This article ” ‘I had to choose being a mother’: With no child care or summer camps, women are being edged out of the workforce” from The Lily got me amped up for a few reasons. I can relate to many sides of the story with different experiences I’ve had over the decades, including some over the past few months dealing with quarantine and family life through COVID-19.
Try to read the article. But if you don’t, it talks about the struggle women have in the workforce when balancing family and professional life and now in a quarantine situation, the struggle is amplified. I put a few summary paragraphs at the end of this post if you want to read that instead of the article.
Women, why aren’t we all lifting each other up instead of making each other go through the same crap over and over like it is a rite of passage?
What got me thinking about related personal experiences is that the assumption many people have, is that only men are holding women back from being able to stay in the workforce through this time of COVID-19 (and pre-Covid with a young family) or from re-entering the workforce after a maternity leave break. Yes, men play a big part in this by keeping the status quo because it works well for them. But in most of my experiences, it has been women who have held me back and this article triggered a lot of past frustrations.
Women, why aren’t we all lifting each other up instead of making each other go through the same crap over and over like it is a rite of passage? Why don’t we create something better together instead of going in alone to become bosses that replicate the men around us? Why not embrace the emotional, empathetic, collaborative side that the female gender tends to have more of and create a new standard?
When I was a residential designer, I worked my way up by drafting more and more complicated homes with a home builder. After some time, I was stoked to be offered to work on the next custom home, which was also just days before I told my female manager that I was eight weeks pregnant with my first child. A week later, she took that opportunity away from me and gave it to a male co-worker because she said I wouldn’t be around for the final stages of the project and wouldn’t be able to put in the time required for it. Nobody was dismayed when I brought it up that this was wrong and willing to fight on my behalf. It was just, “Bummer. That’s the way it is, I guess.” And I became known as the troublemaker and my hormones being the reason I disagreed with some suggestions or opinions was a fun joke with the sales team. I did not go back after my maternity leave.
I actually went back to school after 10 months of maternity leave to change industries and study journalism. A few years later, I was lucky enough to get an editing role with a successful magazine publishing company and knew it would be challenging as I was green to the industry while mature in age. It was also around the time that print was dying, newspapers were closing, writing/editing roles were being eliminated, and the 2008 financial crisis hit all industries. With this company, I was expected to put in overtime and go out for drinks with the crew after work to be considered part of the team by coworkers and management. But I couldn’t, and I never really fit in because of it, even after being there for more than two years. During my time there, my second daughter became quite ill and I had to leave work midday a few times to get her from daycare and take her to the hospital or home. It was just assumed between my husband and I that my job would be more flexible, or at least I would be since my job was lower paying, and the mom takes care of a sick kid, right? There was little leniency from the publishing company owner and management team, and there was a lot of judgement from co-workers that I wasn’t putting in the same effort as them. I had to quit even though I knew the chance of finding work again in the industry would be challenging.
I was told, “This is the pack you chose, you need to run with it to fit in,” regardless that I had a young family and they did not.
After getting my daughter’s illness under control and finally getting an opportunity to re-enter the industry with a different type of writing role, I was desperate to make it work. I wanted to prove myself and be great at all things, so I suggested a lot office efficiencies and new programs we could run. But they just wanted me to write. So, I threw myself into volunteering a lot at my daughter’s school, working out and running a lot more than before, and doing my full-time job. But, once again, family illness hit. Both my daughters suffered from something we couldn’t quite figure out. I had to miss work to stay home with them frequently and my stress levels rose as my emotional and mental state became unstable. All levels of leadership at this organization were female but none of them knew what to do with me as I fell apart in front of their eyes. I was laid off.
You judge her age. Her clothes. Her physique. I am 43. I cannot afford lululemon clothes. I have a muffin top.
I’ve changed industries again while still dabbling in the prior two. My current role is heavily in fitness leadership, which means I have to do my best right now to remain fit, or at least able to lead a fitness class when social distancing restrictions are lifted. And in this industry, the instructor gets judged. You know you do it. You judge her age. Her clothes. Her physique. I am 43. I cannot afford lululemon clothes. I have a muffin top. So, I am completely vulnerable in this industry in front of classes and participants of all ages and stages but I’m doing it.
And so, I am juggling fitness while trying to keep my family motivated and moving with me. I post pictures of our walks on social media but I see in the article and in other peoples’ posts that current working parents are jealous of not being able to have the same time to do these things with their kids. I’m not posting these pictures to show my “perfect life” or make anyone jealous. I am honest about how hard it is sometimes to get the kids out the door, get them to stop fighting, or motivate myself to keep moving through this. The images I post remind me of the journalistic side of me that took photos once and helps me feel that I have purpose and to document that I tried. We all tried during this weird and hard time. That I’m not a useless lump.
I am intentionally being active as I need to be relevant and ready to re-enter the workforce because as an older, less-fresh face in the fitness industry with a mom belly, there’s judgement from all genders and ages. But I’m also fighting the stress and ego of having to accept the government support due to no employed adult in our household and knowing that next year’s taxes will be scary when payback measures get figured out.
Why not celebrate each other’s emotions and empathy rather than being embarrassed by them?
We can all be better. I keep supporting, engaging, and creating female empowerment groups because I am tired of being held back and judged by others, and it hits me harder when women do it to me.
We need to be there for each other. Give a hand up. Mentor each other. Trust each other. Celebrate each other’s emotions and empathy rather than being embarrassed by them and replace with aggression to feel more “male”. We can to complement each other’s differences, acknowledge our strengths and weakness, and then join forces to create something pretty awesome.
Creating a more welcoming re-entry into the workforce for women and not letting the wealth of professional skills and brain power go to waste because it was an unhealthy, toxic environment for a family women to be in was something Katie McLean was working on years ago with a partner, when I was in touch with her about Joe’s Team and triathlons. It has been a while, but I would love to reconnect to see if her attempt to create spaces for family women, intentional about collaboration, flexibility, and work/life balance ever came to fruition for Katie and her professional partner. I’ll be in touch!
[Summary notes from the article if you didn’t read it: One example in the article is that a female founder and CEO of a company was trying to keep her successful company afloat from home during COVID-19 and the thought was that her husband, who was between jobs pre-coronavirus, could take care of their young son and guide him through online school while she worked. But after a few days of full-time parenting, her husband quit. Said he couldn’t do it. And so, this woman had to fold her company to choose family over a company she built so her young son wouldn’t suffer, and she wouldn’t absorb the immense guilt of feeling like she failed him.
There is mention of other families deciding what to do in this time without daycare or school. Many times, it has little to do with the ability of the husband/partner to do the full-time kid care at home, it’s the financial choice. Most women are making less than their partners due to the wage gap and most women feel the guilt and expectation on their shoulders from society to take on the kid care role that most males don’t instinctually feel nor does expectation fall on them very often from the professional world or social media parent groups (which most haven’t joined anyway to be judged…which is pretty smart, I may be leaving a few groups…).
And then the article mentioned the fear of the unknown when trying to re-enter the workforce after stepping away from it for maternity leave and now with COVID-19, having to quit jobs or be laid off from them, the opportunities for females are not as abundant as they are for males because employers are judging our maternal clocks (are we young enough to potentially get pregnant and have to leave the company for mat leave, which equates to not being dedicated to the company in their eyes); or judging why we’ve been out of the workforce for a couple of years after having kids (again, not that committed to the profession/industry, not a real go-getter…) and so on.]
New-Normal 