Caymans Post

A world within. A state apart.
Friday, Mar 29, 2024

‘No reward or recognition’: why women should say no to ‘office housework’

‘No reward or recognition’: why women should say no to ‘office housework’

Accepting too many necessary yet thankless tasks is holding all women back, say the authors of The No Club

Many of us have a never-ending list of tasks that are work-related, but not quite work: writing up minutes from meetings, assembling entries for awards, serving on committees, selecting interns, organising holiday parties, shopping for leaving gifts.

Many, if not most, working women accept it as just part of the job. But taking one for the team could be holding all women back.

A new book argues that “non-promotable work” – the kind that is important to organisational functioning, but unlikely to be rewarded or even recognised – is the invisible hurdle to gender equality in the workplace, with women’s time and energy being disproportionately expended on thankless tasks.

“It’s not that women are do-gooders, who want to help out the group,” says Lise Vesterlund, an economics professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “They’re doing it because we’re expecting them to.”

Vesterlund and three friends wrote The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work after finding themselves overwhelmed in their own careers a decade ago. “Initially it was about getting our own work lives under control,” she says.

Over years of research they found that across the public and private sectors, and a wide range of roles, female employees were shouldering the burden of “office housework” and low-value assignments, causing them to miss out on promotions and pay increases.

“We think this is a central part of why women are not advancing at similar rates to men,” says Vesterlund. From teachers to engineers, investment bankers to checkout clerks, “there is not an industry, occupation or rank that we have looked at where we didn’t see this being a problem”.

Their analysis of employee hours at a large consultancy firm found that regardless of seniority, the median woman spent about 200 more hours on non-promotable work each year than the median man – equating to approximately one month’s worth of dead-end tasks.

For junior women, it seemed to come at the expense of meaningful work, with junior men spending about 250 more hours each year on high-value work such as with clients. Senior women, on the other hand, spent the same amount of time on promotable tasks as senior men – meaning they just worked more hours in total.

The firm’s executives were “shocked” to learn of the size of the imbalance, says Vesterlund. “The magnitude of this is just so much greater than what organisations expect, which is why we need to spread the word.”

The reason for this imbalance is twofold, says Vesterlund: not only are women asked to do this work more often than men; when asked, they are more likely to say yes. “Women feel guilty when they say no – because we expect them to say yes.”

One experiment found that in a mixed-gender group, women were 48% more likely to volunteer to take on a task than men were. (Men volunteered more often when in a group without women.)

This collective expectation has been internalised by managers and employees alike, derailing individual careers and entrenching inequality. Vesterlund’s research found that employees with less productive assignments were paid less and found themselves unable to increase their pay through negotiation.

“Men are also more strategic in the non-promotable work that they do, selecting the tasks that will get them access and connections,” Vesterlund says.

A 2021 report by McKinsey found women to be taking the lead on employee wellbeing and diversity, equity and inclusion – often without thanks, even as such initiatives were trumpeted through the pandemic. “It is clearly seen as being critical work but it is not being rewarded or recognised,” says Vesterlund.

In fact, company commitments to equal representation – such as on panels or committees – can pile the responsibility on to just a few individuals, says Vesterlund, with minority ethnic women in particular “taxed” for their underrepresentation.

One study of teaching staff at a US university in 2012 found academics of colour spent three more hours a week on non-promotable service tasks than their white counterparts, with one respondent noting: “If you are one of two women in your department … [you] go on a lot of dinners.”

Combined with domestic responsibilities, not least caring for children and elderly relatives, this personal-pressure pileup is coalescing into a mental health crisis among working women. “The risk … remains very real,” warned the McKinsey report.

But Vesterlund and her co-authors argue that until the problem of non-promotable work is tackled, inequalities will persist.

The switch to hybrid working, often presented as increasing flexibility, could in fact worsen the problem by making women less visible. A Deloitte survey found that nearly 60% of those working remotely felt excluded from meetings, while 45% said they did not have enough exposure to leaders.

Vesterlund says the solution is for employers and employees to reflect on how non-promotable tasks are allocated within their organisation so that it can be made fairer. Managers could assign tasks at random or by a rota, split them between multiple employees, or align them with existing responsibilities or skills.

“The solution is to change the way we distribute work: once we give men and women equal opportunities to get assignments, many things will fall into place,” says Vesterlund.

In the meantime, the challenge is resisting the status quo. “When women are expected to say yes, it can cause backlash when they say no,” says Vesterlund. Men can help to redress the balance by putting themselves forward for non-promotable tasks before a female colleague volunteers, or by taking some off her plate.

Meanwhile, women can support each other to protect their time and boundaries, just as Vesterlund and her co-authors started doing a decade ago. Even so, she says: “I continue to be shocked by how easy it is for some of my male colleagues to say no – and how hard it is for me.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Caymans Post
0:00
0:00
Close
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Israel: Unprecedented Civil Disobedience Looms as IDF Reservists Protest Judiciary Reform
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
Europe is boiling: Extreme Weather Conditions Prevail Across the Continent
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Italian Court's Controversial Ruling on Sexual Harassment Ignites Uproar
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
BBC Personalities Rebuke Accusations Amidst Scandal Involving Teen Exploitation
A Swift Disappointment: Why Is Taylor Swift Bypassing Canada on Her Global Tour?
Historic Moment: Edgars Rinkevics, EU's First Openly Gay Head of State, Takes Office as Latvia's President
Bye bye democracy, human rights, freedom: French Cops Can Now Secretly Activate Phone Cameras, Microphones And GPS To Spy On Citizens
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
Unilever Plummets in a $2.5 Billion Free Fall, to begin with: A Reckoning for Misuse of Corporate Power Against National Interest
Beyond the Blame Game: The Need for Nuanced Perspectives on America's Complex Reality
Twitter Targets Meta: A Tangle of Trade Secrets and Copycat Culture
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
The New French Revolution
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
×