F*#k playing by the old rules, it’s time to change the game
For hundreds of years it’s been a man’s world.
In actuality, it’s only in the last 60 years or so that women have taken a seat at the table, and perhaps only in the last 20 years that we’ve been taking up more space in boardrooms, and as decision-makers.
The truth is the working world was created by the patriarchy, for the patriarchy.
The workforce, the hours and obligations of working life were created in a time when the predominant household duties were carried out by women who stayed at home, allowing the men the freedom to be out working with few (if any) household obligations.
It was a different time.
So why then, are we still pushing to work a traditional 9-5 (or let’s face, 18 hour days thanks to being constantly reachable via technology) when the balance of responsibility has shifted in the home? Women are out working and continuing to maintain the primary responsibility for household duties.
An American study found that women are still likely to be doing 4 hours of unpaid work at home, compared to men who are contributing on average 2.5 hours.
Yet, we, as women still expect ourselves to be hitting the home runs in the office and juggle our roles as dutiful mothers, daughters, wives. And for what, exactly?
Even today in Australia, women are earning 14.2% less than our male counterparts, with the gender pay gap reaching a whopping 25.3% in the Professional, Scientific and Professional services. There’s still only 30% representation of women on corporate directors boards.
The result? Women are more prone to burnout, anxiety and depression because even today we have less authority and are less likely to be calling the shots in the workplace, increasing frustration and stress, which diminishes our wellbeing.
After burning out at 28 and spending the next few years rediscovering myself, only to be shoved head first into a pandemic as I was finding my feet, my perspective on work-life balance has shifted in a dramatic way. I am proud to have a thriving corporate career at a tier one construction firm, and run this business, and I do it without compromising my health or mental wellbeing.
I’m lucky that the corporation I work for is progressive. Or should I say, I waited until I found a corporation that matched my values and have been unwavering in setting and keeping my boundaries. When asked what I felt about work-life balance in my interview, I told them exactly what I thought:
I highly value having flexible work arrangements. As a previous manager, I do not enjoy micromanaging staff. I don't care if they are in the office, or out at a cafe. As long as the work is done on time and at an exceptional standard, I don’t care if it took them the whole day or two-hours. And I expect the same flexibility in my workplace. I’m dedicated, but when I switch off, I switch off, because my mental health is my first priority.
I know I could have easily lost the opportunity to take on this role because I spoke my truth. I know a lot of people would have told me to shut up and tell them what they want to hear. The truth is, I knew I wanted to work for an organisation where I am passionate about contributing fully whilst I’m in the office and working, and also one that supports me to prioritise my health and wellbeing.
The old way of functioning, those days where I would be sitting at my desk “working” until 11pm just so that my manager would see me on his way out of the office, or he’d seen an email in his inbox at 1am from me, are long over.
In fact, that sort of workplace culture helps no one, neither the worker, nor the organisation. Workplace absenteeism (when you’re unable to come to work to work) and presenteeism (when you come to work, sick or with mental health struggles and are unable to be fully functional) is costing the economy between $13 and $17 billion per annum according to a report by the Productivity Commission.
Those old rules, work hard, be seen at your desk, pull an all nighter. Those days of glorifying work over personal life in order to climb to the top are fracturing all around us. We can see the fissures in the way it’s impacting our health, our society, our relationships.
The current paradigm hasn’t done women, or men for that matter, any favours. It functions solely on the premise of output and growth, and if the last two years have taught us anything it’s that growth for growth sake has got us on a one-way track to extinction.
We are not human doings, we are human beings. We are not machines, we are sentient beings that require connection, co-regulation, appreciation, beauty and so much more in order to thrive. To be the best we can be in our work, we need to be the best we can be for ourselves, and in our relationships.
Our constant need to be busy, to work, to hustle, to get more is part of a cultural matrix that has been cracking around the ages. This is a matrix in which we’ve been taught to undervalue the feminine and overvalue outward successes. Intuition, receptivity, creativity, flow – these are feminine qualities, and yet they are not qualities that are inherent within the corporate matrix.
Instead, the corporate, and indeed cultural matrix promotes achievement, action, growth as the index against which to measure our success. Heck, even creative industries, like the film industry measure success by how much is racked in at the box office, instead of the emotional and mental, or even creative impact the film has on the wider social spirit.
We are at a tipping point in society. The pandemic, as traumatising, horrifying and depressing as it has been, has ripped away the crutches we were relying on to avoid looking at how we were function.
Mother Nature herself put us in a bit of a time out so that we had the space to look at how we’ve been functioning. And I think we’re all awakening to the truth that our value is not in how much we do. That being successful is as much about how we interact with our fellow humans as it has to do with our title.
We have an opportunity to shift how we do business, how institutions function and how we play the game. For the last 60 years that women have been allowed to work and grow within the corporate sector, we’ve been playing a man’s game with rules that have been written for the linear output that is the masculine energy. As much as we’ve succeeded within this paradigm, at what cost? Depression, anxiety, low self-worth, a constant cycle of never feeling good enough as a mother, a wife, a worker. Burn out. Filling the void through television, shopping, alcohol.
The cracks are widening, and the pandemic has been shining a light on it now more than ever. It’s time to reclaim the power of the feminine, it’s time to re-write the rules. In fact,…
It’s time to change the game.
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