September 23, 2020 • 46 mins
In episode 3 of our special, six-part series, Getting to Equal, Eve Rodsky, author of the best-selling book, Fair Play, talks to Carolyn Tastad, Group President, North America and Deanna Bass, Vice President, Global Diversity, Equality and Inclusion—both of P&G—about how to balance the task load at home and why that has a profound impact on women's performance at work.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, This is Milan Vervier and this is Kim Azarelli.
We are co authors of the book Fast Forward, How
Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose, and you're listening to
Seneca's conversations on power and Purpose. Welcome to this special edition.
(00:24):
This new six part series called Getting to Equal will
change the way you think about women and leadership, and
it comes at a time when women's leadership has never
been more crucial. We have two amazing leaders who are
guest hosting these six episodes, Carol and Tastad, Group President
North America and Diana Bass, Vice President Global Diversity, Equality
(00:45):
and Inclusion, both from PNG, one of the largest consumer
goods companies in the world. Together, Caroline and Diana have
created an impressive gender equality strategy for PNG, and it's
a strategy that's really breaking new ground on these issues
in the private sector. And they'll be joined by incredible
guests from all walks of life. Today, Caroline Indiana talked
(01:05):
with Eve Rodsky, author of the best selling book fair Play.
Fair Play offers a solution to the fact that women
continue to bear the brunt of child wearing and responsibilities
at home. Caroline and Diana, thanks so much for joining
us again today and I'm looking forward to hearing the conversation.
Thanks Kim. Before we start this episode of Getting to Equal,
(01:25):
we want to take a moment to acknowledge the recent
passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a remarkable woman, a
bold champion for equality. Justice Ginsberg dedicated her life to
helping everyone get to equal. Today's conversation shows why equality
in the home is crucial to women's advancement in the workplace.
(01:47):
It's a concept Justice Ginsburg understood well. She and her
late husband, Attorney Martin Ginsburg, embodied home life equality. There's
was a partnership of shared responsibilities, and as with most
topics in this area, Justice Ginsburg was ahead of her time.
And that's only one of the very many reasons she'll
(02:08):
be so profoundly missed. Gosh, you're so right, Caroline, what
a great example Justice Skinsburg was. She was such an
extraordinary woman. I'm happy today that we're going to be
talking with our good friend and ally in this work,
Eve Rodsky, who has excellent practical ways of achieving equity
(02:28):
and balance at home, and she's always so much fun
to talk with. But to start with, I want to
ask our listeners a couple of questions. Have you ever
thought that there just wasn't enough time in the day
to get everything done? Does getting everything done become more
complicated when children enter your family? And at the same time,
(02:49):
have you ever wondered how your partner or spouse has
time to work out, watch a ball game, or read
a book while you're barely able to make it so.
Kara and I are fierce advocates of shining a light
on the inequalities in our homes and the fight for
gender equality. We believe that we will never truly achieve
(03:10):
equality until there is a quality at home. Today, we're
going to talk about the intersection of work and home,
which has simply been compounded by the global pandemic, How
to balance the taskload at home and why that has
a profound impact on women's performance at work. We're going
to share advice and solutions that men and women can
(03:30):
use to free up what is today mostly women's time
and allow women to accelerate their careers, accelerating their communities,
or frankly, just take a nap. So, Caroline, we're talking
about equal treatment of men and women at home, but
it's really a bigger issue, isn't it. It's one that
ties to our overall theme of women in leadership. So
(03:53):
how do those things connect for you, Diana? It's a
it's a really a great question, and it is a
much bigger issue than simply who does the dishes or
who helps the kids with their homework. You know, we
know that women at all levels of achievement and in
however they define what their career and their interests are,
they continue to do most of the work in the home,
(04:16):
including caring for the home, child rearing, and often taking
care of extended family obligations. So these additional responsibilities, while
very important, I mean less time available to concentrate on
their careers or other interests, especially as compared to their
male colleagues or counterparts. And we often say that, you know,
(04:39):
equality at work starts with equality at home, and we
need to make room for both men and women to
play equal or shared roles at home. Linked to that,
we need companies to acknowledge that both men and women
should share responsibilities and and in doing that, in courage
(05:00):
this to happen through workplace policies that can allow for
mothers and fathers to be part of a child's life
and their home home responsibilities. You know, interestingly, when women
get into leadership positions, it's been shown that they're more
likely to create or sponsor workplace policies or solutions, such
(05:24):
as paid parental leave and child care policies for women
and men. And not only are things like this the
right thing to do, but that parental leave allows men
to really understand the challenges of child rearing and what
uh women in the home and at workface every day.
