Opinion: Inspired by “Talking About Bias & Speaking While Female”

I want to thank TwoEsforMee for her recent post: “Talking About Bias; Speaking While Female.”  It made me think harder about many things we have discussed here on the blog and I want to offer a longer comment before all these thoughts evaporate. 

The Sandberg Paradox

It is easy to pick on Sheryl Sandberg because she is putting herself and her ideas out into the world, but I think her efforts are slowly proving the futility of her perspective.   When I reviewed Lean In early in our blog’s development, I highlighted two somewhat divergent approaches to the "women in the workplace" issue: the institutional perspective and the leadership perspective.  The institutional perspective focuses on systemic barriers like sexism, inadequate childcare and/or maternity leave, inflexible scheduling, etc.  In contrast, the leadership perspective focuses on what individual professional women can do to improve their career prospects.  Sandberg acknowledges the institutional perspective but generally operates under the leadership perspective.

Unfortunately, the leadership perspective is not holding up well in practice.  Sandberg seems to eat her words more and more as time passes.  As TwoEsforMee noted in her post, one of the main calls to arms in the Lean In movement, discussing discrimination, appears to be backfiring, or at least requiring heavy qualifications.  Similarly, many women’s personal experiences (including my own) illustrate the entrenched barriers in women’s workplace environments.  Even Lean In seemed to contradict itself, with chapters alternately telling women to a) stand up for themselves but b) not making too much fuss in case someone thinks they are bitchy.

The more Sandberg champions the leadership perspective, the more the outcomes seem to support the institutional perspective.  It is nearly impossible to walk the tightrope (leadership perspective), when the weather is terrible and everyone around you thinks you should not be walking in the first place (institutional perspective).

The Leadership Perspective as a Distraction?

Given the leadership perspective's apparent ineffectiveness, why does it persist?   Because we want it to be true.  

We want to believe that with the right suit, resume format, business speak, and hard work we too can overcome adversity and become the next woman leader.  This delusion is not limited to the women's community.  Upward mobility had stagnated for many groups and self-help books are as popular as ever.  But I believe we are doing ourselves a disservice when we persist in asking powerful women like Sheryl Sandberg, Hillary Clinton, and Oprah their secrets for success.  Lean In is full of typical answers about assertiveness and communication skills, but all this seems shockingly incomplete and ultimately insufficient.  None of it would have helped in my sexist project experience, nor will it do much for TwoE'sforMe as she tries to navigate the patriarchal world of medicine.

In the end, the real answer seems to be locate a supportive environment.  In Sandberg's case, the supportive environment came from good workplaces, mentors, and life partners.  Others have succeeded after building their own supportive environments (see L's review posts of #GIRLBOSS). Either way, this is unambiguously an institutional perspective solution dressed up to look like leadership in hindsight.  

Finding or developing a supportive environment is not easy by any means, but it is much more likely to pay off than fretting over your communication strategies.  It does involve personal initiative, but initiative that focuses on your needs (not someone else's "role model" path) and your environment, rather than viewing your situation as some personal leadership failure.  

The institutional or work-environment approach also broadens the range of potential allies.  Everyone benefits from inclusive and supportive environments: families, racial minorities, the disabled, women, the LGBT community . . . the list could go on for a while.  Even the "corporate" interests would benefit from greater worker morale and productivity.  Feminist issues move from being "women's" issues to being workplace issues with a broad coalition of support.

So I applaud Sheryl Sandberg for her efforts, but I worry that they represent a distraction from practical realities and effective initiative.  I for one will focus on finding or building a supportive work environment for myself in the future.

Women & Energy: An Important but Underappreciated Dynamic

Last week, as I read through a scholarly article about social science-based energy research, I was surprised to see “Gender and Identity” in the list of promising though underdeveloped research areas.  I shouldn’t have been surprised.  While under-appreciated, gender interacts with energy in many important ways.  Women throughout the world spend hours collecting fuel before using it for cooking and other chores.  Energy also shapes our practices, cultures, and communities.  For example, the article notes how communal cooking fires can act as havens “where women can gather to discuss their personal issues without the presence of men.”  Of course Schwartz Cowan’s link between technology and gender roles (see the More Work for Mother posts) also applies to energy.  

