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The Imposter Phenomena: Part II

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Researchers and the general public alike are rekindling their interest in an old topic—the Imposter Phenomenon (IP). I first wrote about IP in 2018. As a result of that article, I have been invited to speak on this topic several times. The reactions and questions from my audiences, along with the publication in 2019 of some new research, inspired me to revisit this topic for my current readers and share new information on the differential impact of IP for women of color and the implications for mentors and coaches supporting the development of people dealing with IP.

My recent audiences have most often been women leaders in technology and healthcare industries. They are hungry to learn about this topic and anxious to tell their own stories. By way of review, here is some background information on IP: Psychologists Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes coined the term imposter syndrome in 1978 to describe an “internal experience of intellectual phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement.” The imposter phenomenon is not uncommon, but most people do not talk about these feelings and think they are the only ones having them. IP can cause people to hold back, hesitate, or fail to contribute their valuable ideas and skills. They may appear to lack confidence. When they have an opportunity to put a name to this experience and discover they are not alone, people often feel liberated and empowered.

While not uncommon, not everyone experiences IP, and symptoms can be transient and may range from mild to severe in those who do experience it. Clance and Imes’s research also shows that more women than men experience IP. While men can share these same fears, the experience tends to be less frequent and less severe—and I have known men who had intense and severe bouts of IP.

Lincoln Hill writes that the original research by Clance and Imes was based upon a homogeneous sample of white, educated, middle- and upper-class women and did not take into account the intersectional experience of women of color. Hill notes that Kimberlé Crenshaw first used the term intersectionality to describe ways “racism and sexism interlock to form a nuanced and exacerbated form of oppression.” In the case of IP, black women and other women of color who experience IP are often hit harder by it than their white counterparts. IP for women of color may be triggered and exacerbated by

  • Feeling that they don’t belong when they look around and do not see others like themselves
  • Being subjected to gendered racial stereotypes such as “angry Black women” or “emotional Latinas”
  • Experiencing gendered racial microaggressions on the job or in school ranging from microassaults (name-calling) and microinsults (insensitive comments) to microinvalidation (dismissing their stories and complaints about their experiences as women of color)

Hill cautions us to be aware that for women of color, “racism is gendered and sexism is racialized.” In other words, we must be aware that for women of color, IP can be increased by the interplay of dynamics of race and gender within our society, which is founded on racial hierarchies and the masculine ideal.

Supervisors should note that employees dealing with IP may require somewhat different strategies to support their development. Those people who experience a fear of failure as part of their IP will go to great lengths to avoid criticism. They may feel that anything less than perfection in their performance is equivalent to failure and proof of their lack of worth. Valerie Young writes in her book The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women that “in the imposter world there is no such thing as constructive criticism—there is only condemnation.” Consequently, supervisors, when they must give constructive criticism, should be specific about what needs to change and give extra assurance that they know the employee can make the change needed.

New research reported by W. Brad Johnson and David G. Smith in the Harvard Business Review, entitled “Mentoring Someone with Imposter Syndrome,” offers helpful strategies for mentorship:

  • Make their feelings seem normal—Assure your mentees that they are in good company, as many people deal with IP.
  • Stop negative self-talk—Use available data, stay concrete, and create dissonance between evidence and your mentees’ self-critical statements.
  • Encourage and affirm—Look for opportunities to give copious doses of affirmation and encouragement. Review your mentees’ progress and milestone achievements.
  • Fight stereotypes—Remind your mentees that context matters and that race and gender can set people up to feel marginalized and like imposters.
  • Share your own imposter stories—If you have your own stories, share them. It will help normalize the experience.
  • Don’t let your mentees give you credit for their achievements—Highlight your mentees’ own achievements and show them how they got there.

These strategies work. As an executive coach, I have worked with many clients struggling with IP. They have been able to gain mastery and reduce their anxiety—and realize their potential. What has worked for you?

