Women can do better – or can do too?

Why I think the gender equality and women leadership movements need to drop the argument of “better”. And yes, I write about cleaning toilets in this blog too.

I have spent a lot of time listening during the past two weeks. With a felt 35 webinars running simultaneously each hour on development, humanitarian and health topics, this has been quite easy to do in practice – although I’m not sure I recommend the advanced version of listening to two audio channels at the same time (I’d claim a beginners’ multi-tasking job, coming from a mom of four).

I’ve focused primarily on two topics that interest me at the moment: decolonisation of the aid/humanitarian/health sector, and gender equality/women in leadership.

These two debates are raising some fundamental – and very uncomfortable – questions about our sector, including:

• Who is making decisions that affect other people, who is excluded from decision-making that affects them?
• Who has the power to determine what gets prioritised and communicated, and how?
• Who gets excluded from discussions and decision-making – and why?
• Why do we have lack of diversity, and exclusion in our sector? Is our governance and institutional set-up to blame? Or individuals who benefit from this set-up?
• How does and can change happen – very practically?

The decolonisation debate is currently broader, and also angrier – but currently still quite fragmented. I’ll write about it more in a later blog and focus on gender equality and women’s leadership in this piece.

First, a few positives. It’s great to see many new initiatives calling for more focus on gender, gender equality, and women’s leadership. Each initiative – whether global, sector-focused, or within an organisation or institution – plays an important role in sensitising others to inequalities, unfair treatment, and potentially or very practically discriminating policies. Ideally, such initiatives and movements can provide individuals with facts, tools and best practices to raise questions, mobilise others in support, and convince leadership of the benefits of change. In the least, they can help point to systematic challenges, and show individuals who have suffered from discrimination that they are not alone.

However, there’s some room for improvement. For one, there’s a lot of yay-saying on this topic (and especially on panels) at the moment from all directions – but very little action and accountability. Second, although gender movements are good at rallying other women as allies, they have to date done poorly on building alliances with other movements, including with men. I recall attending some of my first gender conferences over a decade ago, and feeling incredibly uncomfortable sitting in a room with 999 other women, criticising the one man who had been invited to join. We’ve thankfully moved on, and some gender movements and campaigns have built on the power of allyship (such as HeForShe), but there’s still a lot of antagonising language. For example, I’ve expressed some discomfort before on the argument that successful Covid responses have only been led by women leaders, and that this shows that women are better leaders. Here too, the language is thankfully moving more into focusing on leadership attributes (e.g. empathy, listening, caring, communication, involvement), rather than focusing on pure biology – but there’s still some way to go to make this clearer. The conclusion then changes from “and therefore all leaders should be women” to “men can learn to become better leaders too”.

This latter argument doesn’t fly well with many people in the gender equality and women leadership community (I at least haven’t seen many press releases or tweets accordingly). “Women can do better” is one argument that is still common, as the Covid19 example shows. Another common one is that “women deserve to be leaders”, because they haven’t had the chance for the past centuries.

I’m personally more in favour of an argument – less provocative, but I think more in line with reality – that is along the lines of “women can do too”. I may have been brought up and socialised this way (as a Finn with a very Nordic upbringing): women can do all the same things that men can do too. We don’t need to do them better, it’s enough that we can do these things too. And to make this happen in reality, men need to be able to and encouraged to do what women typically do or are expected to do: Caring for babies, cleaning the toilets, shopping for clothes with teenagers, caring for sick children or elderly parents, etc. Our social security and tax systems also need to change, but this change isn’t happening fast enough for our generation, and isn’t providing the support we need right now during Covid19 when all support structures are breaking away or not available – so something needs to budge within the household, immediately.

I still believe that women can have it all (contrary to the seminal Atlantic article by Anne-Marie Slaughter). I believe women can be anything they want to be, leaders too. They may not be better leaders at the individual level (they can be appalling bad and brutal leaders too!), but everyone deserves the same chance. And based on my own experience, having worked and had four children at the same time, it’s only possible if there’s a lot of leaning in and leaning out going on simultaneously. I have actively leaned into every new learning, career step, and possibility to increase my responsibility in my career. I have actively leaned out of cleaning toilets, and out of jobs that have had no perspective other than pay and logging in more time for my CV. In return, my husband has actively leaned out of his career whenever I’ve decided to make a jump or prove myself anew. And he’s actively leaned into childcare, covering a kazillion things in the household and during illnesses, and yes – those toilets too, even if it’s at 10pm after a full day at the office and evening with children.