More Work for Mother: Part 4

I thought I would use this final post in the More Work for Mother series to explore our current circumstances.  For those who missed Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 (links?), this series of posts is based on Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s book More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave.

By the end of her book, Cowan concludes that technological developments over the last century haven’t reduced housework for women.  Instead, they have leveled the playing field, allowing families across all social classes have achieved the same basic standard in food preparation, house cleaning, and personal hygiene.  Today, nearly everyone in the U.S., not just the wealthy, bathes regularly, wears laundered clothes, and receives basic nutrition.  Nevertheless, housework still takes time and most of it is still done by women.

Are we stuck with this dynamic for the foreseeable future?  Or is society shifting towards a more balanced division of household labor?  I don’t think we have an answer, but I’d like to bring up two recent phenomena.

New Domesticity: I don’t know a huge amount about this and would like to read more.  If anyone has suggestions please comment!  By “new domesticity” I mean the recent growth in home-based activities like canning, pickling, jam making, knitting, etc.  In More Work for Mother, Cowan mentions the appeal of traditional self-sufficiency in our society and calls these activities a “backward search for femininity.”  I wonder if the trend is somewhat more complicated.  While people have many reasons to participate in traditional home cooking and crafting activities, might the trend reflect reactions to the frantic rat-race in modern business? Or the recent backlash against processed food?  We’re stressed at work and don’t trust our food.  Why not fall back to traditional tasks we can trust?  Maybe so, but I wonder if society has just rationalized increases in women's labors as a default alternative to addressing the underlying issues.  Surely this is a fertile topic for broader feminist discussions.

Stay-at-Home Dads: But! I hear you say.  What about the rise of stay-at-home dads?  Many popular media outlets have highlighted stay-at-home dads and more equal balances in housework generally.  Again, I am not an expert here and would welcome hard data on this topic.  Are stay-at-home dads just an artifact of this most recent economic downturn? Or do they represent a substantial shift in the way families approach the household and its labors? Hopefully they reflect a societal shift in gender roles, but Cowan would not be hopeful.  Apparently such talk pops up once a decade.

More Work for Mother: Part 2

Welcome to the second installment in our 4-part blog series on Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s seminal book More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave.  Today we will discuss how modern utilities and automotive transportation helped keep “women’s work” in the home.

As discussed in Part 1, the industrial revolution moved traditionally men’s work into the commercial and industrial sectors while leaving women’s work in the private sphere.  According to Cowan, modern utility access supported this break.  According to her research, access to water, gas, and electric service removed men’s role in collecting and hauling water and fuel, and made it possible for cleaning and cooking tasks to remain inside the home (rather than be outsourced).  For example, with a water hookup and electricity, women could clean their laundry at home rather than sending it to a commercial laundry.

The development of automotive transportation also influenced the work done by married women.  Before the car came into widespread use, goods and services came to your door.  The local grocery's delivery boys would deliver your order.  Doctors made house calls.  Peddlers would make their rounds.  As the car took over and the depression put pressure on businesses, delivery services vanished and women started driving to do their shopping, take the kids to school or the doctor, etc.   Transportation service became a large part of a women’s daily route.

Cowan’s book was written in the early 1980s, so recent developments in internet shopping piqued my interest.  Has the internet made things easier for women or harder?  At first, I thought it’s probably helping.  With the rise of online shopping and reliable delivery, women don’t have to drive all over town for many items.  On the other hand, most day-to-day items like groceries still aren’t available for delivery at a price most people are willing to pay.  In addition, internet access has placed the burden of research on the consumer.  Whereas once you paid a travel agent to book your flights, now you spend several hours researching and comparing prices.  The variety of products available also means you spend a lot more time researching the perfect backpack for your child or the best rice cooker.  All this research time seems like an added burden on working mothers that we take for granted.

More Work for Mother: Part 1

As a PhD student interested in technology and its role in society, professors are always suggesting interesting reading material.  Of course, I never read most of it, but this blog gave me a good excuse to finally read Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s seminal book More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave.

The book covers a lot of ground, so I’m going to get four posts out of it.  This “Part 1” will discuss Cowan’s basic thesis: industrialization eliminated “housework” for men and children but preserved “women’s work” and in some ways made it worse.