 

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Female Leaders Make a Difference: Putting Women in Space

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Two women, Jessica Meir and Christina Koch, recently made spacewalk history when they completed the first all-woman spacewalk for the International Space Station. This breakthrough was possible thanks to the efforts of Janet Kavandi, a recently retired NASA leader. Jillian Kramer, writing for the New York Times, notes that after three missions in space, Kavandi moved into NASA administration and became a role model for women in leadership roles at NASA. Kramer explains that Kavandi is “credited with adding fairness to a process that for the first time chose an astronaut class that included as many women as men.”

In 2013, Kavandi was appointed director of flight crew operations. As chair of the astronaut selection committee, she chose diverse committee members who had demonstrated open-mindedness. She implored them to make fair and diverse choices. While she did not specifically tell them to pick as many women as men, that is exactly what they did. Out of 6,300 applicants, they chose four women and four men, “the first astronaut class balanced by gender.” One of the four women chosen was Christina Koch, part of the recent historic spacewalk described above. This instance was also likely the first time a senior woman leader was in charge of the selection process, and Kavandi clearly made a difference.

Not surprisingly, few women hold senior leadership roles at NASA. Kramer cites Lori Garver, NASA’s former deputy administrator, as stating that less than 15 percent of the agency’s top roles are filled by women. Garver notes that “when there is such an imbalance at the top, the culture tends to favor men, and women often struggle to be heard or have their views taken seriously.” Women are also often passed over for promotions when top levels still have a gender imbalance. For example, last year, the current NASA administrator recommended that Kavandi be promoted to the number two position, deputy administrator, at NASA, but President Trump instead appointed a man with no previous space technology experience. A short time later, Kavandi announced her retirement and took a position at a space technology company. (Wouldn’t you do the same?) Nonetheless, her legacy will continue as one of the four women in the gender-balanced astronaut class chosen by her hiring committee will likely be the first woman to walk on the moon when the next moon walk occurs.

Women have faced great difficulty in being allowed to become astronauts. Jessica Bennett and Mary Robinette Kowal, writing for the New York Times, note that of the 560 people who have been in space over the past five decades from all countries, only 56 have been women. Many myths and distortions abounded to justify why women could not be astronauts. For example, Bennett and Kowal cite a report from the 1960s “that raised concerns about putting ‘a temperamental psychophysiologic human’ (read: a hormonal woman) together with a ‘complicated machine’ (the spacecraft).” In fact, studies now show that

  • women are actually better suited than men for space travel. They are smaller and lighter on average and consume fewer resources.
  • women astronauts handle stress better than men do.
  • women, when they have spacesuits designed for them rather than ones designed by and for men, perform as well as men in space.

It does make a difference when women are in senior leadership positions in organizations. We need more of them.

 

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Advancing Women: Best Practices Roadmap

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Many best practices exist for creating organizations where women can advance. The ones listed below, from a variety of sources, are current, innovative, and comprehensive ideas that can act as a roadmap for what works:

  1. Implement sponsorship program—Enhance the quality of and access to sponsorship. Hold senior leaders accountable for achieving measurable targets for increasing the visibility and opportunities for advancement for white women and women and men of color.
  2. Eliminate bias in hiring, performance reviews, and promotions—Use gender-balanced panels and third-party review of performance feedback to screen for possible bias.
  3. Have a flexible life-work infrastructure—Provide and support the use of flexibility to balance work and family. Organizations often have flexible work policies but then discourage their use.
  4. Create accountability and share failure—Build accountability by setting targets and measurements. Hold leaders accountable through a reward system. Address implementation failure and policies that are in place but fail in their execution. Acknowledge and reward trial and error—one size does not fit all.
  5. Develop men as allies—Educate men on gender dynamics, double binds for women, and unconscious bias.
  6. Create immersion experiences for men—Challenge men to experience interruptions during team meetings, pay gaps, and other forms of gender discrimination to humanize the experience for them of the gender dynamics women often deal with.
  7. Listen to the needs of both women and men—Women and men often want similar workplace policies and practices that support family life but are reluctant to ask for them.
  8. Reduce the “only” dynamic—Increase the representation of women and people of color so no one is the only —— at the office.
  9. Diversify networking practices—Networking is different for women. Women need to build small, intentional, and diverse networks of other women, as well as a broad network that includes men. Men need only the broad network.
  10. Create an anti-harassment culture—Offer multiple avenues for reporting sexual harassment, ensure that no one will experience retribution for reporting harassment, and institute appropriate responses to findings of sexual harassment, including counseling for less severe offenses and firing for severe ones.