I’ve over the years been very open that I didn’t start out believing gender inequalities were a huge problem. I come from such a privileged place, with my upbringing, culture, education and partnership. Having several children was an eye-opener for me, and of course also having worked on issues such as violence against children and women, and lack of rights to access family planning services. I’ve become a believer and advocate for “women can do too”, and have every right to.

Maybe I’ve just been extremely lucky to have so many men as leaders whom I admire greatly, who have ticked every single box on those leadership attributes that we so often claim are just for women leaders. Maybe I’m not advanced enough in my career to have seen that women really lead better. But right now, I simply don’t buy the argument yet that “women can do better.” We need a different argument, and I think it will take us further too in the gender equality and women leadership movement, while living the values of empathy, collaboration, communication, compassion – and perhaps two key ones (at least to me personally): humility and partnership.   

Motherhood Penalty and Fatherhood Premium in the Zoom Era

As nearly 40 million other people, I for several days watched on repeat and laughed at the 2017 BBC live interview of a father whose toddler makes a surprise entrance during the interview. During the Covid19 shutdown, when many people are in home office, and even news anchors and late-night show hosts broadcast from their homes, kids popping up in TV shows and during Zoom meetings has become a new normal.

Or has it?

I’ve noticed that a little toddler perched on a father’s knee for a while during a Zoom call is quite frequent, but more rare for working mothers (who, as most studies already show, are covering additional child care and household tasks to ensure that men can keep working normally, even if they have full-time jobs of their own).

The reason for less mothers with toddlers during calls may be that also during Covid19 and home office work, fatherhood premiums and motherhood penalties kick in. As studies from many countries have shown, when working women have children, their salary drops – whereas men who have children see their salary increase. Why?

Most childcare and household tasks are still carried out primarily by women, irrespective of their working status. With an increasing burden of care and tasks, women often opt to reduce paid working hours, or take a step back in the career competition. Some drop out fully, or for long periods. They also frequently miss out on jobs and promotions when they are in childbearing age, due to the perceived risk that they will drop out or step back.

Men, on the other hand, are seen as more reliable when they have families. They are perceived as being conscientious breadwinners, who have an interest to be successful in their careers, in order to be able to pay for their family costs. They have wives who downscale working hours, or they outsource care if needed. When men have children, the expectation is that they will work more and harder, not less.

In Zoom meetings, men who “show” their children are rewarded, at the minimum they are applauded for showing their care-taking side. Women, on the other hand, are often perceived as unprofessional, or unable to separate the professional from the personal. They are showing not their children, but their “risks” (the “she’ll not manage this”, “she’s clearly struggling”, “this made her priorities above work success evident”).

I recently spoke to a successful working mother of several children. We spoke about how open – or not – we have during our careers been about our children. Not only whether we have children, and how many, but how much we mention them during our work days. At least in my case, living in a country where many mothers still stay at home or work part-time (and are expected to do so), I’ve struggled with this question early on in my career, but also during every application process. This is probably what makes me so adamant to support parents who have children, want to have them, and raise them, whenever I manage staff.

One potential solution to this dilemma would be to “normalize” the image we have of working parents. Most of our colleagues, managers, and staff, know us as professional beings. They see one very narrow side. Zoom during school and daycare closures has, as some people have pointed out, forced this normalization. You see different facets of people, and get a glimpse of their lives beyond what you see at a conference table or behind a computer (for the better or worse).

For managers and leadership, acting as “role models” of what is tolerated, accepted, or even encouraged is often central to this mantra of “normalization”. If my boss can sit through a Zoom meeting with a toddler on their lap, why can’t I?

Well, unfortunately there is something called power dynamics that comes into play here. This happens at the office as well. A boss who “leads by example” by picking up their kids each afternoon may not be quite as supportive when staff does this – and don’t deliver what is expected exactly when expected. Similarly, when that time-sensitive memo doesn’t reach expectations after a Zoom call, a boss can pull the “are you having challenges multi-tasking or reaching deadlines during tough periods” card. As staff, you are always vulnerable to having any personal information used against you at some point – also by competitive colleagues.

As working mothers, we’ve unfortunately been brainwashed to view our children as our greatest richness and blessing – but also our greatest professional vulnerability. This is why many of us don’t Zoom with kids on our laps, and perhaps also because fathers are not ready or willing to be on standby when that cute little toddler decides to loudly start repeating they want to watch a film, or throws a tantrum, just when you are expected to deliver your inputs and feedback on the call.

This is not to say that many women don’t manage this situation professionally, in a calm way, or humanely. Many mothers don’t have a choice, especially single working mothers. I can think of several working mothers who just accept things as they are, and get stuff done anyway, child or no child on their lap. But they are very few.

