🌊 The Plunge #8: Dear Guys

Monster trucks, invisible labor, and a scoop of champurrado ice cream

Hey hey! Ok, let’s get it over with. This post contains no reference to monster trucks beyond this paragraph. That was clickbait for my heteronormative male readers, because I really want you to read this one.

Let’s dive right in.

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Dear Guys,

If I had titled this post something like, “On Being a Working Woman”¹, you probably would not have read it. The impulse to skip this essay would not really be your fault. You and I both have been made to believe that “women’s issues” are a niche topic that have very little to do with you, and a whole lot to do with me.

You’re cheering us on and all, but this lady stuff just isn’t really your business.  

BUT…I don’t want you to skip this post. I want you to read it. Please?

Ok, thanks. I’ll be quick.

I want you to know I started coaching several new female executives over the last month. Many of them are moms, and about half of them shared some sentiment along the lines of “I don’t know if I can keep doing this”. “This” being the juggling act: killing it at work while planning birthday parties and attending parent teacher conferences and you know, running the entire experience of childhood for one or more small humans. I hear this end-of-my-rope overwhelm all the time from the working moms I coach.

I also want you to know that I’ve started coaching several new male executives this month, and not one of them has brought up similar issues. In fact, I’ve rarely heard a male client express more than a nominal tension between work and family life. It certainly isn’t the existential crisis for men that it is for the women I coach.

Recently, my husband Rob commented that he almost never looks in the mirror. I allowed myself to imagine such freedom, such un-self-consciousness.

Guys, I’ll tell you what I told Rob. Did you know that the women around you can’t afford to avoid the mirror? That we’ve been trained to constantly check for what needs to be fixed so we’re seen as “polished”? Stray chin hairs, ruddy skin, tattered cuticles: all fine for men, socially unacceptable for women.

You might not have ever thought about all the grooming women do as a burden we carry. You might have thought we do our hair and nails and makeup “just for fun”. Whether or not we find it fun, the reality is, if women don’t invest significant time and money into looking put together, we know we’re at risk of being deemed unprofessional, of getting overlooked for career opportunities.

Here’s a case in point, shared with me by a female client who works in manufacturing. She was present in a talent planning meeting where a group of male executives labeled several female employees as lacking “executive presence”. The reasons cited? Their clothes were too casual (they wore the same khakis and company logo wear as the men donned daily) and they didn’t look polished (their appearance was tidy but unstylish and unfeminine).

Something else I want you to know is that women with a point of view on any topic (let’s say “leadership” just for kicks) are often assumed to be talking only to women (ex: “women’s leadership”). We’re not thought leaders for everyone; we’re thought leaders for other women.  

In a church I once attended, women were only allowed to speak to an audience if that audience contained no men, only women and children. Out here in the woke-up real world, we like to think we’re more liberated than that. But the sad fact is, many men unconsciously gravitate to male experts and don’t even consider learning from a female with similar credentials.

Elise Loehnen wrote a staggering exposé about how this plays out in the podcasting world, where a few powerhouse men dominate the charts and interview mostly male guests, though half their listener base is female. For example (and this is just one example), across 700 episodes, Tim Ferriss selected female guests to interview just 13% of the time, fewer than 100 women. This mutual back-scratching bro club boosts the platforms of many men and few women. (And here is where I worry about sounding “whiny” or “bitchy”. Onward.)

Guys, you may not realize that the revolution in women’s rights in the last 100 years has not yet deconstructed the unconscious assumptions most of us – men and women alike – make about the roles women should play. Yes, we’re allowed our careers nowadays, but we’re also implicitly expected to take on the following “invisible labor”:

• Running the household. Many male partners do chores, but few take the lead in the orchestration of it all: thinking ahead about what needs to happen, planning for it, and executing it. Make no mistake - the mental and operational load of this equals at least a part-time job, and working women are absolutely exhausted and overwhelmed by it. Some men think that by owning “the yard” while their lady runs “the house”, things are about even. They are not.

• Being the “default parent”. Kids, teachers, other parents arranging playdates – by default, they go to mom first. My husband has genuinely tried to take on this role – being the one to take our kids to birthday parties, handling all school paperwork – but without fail, the moms and teachers still reach out to me. I’m constantly triaging an unceasing flow of info and requests related to my kids.

• Strengthening social and emotional bonds. This includes planning team social events or birthday lunches at work, writing thank you notes to teachers, making holidays special, buying presents for family members (on both sides), planning family get togethers (on both sides). Much of the time, if a woman doesn’t do it, it just doesn’t occur to men that it needs to be done. IHAQ: Have you ever seen a man arrange a meal train for a family after a death or a birth? If so, please introduce me to this unicorn so I can shake his hoof.

Women of all stripes face this invisible labor, but women of color face it on top of the invisible labor of being black or brown in a mostly-white world. The energetic cost of code-switching, facing micro-aggressions, and wishing to be seen as an individual rather than a representative of an entire ethnic group: it all adds up to a heaviness no human should have to bear.