It builds empathy, it builds understanding, and it makes room
(05:48):
for more equality in the workplace. Yeah, you know, I
believe that paid paternity leave is the single most important
benefit intervention we can make to accelerate gender equality at
home and importantly in the place. We're going to talk
about this a lot more with Eve, but here's some
research to get us started. First of all, the research
(06:08):
tells us that when new fathers take paid parental leave,
mothers return to work more easily. Now that's a little obvious,
but more interestingly, female employment is higher in countries where
they have paid paternity leave, and more significantly, the earnings
gap is lower in those countries. In fact, a study
(06:29):
done by the Institute for labor market policy evaluation. It's
a European organization. UM found that for every month of
paid parental leave a man takes, a woman's salary goes
up almost seven percent. And it's amazing to think that
this one policy intervention can and will help equalize the
(06:50):
effects of maternity leave and motherhood on the development and
the compensation of women in our organizations. It's so important
to us that at and G we just announced we're
going to be rolling out over the next year a
standard eight weeks paid parentally for all of our employees
in all parts of the world. It's a significant intervention
(07:14):
for us, and it's significant for men and women as
part of our gender equality initiative. But we also know
from our own experience with our employees that the coronavirus
has made all of these challenges much more painfully obvious. UM.
And in fact, there is this great article in Fortune
that Cheryl Sandberg dig back in May where she smartly
(07:36):
coined the phrase the double double shift, right, referring to
the fact that women who are already doing a double shift,
like I'm going to work working all day long, and
then I'm having to come home and do everything at home.
The double double shift like takes into consideration what's happened
in the pandemic, that there's additional responsibilities of home schooling,
(07:57):
of taking care of elder parents, you know, many of
the things that you talked about. Yeah, you know that
this is exactly true. This pandemic has the potential to
wipe out years of progress that we've made in building
up a pipeline of women. A recent survey shows that
four percent of women considering quitting their jobs due to
family demands created by COVID versus eleven percent of men,
(08:20):
and that pressure is even higher for multicultural women of
Hispanic women and fIF percent of Black and Asian women.
You know, even our own internal survey data at p
AND shows that women are more concerned about caretaking than men,
and it shows up in one of their top three
concerns for more than fifty percent of women and a
(08:41):
little over thirty of men. So this shows up over
and over again. Yeah, there's so much to talk about
on this topic. Our guest today has even written a
book on this and it's a New York Times bestseller.
I'm so excited to introduce all of you to Eve
rod Sky, the author of fair Play a game changing
solution for when you have too much to do and
(09:04):
more life to live. In fair Play, Eve uses her
Harvard Law School training and years of organization management experience
to create a gamified life management system to help couples
rebalance all of the work that it takes to run
a home and allow them to reimagine their relationships, their time,
and their purpose. So, Eve, I'm so glad to have
(09:27):
you here. Thank you for having me. Can you tell
our audience what got you started on the fair Play journey? So, yes,
how did this I'll get started? Well, um, yeah, I
guess you can't. You can't make this stuff up. But this, this,
my whole journey to understanding started with a text my
husband sent me after been my second son was born.
(09:48):
And that text just said, UM, I'm surprised you didn't
get blueberries. So I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries. So
I just had been at a toddler Zach at the
time as well. Um I had that day that I
got this text, I had a diaper bag and a
breast pump on the passenger seat in my car. I
(10:08):
had gifts for a newborn baby to return in the
back seat of my car. UM, So I had a
client contract in my lap where I was marking it
up with a pen, and I'm racing, racing to get
my older son, Zach at our his toddler transition daycare.
And in all that chaos, which reminds me a lot
of what's happening today, UM, where it feels like sort
of the space and time continuum is collapsing on a
(10:30):
lot of seth Um had the audacity to send me
a text saying, UM, I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries.
And it hit me so hard that day that I
pulled over and if I had to pull over to
compose myself because I was crying over this text. UM,
you know, it was pretty bad. But what I was
(10:51):
thinking that day was two things. One was blaming myself that, UM,
I used to be able to manage employee teams and
now I'm in a position and I'm so overwhelmed that
I can't even manage a grocery list. But more importantly,
I was thinking to myself, how had this happened that UM,
(11:13):
I am the default, or as I call in fair play,
the she fault for literally every single household and domestic
task for my family wasn't supposed to happen to me.
I'm a product of a single mom. I vowed from
being her partner in life seven years old, eight years old,
helping her with eviction notices and late utility bills, that
I would have an equal partner in life. And more importantly, Um,
(11:35):
as you said so nicely before, Dana, I'm a Harvard
trained attorney, I'm a mediator, and I'm trained to communicate.
So I think what I realized was that if this
was happening to me, it was probably happening to other women.
And that's the quest that began eight years ago that
I'm still on today to understand what it means to
(11:56):
be the she fault in our society. You know, I
think I think it's such a great story, and this
notion of the she fault is something that um, I
think many can identify with. It's your story amplifies this
whole assumption that caring for home and family is women's work,
or or potentially even worse, you know, the perception that
(12:19):
women are intrinsically better at caring for home and family
than their male counterparts, neither of which is true. You know,
I was at a leadership for him. This was a
few years back with two uh pears in in our industry,
man and a woman who used to work together. And
as the conversation began, you know, they were talking about
their early years together when they would do Saturday morning
(12:42):
store visits, which was kind of a write of passage
for all of us. And as they chatted, the man
said to the woman, you know, I always felt so
badly about you having to leave your kids on a
Saturday morning. To what she smiled and nodded, and the
conversation moved on. I sat there going, wait a minute,
didn't he have kids too? Why aren't we talking about that?
