MNHQ here: AMA with Corinne Low, author of FEMONOMICS: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and How To Get The Most Out of Yours, Weds 24th September at 6pm

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

Hi there,

We’re pleased to announce that Corinne Low, author of FEMONOMICS: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and How To Get The Most Out Of Yours will be joining us for an AMA on Wednesday evening at 6pm.

To be a woman today is to be overwhelmed from every angle. The data proves that the odds are still stacked against us - biologically, culturally, economically. But that same data can empower us to make choices that will reclaim our time, energy and help us find joy.

In Femonomics, economist Corinne Low explodes the myths about what makes women successful and happy such as:
- What if flexible working isn't the answer, and we actually need more boundaries?
- What if the gender happiness gap was as important as the gender pay gap?
- What if you had the power to prioritise things you actually value, rather than the things that other people value?
- What if being more 'successful' actually meant putting family before work?

Femonomics gives you the tools to design the life you want. It will teach you how to turn your time into money, how to work out what you value, how to invest in the right partner, how to plan your career at every stage, how to organise your family life - and ultimately how to make the world work for you.

Corinne will be answering your questions on Wednesday evening - please post them below in advance or join her live at 6pm on Wednesday.

Thanks,
MNHQ

Well I'm so sorry you're so squeezed, and I want you to know that the data shows this period of life is temporary! And if flexible work is working for you to get through it, that's great! I think I wanted to say that flexible work isn't the only solution, because what many women need is work that can be structured around childcare. And, I worry that women taking on flexible work lets men rely on them ever more to pick up every little thing when it comes to running a household. What I mean by boundaries is work that's structured around childcare times, 9-5 for example, often with a work from home day to catch up on errands. That type of program allows women to put boundaries on work, and to put boundaries on home time, too, by saying, I need to be unavailable during those work hours, but then I'm going to be 100% present when I'm home. That doesn't mean you can't call out sick or rearrange in case of emergency, but it's just giving some rigidity to those blurred lines that so often leave women doing double duty. And, we see fields with highly structured shifts like that, such as nursing, are heavily female. Now, there's some moms whose kids aren't yet in full time childcare or school who flex work while juggling childcare, and that's a different story. Again, if it's working for you, absolutely do it, but I provide some data that firms have overemphasized flexibility while ignoring simple boundaries.

I joke that we interview for the wrong position. We interview for the position of boyfriend when what we really need is a co-CEO. Our lives are often so different at the time we're boyfriend shopping than they will be in the future. So much simpler!! So, I encourage people to spend time thinking about that future, about what they want it to look and feel like, and seeing if your values are aligned. As I said in another post, if someone doesn't share preferences with you, they're not going to share the work to implement those preferences when push comes to shove. So, if he thinks a nanny can handle everything and you think parents should give baths and help with homework or whatever, he won't want to do those tasks because he'll say "it's your choice to do it yourself." I also think we need to look at the reality of his life right now. If he sends the laundry out, orders take-away every night, and lives in a plain white box with nothing on the walls, what makes us think he's going to participate in the shared work of living once we have a home and a family? I literally provide a list of interview questions in the book to see if you're on the same page and if he has demonstrated skills and capacities in the areas that make up the joint venture of your life!

I talk in the book about how some gender differences could be shaped by genetics and evolutionary forces, but we also know that many are shaped by society--by how people treat us, by roles and norms and expectations. So to me gender captures that blend of potentially biological and social forces.

I love this and in a work context give the related advice "don't marry your glass ceiling". My question is that we know that statistically single women do better than married women, and married men do better than single men. What are the data points that, as a married woman, I could take action on, to mitigate this?

You are not alone! You are in a period I call the squeeze, where time on childcare and housework skyrockets, and yet we still need to make investments in our careers, but then because those investments haven't paid off yet, we can't throw money at the problem. It's temporary, and we need to do whatever we can to get through it. So, my mantra during this time is "I can say yes LATER." During this period, we've gotta say no to all the extras at work and at home. No to planning the office retreat. No to taking on extra mentorship duties. You might love to do those things, but there will be a chapter for them, LATER! Right now your job is to find out what your company cares about or what matters for performance reviews / pay and put your time there. And at home, we have to figure out where we're getting a good return on our time. Do we need to limit kids' activities to two nights a week? Do we need to simplify something - find a carpool, find a closer school, or even more drastic, move closer to work? Also, we can feel a lot of guilt about outsourcing, but during the squeeze, it can be a good investment - even if it means putting less money aside for savings (again, you can say yes LATER). Not outsourcing means hiring ourselves for a task. We don't usually "hire" our husbands for car repairs or roof repairs, yet we expect that we can seamlessly take on paid work and all the work at home. Do we need to stop hiring ourselves for laundry and groceries, so that we can invest in our paid work? And finally, even though it sounds impossible when things are so hard, I want you to practice paying yourself first in leisure time. We end up with little time crumbles at the end of the day, and we're so depleted, we just spend them scrolling our phones. We need to prioritize the things that bring us wellbeing and joy, the same way we prioritize those activities for our kids. Block it out on your calendar--the rest will still get done, somehow.