Guys, I’m not angry at you. I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just asking you to see what might be invisible to you.

Yes, women’s freedoms have come a long way. I’m so grateful I live in a time when I can choose a destiny spanning far more options than my great-grandmothers dreamed of. But we’re not done.

Women are bone tired. The world has given us the chance to be more than wife, housekeeper, sister, friend, and mother, but it hasn’t yet figured out how to help us share the load we’ve carried for most of human history. It’s like we were bearing a heavy pail of water on our backs, and then society gifted us a big ol’ pail of blackberry lemonade, too. We like the lemonade, thank you for the lemonade. But now we’ve got two pails on our backs. The weight is crushing us, and we constantly feel we’re one stumble away from spilling water or purple lemonade, or both.

The point of this post is not to speculate on all the possible solutions for our two-pail problem. Yes, there are systemic, societal, and political steps we need to take. But today, I’m simply asking you to see and hear our stories, to perhaps ask a working woman you care about for her story. “What’s it like for you as a woman who works?” “What could I do to better support you with all you’re juggling?” “Can I have some blackberry lemonade?” (Do not ask that.)

Hey, thanks for listening, guys.

In partnership,

Claire

P.S. Girls rule and boys drool. 😜

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A few of my favorite resources on today’s topic:

📰 The OG Harper’s Bazaar article that first opened my eyes to the invisible labor I carry: Women Aren’t Nags – We’re Just Fed Up

🎙 We Can Do Hard Things episode 6: OVERWHELM: Is our exhaustion a sign that we’re CareTicking time bombs?

♣️♦️ Fair Play: this division-of-labor system changed the game in our household. Now Rob and I both know which aspects of running our home and family we each own – from conception (remembering or noticing a task needs doing), to planning, to execution. Neither of us carries the mental load of the other’s tasks. This means peace, love, and harmony in the Williams’ house, y’all.

💋 And in case you missed it linked above, The Grooming Gap article from Salon.

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🍨 I love food so, so much. I just got back from a work trip to Chicago and ate at two great restaurants: Rooh (“progressive Indian”) and Proxi (I can’t stop thinking about the Cinnamon Churro with champurrado ice cream. I do not know what champurrado means but I now know it is a good thing when related to ice cream²). I will be back in Chicago several times this year, particularly in the West Loop. More restaurant reco’s welcome!

My daughter Mabel, fellow food enthusiast.

💿 I would like to manifest that Taylor Swift will release her new album on April 1^st instead of April 19^th, as an April Fool’s Surprise. You heard it here first.

💜 😂 Where have all the rom coms gone? As a teen, I watched the following on repeat: Notting Hill, The Wedding Planner, Runaway Bride, You’ve Got Mail, and many, many more. Am I just an out-of-touch millennial or do they just not make great rom coms anymore? One exception: Rob and I just watched Anyone But You after hearing all the buzz, and we both loved it. Plenty of com to go with the rom (we laughed a lot).

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I’d be remiss in this post if I didn’t give a shout out to my own “dear guy”, Rob. Over the years, Rob has paid attention with an open mind and heart when I’ve shared the sentiments outlined in this post. He’s always aimed to be an equal co-parent and household contributor, and he’s humbly upped his game when I’ve pointed out some of the more “invisible” labor that defaults to me. He’s the biggest champion of my career, thinks I’m smarter than him (true), and believes I can do anything (not true – I am hopeless at lawn-mowing, and need him to please take care of that). 😉  He fully believes the world would be a better place if women ran it, at least for a nice stretch of time to make up for the past few millennia of toxic masculinity. He’s got a heart of gold, and I’m lucky I landed him.

Where it all began. January 19, 2008.

📣 Lots of you know I’m writing a book and have asked, “So, what’s the book about?”. I’m gearing up to speak publicly on my book topic for the *first time* at the Center for Coaching in Organizations Summit on April 25th! You can watch my 1-minute video sneak peek here and sign up for the virtual Summit here – lots of great sessions for anyone interested in professional development!

📚 Book lovers, get excited for my next post: my first-ever quarterly Book Report! Every 3 months, I’ll share what I’ve been reading, what I’d recommend others read (or leave on the shelf), and what’s next on my TBR (to-be-read) list. Teaser: in my Q1 2024 Book Report I’ll cover books on hilarious infidelity, the internet of trees, matricide, and psychedelics. Intrigued? Come back next time for the full report!

For those who read all the way to the end, I reward you with this:

Photo by Gabriel Tovar on Unsplash

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Thanks for diving into a somewhat touchy topic with me today. I don’t like controversy, so I actually agonized a bit over this one. I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

Now, get back in there.

1. In this post I’m not speaking to universal truths about all women and all men. I’m speaking to common patterns I’ve observed and experienced, particularly among cis-gender women who are socio-economically privileged, and in some parts of the essay, among those who are married to cis-gender men and have children. I’d love to hear from those who don’t fit those descriptions about your own experiences with gender dynamics in our culture!

2. Update: Google informs me that champurrado is a chocolatey Mexican drink. Yummmmm.