(13:06):
And there's just this ingrained bias in society and in
ourselves that somehow we think women are failing their families
when they work outside the home or when they when
they step away from that responsibility. Somehow that gets associated
as a as a female circumstance, even in today's world
(13:28):
and in the world I've grown up in where my
husband has played a much greater role in the caring
for our children, but we don't talk about it that way.
So we know today that women do two times more
unpaid care work than men. The World Economic Forums Gender
Report studies more than a hundred and fifty countries, and
(13:49):
in the last report there were zero countries. That's a
crazy number, zero countries where men do more unpaid care
work than women. And the only way to get it
solveding that is by really getting at the systemic issues
and and getting at this bias in our society. Even
when you were putting together your fair playbook, you you
(14:09):
did a lot of your own research. Tell us a
little bit about that. As you said before, this is
a systemic issue, and I think it requires understanding the
systemic bias. This really comes down to a finding that
was so interesting to me, UM when I interviewed five
men and women that married the U S census. UM,
my core finding of fair Play was that we as
(14:32):
a society men, women, UM, and society, we treat and
we value men's time as finite like and we guard
it like a diamond, and we we value and treat
women's time as infinite like sand. And UM. That sounds
very esoteric, so let me just break it down for
how that that plays out in the real world. Well,
(14:54):
we know that we don't value women's time the same
as men's time because we don't pay women the same
for the same work. Um, if you're a woman of color,
you're getting sixty cents on the dollar to a white man.
So we know women's time isn't valued in the workplace.
But what I was so surprised by was how much women,
especially devalue their own time and the home. And so
(15:16):
these were things that I was hearing what I call
toxic time messages. Um, women from all walks of life
said things to me like, of course I am the
one making the lunch is getting the call from the
school because my husband makes more money than me. Well,
typically se men make more of money than women because
of that pay equity issue we just talked about, So
(15:39):
that's gonna be a losing argument for women. Um, I'm
I'm more trained than my husband, I have more degrees,
but I chose philanthropy. So does that mean because he
chose private equity, that I'm now relegated to doing the
unpaid care in my home forever. Other women said to
me things like, well, you know that once you become
a mother, multitask is our superpower. Where why are differently
(16:02):
for care and for multitasking? So for that one I
went to one of the top neuroscientists in this country,
and Caroline Diana. That was the only other time I cried, actually,
um on this journey. The only other time I really
sab was this day that this old crotch of the neuroscientists,
when I asked him our women, why are differently from
multitasking and care because we've heard, or at least I
(16:24):
saw so many articles that sort of implied that. He
just looked at me with a blank stare and said, um, imagine, Eve,
we men can convince you women, um, that you're better
at wiping asses and doing dishes? Why would I want
to change that perception? But other so other than the multitasking,
(16:45):
the most other popular message, toxic time message was in
the time I would take me to tell him what
to do, I might as well do it myself. So
for that when I went to Dan Arielli, my good friend,
because a behavioral economist, and I said, is it a
good argument to say, in the time it takes me
to tell him what to do, I should do it myself?
And he said that was the worst argument he ever
heard for women. Of course, it makes sense to quote
(17:07):
unquote enlist your partner in the wiping of the asses
and doing the dishes otherwise, otherwise you're doing it yourself
forever at the expense of your finite time. Still, I
heard women saying, and that's my husband's bettered focusing on
one task of the time, and I can find the time.
There's no way to find time, especially when space and
(17:28):
time is collapsing on us as it is in a pandemic.
And so what this just means is that there's a
different expectation over how women are supposed to use their time. Yeah,
you know, in our last episode, we were talking to
Justin Baldoni and one of the things that he said was,
you know, basically you can't get mad at men about
this that you have to in today's world. We have
(17:50):
to approach equality with a sense of compassion. And like,
I'm listening to your story, going, then who do I
get to be mad at? Who am I supposed to
be mad at? Because it's it's frustrating. I think a
lot of us are directing it at our partners. Um
I called the residentometer a lot of resent as at ten.
But when I think is we have to also look
(18:11):
at our own our own bias, and part of this work,
really is this idea of UM using our voice. Because
I think the thing that hurt me the most in
this research UM was even more than understanding how women
treated their own time as sand and didn't guard it
as diamonds, including myself, where I had some of those
(18:34):
toxic time beliefs that I was somehow a multitasking superhero
for being able to do dishes and have my own
firm and have pinches perfect, um clothes are my kids?
You know, all these unrealistic expectations that ultimately lead us
to crash UM. The other thing that made me really
sad was that women did admit to anger and rage
(18:59):
and sadness UM, but when I asked whether it correlated
to using their voice in their home, many women said
it did not. It did not correlate, And I think
that was a really hard finding for me to accept.
