Women's work?

Recently, the Boston Globe ran an article entitled "At the office, unrewarded work often falls to women."

Based on the title alone, I had a few immediate reactions:

• No shit, Sherlock
• Been there, done that
• Guess nothing ever changes
• It isn't all that terrible 

The point of the article was that all the "service-oriented tasks" that women see to - making sure there's a sheet cake ordered for someone's birthday, taking meeting notes, etc. - "usually come with little benefit to their careers." The article cited a book, "The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women's Dead-End Work," which is backed by research that finds that women get stuck with:

...non-promotable work...because they're expected to. For women, being helpful is a cultural norm. They feel guilty saying no, and there are repercussions when they do, such as not being seen as a team player.

“We’ve internalized those expectations that everybody holds,” said coauthor Lise Vesterlund, an economics professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s very easy for men to say no, because there are no consequences.”

For women, there are consequences either way. Performing these often invisible roles can take time away from core duties, meaning they could risk getting passed over for promotions, leading to fewer women in leadership positions and less money in their pockets. And if women offer assistance on top of all their other work, it can lead to long hours and added stress. 

At one company the researchers looked at, the amount of time that women spent on "non-promotable tasks" was 200 hours more than the average man spent on them.

Where to begin? Perhaps if I'd spent less of my time as a career woman on non-promotable tasks, I'd know where.

First, I'll start by admitting that I'm old. And out of the game. Things are different for women now, and they have different expectations, different things that they'll accept as a given. For starters, they just don't put up with the crude sexist BS that were pretty much grinned through and borne by women of my effort. Good for them! 

But what's wrong with following the cultural norm of being helpful?

I guess I was just plain naive to think that a workplace that had more women in it would come around to becoming more supportive, inclusive, humane, collaborative, and empathetic. That the cultural norm would become universal and not (just) women's work. Sigh.

I didn't have a blazingly successful career. I didn't really aspire to one. I had a reasonable degree of success - I got to be a boss, I got to help run things - but I never wanted to be the president of GM or a partner at Bain. Good thing. 

But I did generally get ahead at the places I worked, and I always thought that one of the reasons I did was that I always tried to make wherever I worked more supportive, inclusive, humane, collaborative, and empathetic.

Which meant sometimes I was the one who ordered the sheet cake. And a lot of the time, I was on the one who took the notes at meetings - a task that I never resented. 

Working in tech, I was often the only woman at "the table." Maybe I fell into being the note taker because I was a "gal," just a half-generation removed from perching on a stool with my steno pad. But because it involved writing (i.e., summarizing what happened at the meeting), I enjoyed it. I also liked the

fact that it let me shape the narrative of what had happened at the meeting. E.g., I realized early on that a woman's voice is like a dog whistle: only certain ears are tuned to hear it. Thus, I would make a point or suggestion, only to find it ignored until it was made by one of my (male) colleagues a few minutes later. Hmmmm. In the minutes, I got to be the author of the original point, and Joe Blow got to be my supporter. I could also leave out some of the dumber ideas put forth at the meetings in hopes that they would not be acted on. Sometimes it actually worked.

And, apparently, note-taking is still not considered all that bad:

Susan Loconto Penta, co-founder of MIDIOR Consulting in Cambridge, has noticed that in client meetings, the employees taking the notes are usually women. And then they get stuck. “Once taking the note, always taking the note,” she said. This doesn’t have to be purely a secretarial role, though, said Penta, 57, who counsels women to take ownership of the notes by advancing projects and allocating tasks.

Yes!

Meanwhile, I'm wracking my brain trying to remember where I met Susan Penta. Pretty sure she pitched a consulting job - and I'm pretty sure got it - at one company or another that I worked at. 

I don't remember disliking her. I don't remember liking her. I just remember her being around trying to do something to help whatever dysfunctional outfit I was with out. 

Penta also cringes when a woman at a client company brings sweets to board meetings. This well-intentioned gesture could cause younger colleagues who aren’t aware of her skills to have less respect for her, she said.

Well, yes to this.

If someone's toting food to board meetings, it ought to be on a take turns basis. 

This brings to mind an incident from somewhere in the middle of my illustrious corporate career.

My boss was one of the two female VP's at the company. 

The executive committee was conducting day-long meetings covering plans for each of the company's products. For some daft reason, product managers (that would be me) weren't invited, even though they knew more about the products, markets, competition, etc. than anyone else. Bizarrely, the tech counterpart to each product manager was invited.

Anyway, I made my case that product managers should be there and was shot down.

And then, right before noon, my boss had a slight change of heart.

She came into my office and told me, "I think I found a way for you to come into the meeting."

Say what?

Anyway, the way she found was that I would go out and pick up some pizzas, bring them in, and then sit down and stay a while.

I told her that there was no way I was going in delivering pizzas. Furthermore, I told her that she shouldn't be the one who was always jumping up to order food whenever a senior team meeting ran through lunch. (She was, of course, the one who always jumped up. Kudos to the other female VP, who I also reported to at another point, for never being the helpmeet.)

Anyway, women's work as an issue has apparently become a thing. "No Clubs" are supposedly springing up around the country. 

A good thing? Yes/No/Maybe.

I certainly don't want to see women dead-ended by letting themselves get swamped with spending so much time on tasks that just aren't valued. 

Still, I hate to think of a workplace where there's no such thing as a sheet cake...