These best practice ideas are adapted from the following sources:

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Ten Things We Know about Gender Dynamics in Organizations

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I recently had the opportunity to make a presentation to a group of senior women leaders and was reminded of the value of sitting together to review what we know about gender dynamics in organizations that create headwinds for women trying to succeed. Each of the items listed below is important in its own right, but looking at them together had a powerful impact on the women in my session, who said things like “It’s good to be reminded that it’s not just me having these experiences, and I’m not crazy.” Of course, more than then gender dynamics that we know about through scholarly research on this topic exist, but these ten stand out to me. I offer them here, along with links to their sources, for the reflection of my readers:

  1. Society still holds strong cultural biases against women as leaders.
  2. Women get interrupted more than men.
  3. Women are more frequently evaluated on personal characteristics (e.g., how often they smile or are abrasive): 76 percent of women get this kind of feedback compared to 2 percent of men.
  4. Women get evaluated higher on seventeen out of nineteen leadership characteristics than men.
  5. Women face double bind challenges and walk a tightrope, such as the likeability trap, where being assertive and decisive is not likeable.
  6. Executive women who talk more than their peers are rated less competent than executive men who talk more.
  7. If a woman challenges a man’s inappropriate behavior, she is seen as a “b——.”
  8. The only —— in the office (whether regarding gender, race, or both) faces more challenges to prove him- or herself and feel heard.
  9. Women who adopt a masculine style are considered “b——es.”
  10. Masculine workplace norms discourage relationship work as a “waste of time” and value task focus and autonomy.

We can change how women are treated at work, but only when we are aware of the systemic problems. Talking about these points and more with other women is the first step.

 

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Where Are the Senior Women in the Financial Sector?

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The statistics on the representation of white women and women of color in the financial sector, at both management and senior levels, are grim.

“Closing the Gap,” a study conducted by LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company, looked at thirty-nine financial services companies, which employ 1.2 million people:

  • In North America, women account for fewer than one in five positions, or 19 percent, in the C-suite.
  • Women are 24 percent less likely to attain their first promotion than their male peers, even though they request promotions at the same rate.
  • Women of color are 34 percent less likely to make their first promotion than men in financial services. They face compounded bias due to both their race and gender.
  • Despite the value placed on sponsorship, senior-level women (34 percent) are still less likely than their male peers (44 percent) to receive substantial support from senior management, even though they ask for it at the same rate.
  • Nearly half of senior-level women say they continue to shoulder most household responsibilities while just 13 percent of their male peers say the same. Senior-level women are much more likely to believe that participating in flexibility programs will undermine their ability to succeed at work.

This report notes that “a limited number of female role models in leadership positions may limit women’s motivation to make it to the top.” According to Deanna Strable, executive vice president  and CFO at Principal, “Young women don’t see role models or potential paths towards executive level leadership.”

The research study “Women in Financial Services: Quick Take,” conducted by Catalyst, highlights alarming trends:

  • Between 2007 and 2015, women’s representation in the financial services industry remained unchanged for management at about 48 percent and the executive level at about 29 percent.
  • For women of color, representation between 2007 and 2015 increased slightly at the executive level from 4.1 percent to 4.4 percent.
  • Median weekly earnings in 2018 for financial managers was $1,262 for women, and $1784 for men.

A recent article written by Jack Ewing of the New York Times reports that Christine Lagarde just became the first female president of the European Central Bank. Women are visibly underrepresented at central banks and the US Federal Reserve. Ewing notes that less than one-third of the economists at the Federal Reserve are women.

In a New York Times article, Jeanna Smialek writes that representations is important because “women focus on different issues and have different economic priors than men.” Janet Yellen, the former first female chair of the Federal Reserve, explains that “beyond fairness, the lack of diversity harms the field because it wastes talent . . . and skews the field’s viewpoint and diminishes its breadth.”