You're exactly right, I mean it is I myself have
been guilty of this. And you know, one of the
things that Caroline and I have talked a lot about
(19:20):
as we talked to women that we work with, you
hear things like, UM, I have to hurry up and
get home and make dinner, and so I do think
women carry a bit of you know, whether it is
we carry the same bias that everybody else has about
what our responsibility is, or we get something for having
(19:40):
the leadership and the accountability at home. Right. But um,
I do think that that women have some reframing to
do as well in this whole area. Yeah, I mean,
I think that's so right. I think both men and
women have to shift their assumptions in terms of, you know,
the work at home and raising a family and all
(20:01):
of that. I'll give you an example of that. You know,
my husband is the best partner I can imagine, certainly
the best partner for me when our children were younger.
With both of us working, I had a heavier travel
scheduled than he did. And there was one day that
I got home early, a miracle, right, a miracle happens
you never get home early. And I was so excited
(20:23):
because I was there. And so as we finished dinner,
I said, who's having a bath, Who's whose homework has
to get done? Let's go. I was. I was ready
to roll and uh, and my kids stopped and they
kind of looked at my husband, and then they looked
back at me, and they kind of sat there like
I was speaking a completely foreign language, and then looked
(20:44):
at my husband. And then at one point, my husband
looked at the kids and he said, in a very
loud stage whisper, it's okay, guys, Mom's home. She thinks
she's in charge. He said, just just go with it.
She's going to be traveling again next week and it'll
all be back to normal. And the kids thought this
(21:05):
was the funniest thing in the world, and you know,
tripped merrily away to go do homework and have a
bath because Dad had just um very much put mom
in her place. And and for me, what I hadn't
internalized until that moment was that my husband was the
one who was managing the day to day. I got
other responsibilities. We both played a great role in in
(21:26):
bringing up our kids, you know. But he got that
day to day responsibility, and I got things that worked
on my travel schedule, and that was theater costumes and
birthday parties and the big projects and you know, the
dreaded college applications. I still think he got the better
deal than I did on that one. But that notion
of both of us figuring out our role, figuring it
(21:49):
out in a way that worked for us equally, UM
took some took some to and frowing from both of us,
but very definitely from me. I love that so much. Yeah,
you know, one of the concepts that you talk about
that I found so interesting was this notion of fixed
time and flexible time. So I think it's such an
important conversation when you think about what women and men
(22:13):
do at home. Absolutely, typically women are doing work in
the home that cannot be said at their own timetable.
And we know that now, especially in this pandemic, that
UM women are subject to far more interruptions than men
are UM, and men often choose the task that they
can do UM at times at work for them and
(22:35):
so I call that in the book the Daily Grinds.
So here the from my survey of a hundred men
and women, what is causing the most consternation in the
home right now? Laundry, groceries, meals, home supplies, who's ordering
the hand sanitizer and wipes, tiding up, cleaning dishes, and garbage.
(22:55):
If you have children, you would add discipline in in
screen time, homework which has now become homeschool watching of children,
whether it's toddlers or even teenagers. That dirty doesn't are
the other tasks that are the hardest, and typically those
are the ones Diana, that fall on women because they're
(23:16):
not ones that can be done on your own timetable.
You may be able to mow the lawn, who cares
of the grasses a little long, But you can't put
your child to bed without dinner consistently. Otherwise child Protective
Services is going to come to your house. It's just
the reality. And so inviting men to the table for
(23:36):
those dirty dozen those are where you can really get
the most relief. But that requires um not only using
your voice, but it requires understanding that Um, this is
more than just a list list of loan do not work,
but what does work is systems. And if you can
treat your home as your most important organization, if you
(23:57):
can start thinking of your home with some respect and rigor,
like my aunt Marian's Magen group has more clearly defined
expectations in the home. If you don't bring snack twice
to that group, you're out. But the whole we're all deciding,
as Carol, you're said in your beautiful story, Okay, who's
doing what? Who's setting the table for dinner? Who wants
to take the first bath. We're dying in decision fatigue,
(24:19):
and if we are not making those decisions, then it's
gonna she fault right in this gendered way. So the
answer is to treat our home is our most important organization,
to treat it with some respect and rigor, and to
customize our defaults. You don't walk into your boss's office
and say, hey, what should I be doing today? And
I'll just wait here to you tell me what to do.
(24:39):
It's just not gonna fly with you. I know it. It
It would definitely not fly with you, Caroline. I know that. Um.
But what you're doing, and why you're such effective managers,
right is you're giving ownership to the people who work
around you. You're giving them autonomy. And that's why this
doesn't work for men either. Why fair Play became a
love letter to men because no man told me that
the current system was working for them. The number one
(25:02):
thing men tell me they hate about home life is
quote unquote nagging. The number one thing women tell me
they hate about home life is that they can't shut
their minds off. The only way you do you cure
that is by starting to customize your defaults. Were in
advance you know who's handling a task in your home
from start to finish. We'll be back after this break.
(25:33):
I love your system for working this UM Conception Planning
and execution. I'd love you to tell everybody about this
because I think it's simple. It's sticky in that it's
easy to remember, and it's really easy to learn, uh.
