the larger problem: the system itself isn't built to assign the true value of careging, and women disproportionately bear that cost.
Instead, I Vote For: Value Caregiving!
If we truly valued caregiving, everyone would be involved naturally without being “made” to do something.
Men would choose to leave work earlier. We know they do want to spend more time with their kids but currently there is too much sacrifice to income and status. Placing value on caregiving would allow their natural inclinations to come to life.
Caregivers across the board, from nannies to those caring for aging family, would receive fair compensation. This in turn would encourage wider participation and greater relief for the often lone woman trying to hold up a household and career.
Factoring unpaid caregiving into our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculations would be an essential part of assigning value. We have to remember that GDP is just something we humans made up. In 1934, Simon Kunzets presented his approach to calculate national income to the US Congress and a decade later it was globally adopted as the way we would value and compare the output from each country.
At the same time as this was all happening, Margaret Reid was advocating for the inclusion of household labour. In her own 1934 book on economic production, Reid called the household “our most important economic resource”.
We know what happened. Kunzets didn’t like the idea of including something we couldn’t measure (forgetting that we made up the systems of measurement for everything else!) and here we are today.
Acting on Reid and many other feminist economists since then’s research, highlight unpaid household labour in GDP would show its immense economic value and shift how we allocate resources. Instead of framing caregiving as dividing up undesirable tasks, we elevate it to reflect its true worth.
With equal value placed on both kinds of labour, we then can agree that that contributions might not be perfectly equal, yet worthy nonetheless. Eve Rodsky's work on "invisible labor" offers tools like her "Fair Play" system to make this visible. Her method ensures both partners understand the weight each carries, regardless of precise division.
We also need to address men directly. Zachary Watson, a self-proclaimed “recovering man child” is among those urging men to become aware of the mental load women often bear. Think of this as the constant mental inventory: what's in the fridge, meal planning around specific needs, cleaning and maintenance schedules... the list goes on.
My corporate feminist manifesto includes tangible actions to value caregiving:
Incorporate unpaid caregiving into GDP calculations. This initiates the process of recognizing its worth and leads to fairer remuneration, like better parental leave benefits.
Teach caregiving skills to everyone from a young age. This means tea sets for boys, and promoting babysitting courses for preteen boys along side STEM courses for high school girls.
Normalize caregiving as everyone's responsibility. This would look like the 25-year-old intern helping an older cousin with their kids, a 40-year-old VP being home every day to make dinner and a 55-year-old CEO doing meal prep for their aging parent.
This one sits heavy for me because I spent a lot of years angry about the unequal distribution of household labour, despite having a very active and involved partner.
I held deep resentment when it wasn’t 50/50. I fully bought into the idea that I could “make my partner a real partner” and so when it wasn’t the case, I felt like I was failing in some way. And since I was failing, I was holding myself back and was the sucker who got stuck in the slow lane.
It was a game changer when I understood that it will never be 50/50, that it isn’t my fault and that it was my choice to dedicate time to caregiving. So ultimately, it was up to me to value caregiving as much as I did my professional work because society wasn’t going to do it for me.
It is this revelation and a whole lot more that is going into the course I’ve just launched for working parents who feel both overwhelmed and unproductive at the same time.
If you’ve been jiving with my writing and thinking, please join me.
And I don’t think I’m alone. Share your thoughts and experiences if you’re in the same boat!
Keep Well-Rounded,
J
P.S. I’m prioritizing shipping over perfection, so this post may not convey all my thoughts perfectly. I’d love comments or questions to keep the discovery going.
P.P.S. With thanks, as always, to my Junior Associate, ChatGPT-4.0 AND Gemini Advanced