On your next Zoom call, or when you watch broadcasts from home, take a close look at who is holding that toddler or “showing” their kids. And think about those penalties and premiums, and how we need to make some changes fast to what is acceptable, tolerated – and what should never be allowed to be used against us as parents.

Defending Gender Equality During Covid19 – Who is cooking the potatoes?

Many people have argued that Covid19 has thrown gender equality back to the 1950s. Women are back in the kitchen cooking, in the household cleaning, and taking care of children and elderly parents during shutdown – many while trying to juggle a paid job on the side. Even those women who still have secure jobs during the Covid19 crisis (“essential jobs” such as doctors, health workers, care takers) are wondering how to make this juggle work.

In poorer countries, many girls are unlikely to ever return into schools or education, and unintended pregnancies will increase, stalling development and income opportunities for entire generations. In all countries, gender based violence has increased.

For the wealthy, restaurant meals, household helpers, cleaners, nannies, schools and daycares are no longer an option, throwing tasks that were previously outsourced back on the shoulders of women to carry. For those with less income, or who had previously relied on grandparents and friends, the shutdown has had a similar effect. For other women, especially single mothers, the burden may be equally or more back-breaking than before. Women who are juggling work and childcare who do not have understanding employers or clients are juggling the impossible – unless they can survive on 3 hours of sleep for months on end.

Where are the men?

Some women who are the breadwinners in the family may be relying on men who cover childcare and household tasks. But this may not always be the case. Even in households where women earn more than men, or are the sole breadwinners, women often take more responsibility for childcare and household tasks than sole breadwinner men would. Gender norms – imposed by both men and sometimes women themselves – explain this discrepancy.

But for most families, the man is the main breadwinner. He may not work more, but he earns more (in most OECD countries, this earning gap is between 10 and 20%). In a crisis situation, such as Covid19 – but also in daily crises parents know too well, such as unexpected school closures, children’s illnesses, or when a babysitter is suddenly unavailable – the man’s work trumps a woman’s. Why?

Most families need to think and plan longer-term, and think not only about individuals, but of the entire family. If I lose my job, what impact will my job loss have on the entire household, including my children? Will we have enough income to pay the rent? Pay for food? Have health insurance coverage, or pay for school fees? Will I find a new job fast enough to cover not only a month, but for a year?

Unfortunately for women, this long term thinking does not run long enough to cover old age and pensions. Because women earn less (and often drop out from the job market, or work less than full time), women receive 30% less pension than men, leading to more old-age poverty for women.

In some countries, taxation also plays a large role. Where incomes are heavily taxed, labour to support “outsourcing” of household tasks is too expensive for many families. Who covers these task? Primarily women. And in countries such as Germany, men’s and women’s incomes are taxed in a way that benefits the higher earner (nearly always men, due to the pay gap), and comes at the cost of women’s income – often in a way that makes it more beneficial for the women not to work. Net income matters for gender equality, because it may drive women to stay out of or leave the workforce. Again, however, a longer term thinking about investments into pensions for women is often ignored.

During Covid19, we are seeing this short term thinking in full action. But it is also showing us – also in higher income countries – that many people do not have the luxury of thinking long term. Pay the rent now or be forced to move? Pay school fees now or move your children to another school? Pay your health insurance now or risk falling out of an insurance scheme? Pay for groceries now, or go hungry? Unless you live in a country with strong, universal social security systems and large budget surpluses, you are bound to be weighing these risks.

Assuming we will not be able to address gender pay gaps and change taxation policies in the short term, what needs to change in the short term so that Covid19 does not result in an extended crisis for gender equality?