I give lots of workplace advice, and I think it has a similar flavor. I want you to think about your job as a tool to meet the goals in your life, rather than as the purpose of your life itself. So you need to think not just about whether you're performing well, but about whether your job is working for you, and what changes you might need to make it work better. We've gotten the damaging message from so many books that our jobs are supposed to be a calling. But I view them as a vehicle to get all the things we want in our multidimensional lives, not an end in themselves. It's a small perspective shift, but it can really help with feeling bad about ourselves at work. It's not important that everyone is happy with me! It's that my job gives me what I need to be happy. That lets me set boundaries, it lets me seek challenges even if they're risky and might fail, and it lets me be ok with my career progressing at a different pace than someone else, because I recognize my values and priorities might be different than theirs!

Hello, Corinne. Do you have any advice for childfree women, for whom issues of having to put the family first might not apply, but who nonetheless find invisible barriers in the workplace?

YES. And I think one of the dynamics happening there is that within a relationship men's careers tend to take priority over women's. You might start out equal, but for example if she takes time off for maternity leave and he gets promoted in the meantime, it just "makes sense" to prioritize his career. And then there's the housework dynamic - her doing more is actually an investment in his career! I felt this in my own life - compared to my male colleagues I just didn't have as much time, because they had so much more support at home! So, to mitigate this: 1) Insist that the household's joint time and money budget gets invested in your career as well. He needs to feed the kids dinner when you have a deadline. You as a household need to hire help to allow you to make investments that increase earning power down the line. (see my answer on outsourcing). 2) At work say yes to the things that lead to opportunities and promotions, and no to the "non-promotable tasks" women get asked to take on disproportionately.
If he does earn more, also make sure the financial structure leaves you with security in case of the unthinkable and unpredictable - divorce, death, or disability.
But, finally, I think we need to understand that some of those differences in women's careers are also about our choice to invest in children, and that that isn't a "child penalty", it's our priorities, and it's incredibly important economic production of a different type. And it's temporary! (which is why we need better policies for women to rejoin high-powered career tracks, but that's a different question).

Oh my gosh, yes. We're too reachable! And it leads to lack of boundaries! Eve Rodsky tells this really funny story about her friend's husband texting to ask "do the kids need to eat lunch?" Like... do you think they're solar powered? I agree with you that I think we need to act like we work in a hospital. I talk about nursing and healthcare more broadly as a profession that's heavily female, and I think part of what makes it work is the two-way boundaries. You're AT WORK when you're at work, but then you leave it there when you go home. So, maybe we need to tell our partners and kids, hey, I'm putting my phone on do not disturb so I can focus. But, if you call twice in case of an emergency, it will come through. Let them "page you" for genuine emergencies, but take some ownership and initiative for other things!

Absolutely, those barriers are there for all women. I actually cite one paper in the book that shows child-free women facing the same gender gap in promotions as other women, until they hit 40, and firms say, oh, they're not having kids, and then promote them at the same rate as men! But beyond that kind of discrimination, there's also just gender steretypes about what women can and can't do, and there's the fact that male traits are rewarded more than female traits. I show what the data actually says and show there's no evidence male traits are more productive than female traits in the workplace! So we need to be reshaping our workplaces so that female-typical traits are valued and rewarded. And, I think all the advice on shaping your life around your deepest values and figuring out what you need and how to get it still applies.

Still here for your questions for another 20 minutes!

Completely agree with your points, thank you

Hi Corinne, thanks for this - I've just read through the AMA and it's a really interesting way of looking at things. Obviously you're writing from that economist perspective and the data is an important element but in things like finding a partner - love and attraction is also a big thing! how do you strike that balance??

Oh definitely! I joke about the period in my life after divorce where I was so sure that this time around I was going to be rational and find someone who checked all my boxes, and then I went on dates with people who checked all the boxes and was very disappointed that I wasn't actually attracted to them!! But while attraction is a necessary condition to have a romantic partnership, it isn't a sufficient condition. So I just encourage people once they know that the spark and the chemistry is there, to start having those conversations about shared values and goals, and unsexy things like "who does your laundry" and "what do you like to cook for dinner."

Thanks so much everyone! Signing off! Really appreciate everyone's amazing questions! The book Femonomics is available everywhere, and if you like my economist perspective, you can also follow my substack at corinnelow.substack.com. You're the best!