First off, let me just say I don’t care if you go back to work after having a child or not. I have been both a stay-at-home mum and a working mum. But I wanted to see what the science had to say on the issue. Are working mums happier as well as having a house cleaner and better shoes?
Research suggests positive outcomes in households where women work. Barnett and Hyde (2001) posit that having multiple roles is generally good for mental, physical and relationship health, for both males and females. Simply put, multiple roles bring wellbeing. For example, women who belong to the church as well as working part-time and being a wife and mother report higher well-being and less depression than women who are solely a mother. As long as one role doesn’t dominate their time, at the expense of the others.
Also, the single biggest reason marriages break up is money. So, if a woman is contributing to the income, it may take some stress off discussions around the family bank balance. Further to this, the woman may feel like she has a right to make more of the spending decisions, increasing self-confidence.
Pay Gap and Pension Gap
But once in the workforce, women face many challenges. It is well known that there is a gender pay gap at all levels of organizations. Globally, it is estimated to be at around 23% difference. This also hasn’t changed much in the last few years, with the estimated time for the gap to close being over 100 years in the future.
The disparities only continue when it comes to retirement stage. This is the ‘gender pension gap’. Many factors combine to mean lower retirement savings for women. On average, women earn less, contribute for fewer years, and so will receive less employer contributions in their working life. Also, women tend to be more conservative in choosing a retirement plan. Plus, women tend to live longer on average and need more healthcare per year.
All of these factors compound to mean women are generally ending up with less income at retirement age.
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Work / life Balance is the Biggest Challenge for Women
The Gallup World Poll survey listed balance between work and family time as being the biggest challenge for women when it comes to work, especially in developed countries. The next most important issues for working women in most countries in the world, were unfair treatment at work (harassment, bullying) and lack of affordable care of children and family members.
41% of women worldwide would like to be able to (both) work and care for their families
It does not help that domestic work is still unevenly divided for the most part. In this article, Till Leopold of the Word Economic Forum said women “still tend to do the majority of unpaid and household work. On average, men do 34 percent of the unpaid work that women do.” And when considering both paid and unpaid work, “women work 42 minutes a day more than men”.
Women are More Productive, yet still Promoted Less Often
We know that more diversity in workplaces leads to positive outcomes. However, women are still hired and promoted less often than men. Recent research suggests women work harder than men. Women are given ten percent more work than men (55% versus 45%) and are completing more tasks. So women are delegated to more than men, by both men and women.
But it is the quality of work handed to women that is the problem. The work is more likely to be non-promotable, or for the good of the organisation, for example administration tasks. This is opposed to work done for the good of the individual’s career advancement. This contributes to the lack of promotions for women.
There may be another dynamic at play. Women are being ‘intentionally invisible’ at work. A 2018 study found women reported they would rather ‘keep their heads down’ and allow their work to speak for itself in the workplace than be visible and align themselves for promotion. They stated the desire to avoid conflict, maintain work and family balance and avoid uncomfortable feelings of bragging and self-promotion as their reasons.
Bias about Gendered Traits Begins Early
In this article, women reported more rudeness at work from other women than from men. The research showed that women who defied gender norms by being more assertive and dominant at work were more likely to be targeted by their female counterparts, compared to women who exhibited fewer of those traits.
Interestingly, the researchers also found that when men acted warmly —in general, not considered the norm for male behavior—they reported lower incivility from their male counterparts. So men get a social credit for acting differently from their gender stereotypes, but women do not.
This gender bias begins in infancy and continues through school. Girls are offered quiet activities more than boys, boys are offered construction toys and cars more. Parents tend to praise quietness, caring and helping behaviours in girls and aggression, active behaviours, leadership, confidence in boys. This article suggests terms like “ninja”, “competitive” and “leader” in job advertisements, deter women from applying for jobs in the first place, as they associate these words with masculine traits.
So how can we encourage women to promote themselves?
And what is the next step for work / life balance?
References:
Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0731121418782185
Towards a better future for women and work: Voices of women and men (2016) Retrieved from https://news.gallup.com/reports/204785/ilo-gallup-report-towards-better-future-women-work-voices-women-men.aspx#
Barnett & Hyde (2001), Women, Men , Work and Family: An Expansionist Theory, Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276959391_Women_men_work_and_family
How we can save (for) our future (2018) EU-SILC and World Economic Forum, Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/whitepapers/how-we-can-save-for-our-future