Of the big banks in the United States, none have a woman at their helm. Emily Flitter of the New York Times reports that when the leaders of the seven largest US banks recently testified before the House Financial Services Committee, “not one raised his hand in response to a question about whose bank might have a woman as its next chief executive.” Shortly after that hearing, Citigroup became the first giant United States bank to put a woman in line to become chief executive. Jane Fraser will one day be the president of Citigroup, if she decides to wait for the retirement of the current, leader who is not planning to retire for a long time.

Overall, little change has happened in the representation of women in the financial sector, especially in the senior ranks. Smialek cites cultural barriers and biases that are currently embedded in the cultures of banks and other financial services organizations as the cause of this underrepresentation. Thanks to senior women like Janet Yellen and Christine Lagarde, new pressures are now on those institutions to change.

 

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Why Women Do Not Need to Behave Like Men to Be Good Leaders

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The messages to women about how to advance in organizations still, regrettably, urge women to behave like men, but men don’t seem to get messages that say they need to change at all. Reward systems in organizations still undervalue feminine workplace values and leadership behaviors and predominantly reward masculine ones. For example:

  • Assertiveness is rewarded more often than collaboration.
  • Women are urged to work long hours and pretend they don’t have children. (I’m not joking.) Women in a financial services firm whom I just interviewed are told not to talk about their families—even with each other—if they want to be considered for advancement.
  • Women must show they are task focused by not “wasting time” on building teams and relationships by soliciting or listening to input or problems.

Ruth Whippman, writing for the New York Times, notes that “anything (in most organizational cultures) associated with girls or women . . . is by definition assigned a lower cultural value than things associated with boys or men.” She goes on to say that “the assumption that assertiveness is a more valuable trait than, say, deference is itself the product of a ubiquitous and corrosive gender hierarchy.”

I agree with Whippman that achieving equality in organizations means, in addition to parity in representation, that organizations must come to value both feminine and masculine workplace values. These differences are described by Dr. Joyce K. Fletcher in her book, Disappearing Acts, in the table below:

Masculine Workplace Values Feminine Workplace Values
·       Task focused

·       Isolation and autonomy

·       Independence

·       Competition—individualistic competitive achievement

·       Hierarchical authority

·       Rational engagement is valued (focus on task, logic, and the bottom line—leave personal matters at the door)

·       Leadership style is directive

 ·       Community and team focused

·       Connection

·       Interdependence

·       Mutuality—success achieved through collaboration

·       Collectivity, or flat structure

·       Emotional engagement is valued (notice body language and process, encourage relationships, share feelings and personal information, and show empathy)

·       Leadership style is supportive

Fletcher emphasizes that organizations and society need both masculine and feminine values to have healthy and productive environments and relationships. When they are not both valued and our society and workplaces are out of balance, with a higher value placed on the masculine, as they are now, many problems occur for both women and men that could be prevented. For example:

  • Whippman notes that the emphasis on masculine assertiveness has led us to many of our current social problems, such as #MeToo, campus rape, school shootings, and President Trump’s Twitter rages.
  • The problem is not that women are not speaking up but that men are refusing to stop to listen to others and reflect on the impact of their behavior.
  • The problem is not that women apologize too much, as suggested in magazines and books, but that men don’t apologize enough. Whippman quotes a study that suggests women apologize more because they have a “lower threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior.” She is quick to point out that many of our problems with male entitlement and toxic behavior can be traced back to a “fundamental unwillingness among men to apologize.”
  • Rather than pouring money into encouraging only girls to take up STEM subjects, why aren’t we also pouring money into encouraging boys to become nurses? Are we saying that boys have no capacity for empathy, or that nursing isn’t considered masculine enough to count as real work?

Imagine having organizations where both masculine and feminine workplace values were rewarded and valued for leadership—where leaders could be valued for being both task and relationship focused, both competitive and collaborative, both directive and supportive—where leaders could be role models for how to have both careers and families rather than hiding the fact that they have families. This dream scenario is possible, and having a balance of both feminine and masculine values and behaviors will create more productive, equitable, and inclusive workplaces. We need men to “lean out,” though, rather than blaming the victim and putting all the pressure on women to become more like men. Women and men have to work together to make these changes in organizational cultures. Women can’t change things alone, but the results will be organizational cultures that are better for everyone.

