This story from Harvard Business Review was heartbreaking:
https://hbr.org/2020/03/whats-really-holding-women-backIt's a study about what causes gender imbalance in the workplace, especially at high-level senior positions that require long hours and round-the-clock availability. The common assumption is that women value family over work and don't want to make the extreme sacrifices these jobs demand, but the authors found that's not true. Men suffer from overwork and miss their families just as much as women do. The only difference is that men are culturally expected to suck it up.
Whereas firm members attributed distress over work/family conflict primarily to women, we found that many men were suffering, too. “I was traveling three days a week and seeing my children once or twice a week for 45 minutes before they went to bed,” one told us. He recalled a particularly painful Saturday when he told his son he couldn’t come to his soccer game. “He burst into tears,” the man said. “I wanted to quit then and there.”
or this one:
“When my first child was born, I got to carry her from the delivery room to the nursery. It’s almost like I could feel the chemicals releasing in my brain. I fell so chemically, deeply, in love with my daughter. I couldn’t imagine a world without her. I mean, here it was in [just] the first eight minutes of her life. So I can understand, ‘How can I possibly give this up and go back to work?’”
And what was his takeaway from this emotionally charged experience? A sense that he better understood the difficulties women face in trying to balance work and family! To banish his guilt and sadness about returning to his highly demanding workweeks, he projected his intense emotional experience onto the women at the firm—a move that allowed him to let go of those feelings while still identifying with them.
There's a cruel double standard perpetuated by many companies: they have work-from-home policies, flex time and other family-friendly accommodations, but penalize the employees - mostly women - who make use of them. They get passed over for raises and promotions because they're seen as less committed to the job. On the other hand, hard-working women who
don't make use of these accommodations are
also penalized, because bosses assume they're neglecting their families and that makes them bad role models!
The culture of insane hours and overwork hurts everyone, both the men who are suffering in silence and the women who are in a no-win situation. What these companies need is a little more Mustachianism, and more employees who are willing to push back and refuse outrageous demands:
If we want to solve this problem, we must reconsider what we’re willing to allow the workplace to demand of all employees. Such a reconsideration is possible. As individual families and employees push back against overwork, they will pave the way for others to follow. And as more research shows the business advantage of reasonable hours, some employers will come to question the wisdom of grueling schedules.