For most of human history, basic survival required a lot of work from every person in the household.  Men made leather goods, whittled tools, ground grain into meal (or hauled it to the mill), chopped and stacked wood, tended animals, and worked the fields.  Women cooked, tended children, made soap and candles, sewed, and wove.  Even children worked, tending smaller children, mending, stirring pots, and cleaning vegetables.  If the family needed help during the harvest/slaughtering season, or if someone was ill, they would hire help or foster a young family member.  In this dynamic, everyone had work to do and each person developed specialized skills to complete this work.

Then the industrial revolution changed the balance.  Children went to school and men’s work became industrialized: flour was milled commercially, tools and leather goods were made in factories, coal and gas replaced wood.  However, traditionally women’s work remained in the home and new technologies often created more work for married women.

• The production of industrial clothing reduced women’s sewing and weaving tasks, but now the family has more clothing that is expected to be washed more frequently.
• Coal and gas stoves meant that women didn’t tend the fire anymore, but they are expected to provide more diverse and more time consuming meals.
• Vacuum cleaners simplified carpet cleaning, but now women are expected to clean the carpets weekly rather than yearly.

In addition, with the boom in factory jobs, domestic workers could find better pay for less work outside the home, so married women are expected to do all of this by themselves.

This got me thinking.  Aren’t  there “labor-saving” devices today that only make more work for women?  Here are some examples I thought up and I’d love to hear others: 

• We now have McMansions where each kid has his/her own room with a bathroom and Dad has his man-cave, but now Mom needs to clean more rooms.
• How many kitchen devices promise to grill a stuffed pepper, infuse a steak, or puree something exotic?  Guess who usually makes all these specialized meals and then cleans the contraptions.
• How many laundry steaming and sanitizing machines are on the market, raising the sanitation standard yet again?

Lean In: A Mini Review

Since TwoEsforMee started us off with Sheryl Sandberg and her Lean In campaign, and I just finished the Lean In audiobook, I thought I'd use my first post as a mini book review/commentary.

Final verdict: Important message but flawed vehicle. 

Lean In: Women, Work,and the Will to Lead

by Sheryl Sandberg

Published: 2013

Audiobook read by Eliza Donovan

As the author describes early in her book, there are two broad approaches to the women in the workplace issue.  I will call them the institutional perspective and the leadership perspective.  The institutional perspective tends to highlight the systemic barriers facing women: sexism, inadequate childcare and/or maternity leave, inflexible scheduling, etc.  For a recent paper from this perspective, see Anne-Marie Slaughter's "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" in the July/August 2012 issue of The Atlantic magazine.

Sandberg acknowledges this approach but focuses on the leadership perspective.  Based on her personal experience she writes from the perspective that little will change unless women are in positions to make those changes.  While our society and institutions don't support us yet, we shouldn't just give up.  With this in mind, she offers strategies to work through difficulties and reach leadership positions in our careers. 

Here are some of the main points:

• There are many behaviors women employ that can sabotage their journeys: keeping a low profile (sit at the table), avoiding risk (what would you do if you weren't afraid), passing on opportunities based on very long-term plans (don't leave before you leave).
• There are communication strategies that can help navigate the sometimes-hostile professional world.
• Life partners can and should be life partners, especially with housework, childcare, etc.
• We have unrealistic expectations for motherhood, housekeeping, and career perfection.
• We should be able to talk about women's issues.

While these points are valuable, I will admit to being disappointed with the work.  Part of this comes from the my own bias and the audio version probably offered a different experience than reading the book myself.  For example, the reader they chose for the audiobook sounded very cutesy, so I had a hard time taking the content seriously (sexism 1, feminism 0).  I also reacted badly to a women sounding pushy and touting herself, which was one of her points about society's reaction to women in leadership . . . embarrassing but lesson learned.

Despite these problems on my part, I still think the book has flaws.  It offers an introduction to many of the issues facing women in the workplace, but the book's organization is haphazard and its content thin in many respects.  Too many anecdotes and not enough research for my taste.   The author would have done better to condense her material into a strong article or to collect more research to strengthen the book's content.  Sandberg's message-- you can do it, don't give up -- is very important (I was quite depressed after reading Anne-Marie Slaughter's article) but her book is a bit of a mess.

Looking forward to your hate mail, I mean your thoughtful discussion . . .

Morghan