 

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Research on Successful Dual-Career Couples: What Works?

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New research by Jennifer Petriglieri on dual-career couples, published in the Harvard Business Review, sheds light on how these couples successfully manage careers and family life. The researcher and author notes that the number of dual-career couples is growing: the Pew Research Center reports that in 63 percent of couples with children in the United States, both partners work.

Petriglieri defines dual-career couples as having partners who both:

  • Are highly educated
  • Work full-time in demanding professional or managerial jobs
  • See themselves on an upward path in their role
  • View work as a primary source of identity

The author notes that sociological research shows that “when both partners dedicate themselves to work and to home life, they reap benefits such as increased economic freedom, a more satisfying relationship, and a lower-than-average chance of divorce.” But, not surprisingly, they face unique challenges that they must learn to navigate such as how to decide whose job to relocate for or if one partner’s risky career change is worth it. The key to successfully figuring out these and other issues comes from being able to openly discuss their personal hopes and fears, assumptions about relationships and cultural expectations about roles, and shared values they want to live by.

One finding from this research is that dual-career couples go through three transitions that they must navigate successfully together:

Transition 1: Working as a couple—This typically includes dealing with the first major life event, such as the birth of a child or the merger of families from previous relationships. This transition requires that couples make choices jointly and openly about how they are going to prioritize their careers and divide family commitments. People can choose different models to follow. Petriglieri found that while they can all work, the most important factors for success are that the couples keep openly discussing how their choices align with their values and have the best chance of long-term satisfaction for both partners.

Transition 2: Reinventing themselves—Sometimes one member of the couple (at least) will discover that his or her career choice early in life was shaped by the expectations of others and no longer fit his or her own desires. During this phase, couples must be able to support each other during a period of exploration or retraining, which can unsettle the arrangements that worked previously to manage work and family life.

Transition 3: Loss and opportunity—Children leaving home, the death of parents or the need to care for aging parents, or the desire for reinvention can all trigger a new need for realignment or renegotiation of the relationship. The decision to retire can create a loss of identity and trigger depression. This phase can be most successfully navigated by going through the reinvention phase together by exploring possibilities and experimenting.

The author summarizes her findings as “dual-career couples are better off being relentlessly curious, communicative, and proactive in making choices about combining their lives.”

Dual-career couples have their own trials to overcome, but with good communication comes a more solid—and rewarding—relationship.

 

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New Research: Americans Believe Women Are as Competent as Men

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I had mixed feelings as I read the report by Maya Salam of the New York Times about new research on the public’s opinion regarding women’s intelligence in comparison with men’s. I am thrilled with the results from by Alice Eagly, a well-known social psychologist at Northwestern University, that reflect this significant measure of social change for women. At the same time, I feel exasperated about how long it has taken for Americans to see women as competent. And I feel sad about the underrepresented women in the United States who are still not valued and women in all regions of the world who are still voiceless and powerless. Nonetheless, this research by Eagly is good news. Salam notes that the study “published by the American Psychological Association . . . found that a majority of Americans (finally) believe women are just as competent as men, if not more so.” (Emphasis in original.)

Eagly and her colleagues studied opinion polls from 1946 to 2018 looking at how Americans rated a number of factors, including competency (defined as intelligence, organization, and creativity) along gender lines. Here’s what they found:

  • In 1946, 35 percent of people thought men and women were equally intelligent.
  • In 1995, 43 percent thought men and women were equally intelligent.
  • In 2018, 86 percent thought men and women were equally intelligent.

Eagly reportedly told Salam that these findings represent “massive social change.” Eagly notes that one important factor contributing to this change is that until recently, few women were in visible leadership roles. Salam notes that this situation is now changing: in 2019, college-educated women edged out college-educated men in the workforce and, for the first time, six women stepped forward to run for president and were visible on the debate stage for the first two Democratic debates.