And it's a way to have such an important conversation
and dialogue and just to get clear on who's gonna
(25:56):
do what. So tell us about CPE can Option planning
and execution. CPS really the basis of their play. And
this is what I mean by it. What I mean
is that the domestic conversation so far UM in modern
history is all about fifty fifty. And I want to
(26:19):
tell you that I think fifty fifty is a very
dangerous equation because it automatically leads to score keeping. What
if we change the score keeping mindset and instead adopt
an ownership mindset. What I mean is that set when
we first started playing fair play, we first started to
(26:39):
have these conversations. He genuinely felt that he was in
charge of our son's extra picular sports because he was
showing up to the little league field on the weekend.
And so when we finally sit down and said, thank
you for executing that piece, right, I appreciate you showing up. Um.
But here's the behind the scenes task. I'm serving our
(27:02):
kids to see what sports they want to play and
what sports leagues they want to be in. I am
logging onto some crazy portal UM that always locks me
out to try to register them on the same team
at the same at six am in the morning when
the portal opens up. UM. I am ordering cleats or
getting cleats from friends who have outgrown their cleats and
(27:24):
going to pick them up. I'm returning that those cleats
or though that equipment when it doesn't fit. UM. I'm
organizing for three days a week practices for you know,
cumulative between both of our kids, UM, and the car
pulling to and from those practices. I'm organizing a coach's
gift for all of us do once once every couple
(27:46):
of times. I'm snack mom, which is I hate that term.
I'm snack parents. UM. Those are the things. I'm researching
their birth certificate or trying to make five copies of it,
and some I don't have a xerox copy machine in
my house. Um, those are the behind the scenes conception
and planning tasks that take that take us to that
(28:08):
little league field. Those are was required to get us
to that little league field, along with sunscreen and maybe
a protective helmet so they don't have to use a
communal helmet, because of course, my kids will be the
ones that come home with life. Um. And I think
it was that understanding that your own to to move
to an ownership mindset, that it would require taking over
(28:30):
everything the conception, to the planning, to the execution of
that entire task. And then if something fell through the cracks,
the blame would not be the she fault. It would
not come back on me. You would carry through your mistake.
You don't bring the equipment you have to go back home.
You don't say eve, I can't believe in and bring
me the equipment. You carry through your own mistake. That
(28:51):
is really the basis of what CPE is. It's just
another way of saying, um, we're here to start looking
at the home in a different way into adopting an
ownership mindset as opposed to a fifty fifty score keeping mindset.
You know, the other thing on this one is that
you have to be open to different ways to do things.
My experience with that, before I knew what it was called,
(29:14):
was when my kids were older and my husband retired,
and at one point my daughter came to me and said, Mom,
I'm out of clean underwear. Can you talk to dad.
Dad said he's only doing laundry once a week, and like,
that's just not going to work. At which point I
went to my husband and I said, like, really, our kids,
they got to have clean underwear. And he said, no, no, no,
(29:36):
my responsibility. The kids need clean underwear. I understand that
I'm going to do laundry once a week. We need
a different solution. We're going to buy more underwear. And
we did. It was a different solution. It worked beautifully
and everybody was happy. But in terms of the CPE,
the concept, planning and execution, you've got to be open
(29:59):
to different solutions as long as you're clear on what
I think you call it the minimum standards. You know,
what's that minimum standard of care that you agree on,
and then you've got to be willing to let other
stuff go. It doesn't have to be it doesn't have
to be done your way. It just has to be
done in a way that works. Yes, and I think
that that's what so shaming to women, because every article
I was seeing up until that point, Caroline was things
(30:21):
that said, like, women, you have to lower your standards
where men your standards suck and you have to raise
your standards. Were Oftentimes it's just ridiculous. It just wrong.
It's wrong because this is not a zero sum game.
You know, we're trying to redefine teamwork here. This is
not I win and you lose. So the way what
you said before is such a beautiful way to think
about a minimum standard because guess what I talk about
(30:44):
this in fair play. Our legal system, our trillion dollar
legal system works on minimum standard. Our medical system they
talk a lot about minimum standards of care. This is
something that works everywhere else, So why not bring these
concepts into the home. You're exactly right that this idea
that there's this shaming around men's standards versus women's standards
is completely counterproductive. What I said to Seth is here's
(31:06):
what the CP is for extracurricular sports. The only thing
that I care about is that when they show up,
if it's possible that they could be wearing a helmet
and not the communal helmet and then sets like, sure,
of course, you know, I'll get them there on time,
which was important for him, and that was something I
wasn't doing for the minimum standard of care. I would
always get them to their games when they're batting, like
(31:27):
second inning. He said, please, the minimum standard for me
is yes, protective gear, but also getting them there on time.
And that was not a hard conversation to have. One
of the things that Caroline and I have been talking
about a great deal is that there is a relationship
between everything that you're talking about, like how do you
renegotiate things at home so that there's more equity, there's
(31:51):
more opportunity for women, for the person who's taking on
the majority of the unpaid care work. So there's a
relationship between what you're talking about and then inside a
company creating a culture that supports that transition. And um,
it's really it's I started this off saying, you know,
I'm a real I'm very committed to the concept of
(32:15):
paid paternity leave. It's really paid parental leave. What paid
paternity leave does is it's it starts to create the
expertise across both people. Right, So where is the diaper
bag how do you change a diaper? To your point,
we have no diapers, right, like, oh my god, how
(32:35):
did that happen? I don't know. I'm not believing you
for you know, I could have accountability as well, exactly.