1. Girls in all countries need a perspective to return to school and their education. This includes tertiary education, and all levels of education irrespective of whether a girl has become pregnant. If there’s one policy politicians should be focusing on, also in development assistance, it is this one.
2. Family planning products and services need to remain available, accessible, legal and free.
3. Employers need to allow for more flexibility for both men and women to cover child care, and elderly care. Core working hours; presence expectations; meeting, video-call and response times, must be reconsidered. Most of them didn’t make sense before Covid19 anyway, and lack of flexibility hits women and gender equality hardest.
4. Parents and people who need to take care of the elderly need to divide care taking and household tasks equally. If possible, hourly “shift” models are ideal. If an employer does not support flexible working models or hours, one partner should try cover core hours, the other early mornings, all breaks, and evenings. If one partner is forced to leave a job, take unpaid leave, or step back from work or other opportunities, there should be an explicit agreement to switch roles and cover re-entry and onboarding at a later point.
5. Women and men need to ensure that women’s work, learning, and growth is not only defined by current income – but also by hours worked. No matter whether paid or unpaid, women cover valuable, demanding, and strenuous tasks, and deserve recognition, breaks, and support. Women in particular need to ensure they do not fall into the role of martyrs, because “someone needs to do (all of) this”. Men can clean toilets, cook decent meals, pack snack boxes, and care for children too.
6. Men, at all levels, must lead by example, both in the workplace and in the household. They must not only contribute to cooking, cleaning, child and elderly care, but also speak about this as a regular must-do.
7. Media should beware of covering gender roles only in stereotypical ways, or covering women only as victims. It should also highlight reverse or alternative models that can inspire change, include the voice of men in gender equality pieces, and show what is possible. Women nagging about gender equality will rarely inspire change in men; they’ll most likely not listen nor care.
8. Leaders and politicians in all sectors should ensure that they are not backtracking on gender quotas, progress on supporting women leaders, and ensuring improvements in work life balance. Gender equality and equal opportunities are not nice-to-haves, they are must-haves.

Alongside these actions, we also need to address pay gaps, taxation, and broader gender norms. But the above we could do tomorrow, actually we could do and commit to do all of the above today.

Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg once announced she had to leave an interview because she had to go cook potatoes for her family meal. I’m still waiting for men in all leadership and managerial positions to announce and do the same. Especially now, during Covid19.

Respect for care-taking tasks (on international women’s day)

Over the past weeks, I have been caring for a constantly ill toddler, and am in the middle of a big move – and have every day been thankful that I am not doing this on top of a 12-14 hour shift at work.

Anyone who works full-time knows how errands and “life” get squeezed into quick lunch breaks, late evenings, Saturdays (or if in countries with 24/7 opening times, into the weekend). Some people invest a vacation or two into “getting stuff done”, instead of taking vacation. A lot happens online, through outsourcing and delivery, and you cut corners where you can. Your mind is rarely fully present, as work tasks and stress are very difficult to switch off (quickly).

As someone who is very dedicated to my work, I have missed out on a lot during the past years. Birthdays, vacations, recitals, drop-offs and pick-ups. I have not tried “to do it all” or “have it all” (a la Anne-Marie Slaughter), because this has often been logistically impossible (i.e. work conference clash with a birthday, obligatory team meeting clash with a school recital, cooking complex and delicious dinners), or I have simply not had the energy to jet around at the speed of lightning to make it everywhere on time.

I have rarely felt guilty, though, because someone who cares for the children and whom they care about, has been present – either their father, or grandparents / close friends. The kids have never complained, and some part of me that breathes gender equality also enjoys the thought that it’s not always mom who is present – but it can be dad too.

Over the past weeks, I have been enjoying doing things at a different pace again, and not outsourcing most aspects of “life”, in order to make life compatible with “work”. It is fulfilling to see little projects run from gestation to implementation, and to have control of nearly all aspects. But it is also exhausting.

On the one hand, I am able to decide what to do – and what not to. Including the when, how, and with whom. But with a household of six, my days are not just drinking coffees, reading books, taking strolls and catching up with interesting people. The list of errands is endless. Add in a six-person household move, and my shift is again 12 hours, very few breaks.

I have always said that, for me, working compared to care-taking is a piece of cake. Yes, the days are long, and there is a huge amount of (often unnecessary) stress involved. But there’s also (with good leadership) someone else who takes responsibility, takes on the trickiest tasks or advises on these, and makes the big decisions. With larger teams or organizations, there’s a division of labor that you could only dream about at home if you function on a normal salary (accountant, secretary, travel agent, cleaner, etc.). In most workplaces, no-one knocks on the door when you are in the bathroom to ask you where things are (or if you parent toddlers, joins you).

I keep saying (and writing) that I am very aware I live in a very privileged place and time. I can change roles, and dip in and out of more or less care-taking (children and household tasks). There are billions (not just millions, really billions!) of (mainly) women who can not make these decisions. They just do both the care-taking, and the work that feeds the household and puts a roof on their head, because they have to. They cannot afford to outsource, and they do not have much support from their (male) partners due to cultural norms or lack of rights.

For those women who have “outsourced it all”, this blog is a reminder how tough the tasks are that someone else is doing in support. Remember to be grateful. For men who keep shying away from care-taking tasks, this is a reminder of the burden women carry – often on top of work. And to myself, this is a reminder that “life” outside of work is not just a piece of cake. It comes with freedom, but it’s hard work too.