Many women are stepping into visible leadership roles. Here are just a few:

  • Christine Lagarde—Already a groundbreaking visible leader for some time now, Christine Lagarde has just broken another barrier. David Segal and Amie Tsang of the New York Times report that she has just been named the new president of the European Central Bank, becoming the first woman to be picked for this role. She will leave her post as the head of the International Monetary Fund where, appointed in 2011 as the first woman to hold that post, she successfully steered the economies of many countries reeling from the global financial crisis. Lagarde is committed to promoting women as a moral urgency. She states that her research shows that “a higher share of women on the boards of banks and financial supervision agencies is associated with greater stability. . . . If it had been Lehman Sisters rather than Lehman Brothers, the world might well look a lot different today.”
  • Julie Sweet—David Gelles of the New York Times reports that Julie Sweet has become the first female chief executive of Accenture. With her appointment, twenty-seven women now lead S&P 500 companies. Her promotion means that slightly more than 5 percent of the biggest public companies in the United States are currently led by women. Sweet has been a leading voice within Accenture for diversity and inclusion in the workplace and the development of more female leaders in the corporate world. She intends to maintain her commitment to diversity and inclusion in her new role.
  • Sarah Zorn—As she completes her term as the first female regimental commander of the Citadel, a military college in South Carolina, Sarah Zorn provides another example of a woman in a visible leadership role. Alyssa Schukar of the New York Times notes that “for most of its 176-year history, the Citadel . . . did not admit undergraduate women.” Only in 1995, when Shannon Faulkner won her two-year court battle to be admitted, did the state school allow women in, by a ruling from the Supreme Court. Twenty-four years later, women make up 10 percent of the Citadel’s student body, and 25 percent are students of color. Since Zorn ascended to regimental commander as a twenty-two-year-old junior, the school has seen a record number of female applicants.

These women are just a few of those breaking barriers to become visible examples of women’s competence as leaders. We still have a long way to go to reach parity, but change is moving in the right direction—slowly but surely.

 

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Gender Judo

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One of my favorite authors and researchers, Joan C. Williams of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings, just published new research on the likability trap for women. She reports on both her own research and other new studies that show the ways successful women overcome the likability trap and offers practical strategies that many women will find useful.

What is the likability trap? Williams defines it as a double bind that women face when they move into positions of leadership and need to be assertive and direct. She explains that the problem is in today’s American society, women are expected to be helpful, modest, nice, and indirect while men are expected to be direct, assertive, competitive and ambitious. When women move into the traditional male domains of leadership, where demonstrating masculine qualities is necessary (which women can do quite well), they do not fit the feminine stereotype. Men and women both can become uncomfortable with them. They are deemed unlikable and can find it difficult to be effective. In her interviews with two hundred successful women, Williams found that “savvy women learn that they must often do a masculine thing (which establishes their competence) in a feminine way (to diffuse backlash),”or as Williams calls it, “gender judo.” Gender judo requires extra effort for women that men don’t have to expend, but successful women report that they have to do it.

What are some strategies that successful women use? Williams pulls from her own and others’ research to describe some strategies that work. She also warns that some may be hard for the reader to swallow, but they are, unfortunately, necessary and effective. Here are some strategies for leading in a feminine way:

  • Playing Office Mom—Some successful women adopt the strategy of Office Mom. One former chief executive explained, “I’m warm Ms. Mother 95 percent of the time, so that the 5 percent when I need to be tough, I can be.” She embraces the stereotype that women are naturally nurturing so she can be assertive when she needs to be, a form of judo when you can intentionally flip back and forth from one direction to another to maintain momentum and survive and thrive as a woman leader.
  • Using a social impact cover—Williams reports that social scientists Matthew Lee and Laura Huang found that female entrepreneurs are more likely to get venture capital funding if they pitch their companies as having social impact. This “cover” helps overcome the mismatch of the stereotype of a good, community-focused woman with a hard-driving entrepreneur.
  • Negotiating—Numerous studies have been reported in recent years about the double bind for women when negotiating. Williams summarizes this research as “women who negotiate as hard as men do tend to be disliked as overly demanding.” Women have to use “softeners,” such as asking questions for clarification of the salary rather than assertively making demands. Men can just be direct and make demands.
  • Using femininity as a toolkit—This strategy requires some experimentation. Being an authentic leader is important, so each woman may have to find what works for her to do something masculine in a feminine way. For example, some women try smiling more or being more relational and asking about people’s families—which can feel unnatural for many people. Williams does caution, though, about not using a submissive conversational style, like apologizing and hedging, which can undercut your leadership credibility. Some women try to find a good mix of authoritative mixed with warmth that works for them.
  • Displaying gender—This strategy might be harder for some than others, but Williams found that some women in her study reported that wearing feminine clothes or pink lipstick when they are the only woman in the boardroom or on the leadership team helped to soften their impact on the men.