But inside the workplace, it also what the man has
to go through is what women have to go through.
So I now have to go to my boss and say, hey,
my family is going to bring a child into you know,
into our home, and I'd like to take paid paternity
(32:59):
leave that I hope can we talk about is there
a job on the backside of this for me? Um?
And I have to think about how my work is
going to get done while I'm gone, and then I
have to do the reentry into the workplace again. When
men go through that cycle, they are infinitely better managers
of women who go through that cycle, right it, Carolyn said,
(33:22):
it's a big empathy builder. It's an enormous sympathy builder.
But the other thing that we are like working on.
I was at this conference a couple of years ago.
One of the main speakers is he's a CEO of
a very large company, and he is one of the
men that is, you know, genuinely out trying to have
a voice in you know, in gender equality and what
is the role of men. And for the most part
(33:42):
it was a really good conversation, but at one point
he said, Um, you know, I tell the women who
work for me that they can have it all. They
just can't have it all at the same time, right,
And there's kind of silence, and then they moved on, right,
(34:05):
and um and right. That's so perplexing because I would
bet my life on the fact that that is not
the coaching that the men in his office are getting
at all. Right, So it perpetuates the belief and the
bias that everything that's going to happen on the back
side of that child coming in is the responsibility of
(34:27):
the woman and she's just got to navigate when and
how she can have it all, whereas men get offered
it all. And so the you know, there's a lot
of work that has to be done inside the workplace
to support the exact work that you're talking about that
needs to be renegotiated at home. And I think that
(34:49):
you know, Dianna, you you brilliantly gave the example of
parenting leave and how important that is because it really
cements the opportunity for a man to be a dad
all the way through a child's life. But there's so
many also, there's so many other ways that men and
partners can can do this work. And you know, we
(35:11):
spend a lot of time talking about the need for
flexibility and flexible policies for start time and work from home,
and certainly what we've all experienced during this pandemic is
the ability to be flexible and agile and figure out
how to cope with it. And what's really important is
that we continue to learn that way and continue to
set this expectation that we need to give flexibility to
(35:34):
women and two men. So we've we have this initiative
called flex at Work that Caroline is talking about, and
it's my own little way to, you know, try to
make change over the last several years. Every time that
every time we've done any sort of um visual around
flex at work or um in in the materials that
we put out, I'm just like, find me the man
(35:56):
and let's put his next flexibility. I want the sure
and it's it's really important, it's really important. What I
love about that is the modeling. So what was so
beautiful was I got to be with you. UM in
Davos that the World Economic Forum, and I had all
these male ceo has come up to me, UM and ask,
(36:19):
you know, what is the number one thing you recommend?
So of course it's always you know, fraternity leave, right,
but Um, but modeling is a big part of it.
So if it was a CEO of it was a
very high level man that asked me that question, I say,
put your put your name as first and emphasize that
you are the number one only person to call when
(36:39):
your child is sick from the score or needs something
from the school, because the modeling of having a male
leader be interrupted, because that is where the motherhood penalty
comes from. It comes from this bias that, um, we
are women mothers, we are the responsible party for the eruptions,
(37:00):
the daily disruptions, which makes us less committed to the workforce.
And that's how we're losing five of our wages for
every child that we bring into the world, where men
increase their wages by six percent for every child they
bring into the world. So just in our peak earning years,
when women are having children, all of a sudden we
become oftentimes the secondary earners because of these motherhood penalties.
(37:23):
So how transformational if you see the leader uh in
the middle of a giant presentation where the clients say,
I had to step out, my school is calling. We
know that what people see, like what they see in advertising,
or what they see on film or what they see
on television is enormously important in framing how we all
(37:43):
think about this. And so Carol and you are like
really at a real center point in terms of what
goes on air and are advertising in North America. You
want to talk a little bit about that and like
why that's important to us? Exactly as you said, this
is all about setting new expectations. So whether the new
expectation is woods the school phone when somebody's sick or
(38:06):
there's an issue at school, Um, who goes to the
doctor's appointment, But setting that expectation creates a new norm.
It's a new normal. And one of the things that
we're really intentional, very deliberate about doing is really showing
men as equal partners in the home in our advertising.
(38:27):
You know, we are the world's largest advertiser. We have
a an amazing portfolio of brands, so we need to
show men doing laundry, changing diapers, swiffering floors, and we
when we do that, we do that in a way
that's very natural and just part of the everyday living.
We show dads as caregivers, but we're very intentional in
(38:49):
assuring that we we have walked away from these outdated
stereotypes and we really make room to create this better,
more equal world. I'm proud of so many of our
brands for that tied swiffer, Pampers, you know, Pampers, ads
have moved their target from moms to parents. It's you know,
(39:09):
it's it's wonderful, and it's modern, it's relevant for today's world.