In this report, as in her book What Works for Women at Work, Williams suggests some steps that organizations can take to create cultures where women do not face barriers to success because of gender or race:

  • Organizations need to be aware and vigilant about challenging the biases that force women to take these extra measures to succeed.
  • Reward systems need to stop rewarding behavior considered appropriate for white men while punishing women and people of color for not fitting neatly into the stereotypes for their groups.
  • Both women and men should be rewarded for displaying empathy and putting the common good above self-interest.

The fact that women have to perform gender judo is unfair. But the more we talk about this double bind, the closer we get to gender equality at work.

 

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The Debate Over Universal Childcare: What Is Really Going On?

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Have you noticed that we keep talking about universal childcare in the United States, but, with the exception of a handful of states and cities, it never happens? Nearly all of the current Democratic candidates for president are promising it, but this has happened before without legislation ever passing at the federal level. We know that the United States is one of the few Western industrialized nations that does not provide subsidized childcare for working parents. Why not?

Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times writes that the reasons are not economic. She notes that substantial research shows that children and parents benefit from access to affordable or free day care:

  • Women being in the workforce helps the economy and is economically beneficial for families.
  • High quality, affordable, easy-to-find childcare and longer school days result in higher levels of employment for women. In Washington, DC, public (free) prekindergarten increased labor participation of women with young children by 10 percent.
  • The economic benefits of good, affordable childcare for low-income children extends for generations, and spending on it more than pays for itself.

Miller notes, though, that conflicting beliefs in US society create resistance to universal childcare. She describes some examples of the conflicts:

  • Both parents work in two-thirds of American families: 93 percent of fathers and 72 percent of mothers with children at home are in the labor force. Yet one-third of Democrats surveyed by the Pew Research Center say that one parent staying at home is ideal. In another study, nearly half of Americans said one parent should stay home. These statistics conflict with the reality of the lives of Americans.
  • A moral question has resurfaced about whether mothers should work at all. Tucker Carlson of Fox News states, “It is more virtuous [for mothers . . .] to raise your own kids”; in other words, the proper place for mothers is at home with their children.
  • However, poor women, especially black women, have always been expected to work from the time of enslavement to the present, and are denied childcare support or required to work for it when support does exist.
  • Research shows that when subsidized childcare and education are available, the participation of women in the labor force expands, showing that women want and need to work. When childcare costs increase, mothers (more so than fathers) drop out of the workforce. Researchers at the Universities of North Carolina and Maryland note that “you’re boxing women out of the labor market” with the high cost of childcare.

As described by Miller, most women and men who are parents of young children work. Yet Christina Caron of the New York Times notes that the lack of affordable childcare creates a significant financial stress for families. A study by NYT Parenting, based on data collected by YouGov, an international polling and market research firm, found these worrying statistics:

  • Almost 60 percent of parents around the country with children enrolled in preschool or day care reported that the costs created a significant financial strain.
  • Some families had to go into debt to pay childcare expenses.
  • Half of Americans live in places with no licensed childcare providers or very limited slots available.

The moral ambivalence in the United States about whether mothers belong in the home rather than in the workforce is still actively blocking progress on achieving universal childcare. Miller notes that “Americans are more likely to believe in gender equality in work and politics than in the home”—but we can’t have one without the other. It’s time to move on from the moral ambivalence embedded in our culture about mothers working.

 

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