It's about it's about diapering parents. It's not about diapering moms,
you know, cleaning homes. You used to only see mums
doing dishes. It's like, no, we're not going to do
that anymore. We are really going to showcase this new
world and this new expectation that men can play an
(39:29):
equal role here. Uh. And that's good for everybody, you know.
I think the conversation CPE is so important and and
when families and couples get it right, it has huge impact.
You both know that I got divorced when my kids
were very young. I mean they were eight, four and
(39:50):
three when Tony and I split up and when we
first um. When we first split up, we had um.
Back then, it was a really traditional way of thinking about,
you know, split families. Tony had the kids every Wednesday
night for dinner and had them every other weekend. And
but what that meant for me was that I had
(40:11):
them all the time. And I love my children, but
I was exhausted. I was literally exhausted because the cpe
predominantly fell on me. You know, at some point, Tony
and I, for a lot of reasons, for him, for me,
for the kids, moved to a week on, week off
model of parenting. I had to let go of everything
(40:36):
I believed I was supposed to be as a mother.
I mean, we've talked about this all through here, that
women have to really reframe their role at home. Um,
if you want to get to equality, but I will
tell you this, my life changed when we made that decision,
and so did Tony's. But for me, it you know,
I got to get some sleep. Um. I knew when
(40:58):
I could travel, I when it was my week. I
knew that doctor's appointments and parent teacher conferences and sports
were my responsibility, but when it was his week, they
were his responsibility. And UM, and you know, I say
it was life changing, but it also changed the trajectory
of my career because my ability to do my job,
(41:22):
to plan my weeks, to um, you know, be excellent
at what I do at home and excellent at what
I do at work. And I wouldn't recommend that, you know,
people get divorced in order to get that. I mean,
I think, Eve, what you're laying out for us is
a way to navigate the equality at home and equality
(41:43):
at work without having to be drastic. UM. But I
think it's a really really UM. The intervention of CPE
is such an important uh concept for everyone to take on.
Even this has been such a great converse station, Like,
you're so amazing. You have a podcast coming up this fall.
You want to tell us really quickly about it. Oh,
(42:05):
thank you. It's called the fair Play Files. Um. We're
basically looking at this idea that the home presents itself
really small, but recognizing that, UM, the presenting problem is
never the real problem. So really looking at these greater issues,
whether they be issues about UM, the three things that
(42:26):
seem to prevent people from getting to this place of equity,
and those are really boundaries that you know, women believing
that they have a permission to be unavailable for things
that they care about. Systems, as we talked about a
lot um, the idea of owning the full grocery situation,
the CPE, and then also communication, how do we use
(42:47):
our voices? So I'm really excited to explore um what
I believe is really the key to mental health for women,
and that's boundaries, systems, um and communication. So that's what
we're gonna be doing in the fall with the podcast.
I can't wait to hear it. Thank you so much, Eve,
It's been such a delight talking with you today. I
appreciate your being here. So is there one final thought
(43:11):
you'd like to leave us with? One final thought? What
I'd like for us all to take a moment to
think about is do you believe an hour holding your
child's hand at the pediatrician's office is just as valuable
to society as an hour in the boardroom. If you
believe that, then you also believe that all time is
(43:34):
created equal, that women and men's time are both diamonds
and it should be treated as such. That's amazing, beautiful.
Thank you so much. Eve, It's been delightful talking to
you today. What an incredible conversation. I learned so much
(43:56):
today listening to Eve, Caroline Indiana. Here are my takeaways. First,
equality at work begins with the quality at home. As
we've said in other episodes, now is the time to
reframe our thinking and debunk old stereotypes. Both men and
women can play an equal role at home, and children
and families will be the better for it. Second, to
(44:19):
encourage equality at home, consider a system or tool that
actually gets you there, such as eaves CPE. It's a
simple and effective plan that calls for owning an activity
from start to finish, conception, planning, and execution. Finally, we
need to carry this message into the workplace. We need
(44:39):
policies that treat men and women equally on topics ranging
from flexible work for men and women to paid parental
leave that equally supports new moms and new dads. Join
us next week, when Caroline and Diana talked to Tina Chen,
president and CEO of Times Up, about dealing with harassment
at work and creating workplace is that are safe, fair,
(45:01):
and dignified. You're Listening to Seneca Women Conversations on Power
and Purpose Brought to you by the Seneca Women Podcast
Network and I Heart Radio with support from founding partner
of PNG. Listen to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and
(45:23):
Purpose on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts, and please support this podcast
by telling your friends, subscribing, and rating us. For more
information on Seneca Women, follow us on social media, visit
our website Seneca Women dot com, and check out the
Seneca Women app free in the app Store. Have a
(45:43):
great day.
Hi, This is Milan Vervier and this is Kim Azarelli.
We are co authors of the book Fast Forward, How
Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose, and you're listening to
Seneca's conversations on power and Purpose. Welcome to this special edition.
(00:24):
This new six part series called Getting to Equal will
change the way you think about women and leadership, and
it comes at a time when women's leadership has never
been more crucial. We have two amazing leaders who are
guest hosting these six episodes, Carol and Tastad, Group President
North America and Diana Bass, Vice President Global Diversity, Equality
(00:45):
and Inclusion, both from PNG, one of the largest consumer
goods companies in the world. Together, Caroline and Diana have
created an impressive gender equality strategy for PNG, and it's
a strategy that's really breaking new ground on these issues
in the private sector. And they'll be joined by incredible
guests from all walks of life. Today, Caroline Indiana talked
(01:05):
with Eve Rodsky, author of the best selling book fair Play.
Fair Play offers a solution to the fact that women
continue to bear the brunt of child wearing and responsibilities
at home. Caroline and Diana, thanks so much for joining
us again today and I'm looking forward to hearing the conversation.
Thanks Kim. Before we start this episode of Getting to Equal,
(01:25):
we want to take a moment to acknowledge the recent
passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a remarkable woman, a
bold champion for equality. Justice Ginsberg dedicated her life to
helping everyone get to equal. Today's conversation shows why equality
in the home is crucial to women's advancement in the workplace.
(01:47):
It's a concept Justice Ginsburg understood well. She and her
late husband, Attorney Martin Ginsburg, embodied home life equality. There's
was a partnership of shared responsibilities, and as with most
topics in this area, Justice Ginsburg was ahead of her time.
And that's only one of the very many reasons she'll
(02:08):
be so profoundly missed. Gosh, you're so right, Caroline, what
a great example Justice Skinsburg was. She was such an
extraordinary woman. I'm happy today that we're going to be
talking with our good friend and ally in this work,
Eve Rodsky, who has excellent practical ways of achieving equity
(02:28):
and balance at home, and she's always so much fun
to talk with. But to start with, I want to
ask our listeners a couple of questions. Have you ever
thought that there just wasn't enough time in the day
to get everything done? Does getting everything done become more
complicated when children enter your family? And at the same time,
(02:49):
have you ever wondered how your partner or spouse has
time to work out, watch a ball game, or read
a book while you're barely able to make it so.
Kara and I are fierce advocates of shining a light
on the inequalities in our homes and the fight for
gender equality. We believe that we will never truly achieve
(03:10):
equality until there is a quality at home. Today, we're
going to talk about the intersection of work and home,
which has simply been compounded by the global pandemic, How
to balance the taskload at home and why that has
a profound impact on women's performance at work. We're going
to share advice and solutions that men and women can
(03:30):
use to free up what is today mostly women's time
and allow women to accelerate their careers, accelerating their communities,
or frankly, just take a nap. So, Caroline, we're talking
about equal treatment of men and women at home, but
it's really a bigger issue, isn't it. It's one that
ties to our overall theme of women in leadership. So
(03:53):
how do those things connect for you, Diana? It's a
it's a really a great question, and it is a
much bigger issue than simply who does the dishes or
who helps the kids with their homework. You know, we
know that women at all levels of achievement and in
however they define what their career and their interests are,
they continue to do most of the work in the home,
(04:16):
including caring for the home, child rearing, and often taking
care of extended family obligations. So these additional responsibilities, while
very important, I mean less time available to concentrate on
their careers or other interests, especially as compared to their
male colleagues or counterparts. And we often say that, you know,
(04:39):
equality at work starts with equality at home, and we
need to make room for both men and women to
play equal or shared roles at home. Linked to that,
we need companies to acknowledge that both men and women
should share responsibilities and and in doing that, in courage
(05:00):
this to happen through workplace policies that can allow for
mothers and fathers to be part of a child's life
and their home home responsibilities. You know, interestingly, when women
get into leadership positions, it's been shown that they're more
likely to create or sponsor workplace policies or solutions, such
(05:24):
as paid parental leave and child care policies for women
and men. And not only are things like this the
right thing to do, but that parental leave allows men
to really understand the challenges of child rearing and what
uh women in the home and at workface every day.
It builds empathy, it builds understanding, and it makes room
(05:48):
for more equality in the workplace. Yeah, you know, I
believe that paid paternity leave is the single most important
benefit intervention we can make to accelerate gender equality at
home and importantly in the place. We're going to talk
about this a lot more with Eve, but here's some
research to get us started. First of all, the research
(06:08):
tells us that when new fathers take paid parental leave,
mothers return to work more easily. Now that's a little obvious,
but more interestingly, female employment is higher in countries where
they have paid paternity leave, and more significantly, the earnings
gap is lower in those countries. In fact, a study
(06:29):
done by the Institute for labor market policy evaluation. It's
a European organization. UM found that for every month of
paid parental leave a man takes, a woman's salary goes
up almost seven percent. And it's amazing to think that
this one policy intervention can and will help equalize the
(06:50):
effects of maternity leave and motherhood on the development and
the compensation of women in our organizations. It's so important
to us that at and G we just announced we're
going to be rolling out over the next year a
standard eight weeks paid parentally for all of our employees
in all parts of the world. It's a significant intervention
(07:14):
for us, and it's significant for men and women as
part of our gender equality initiative. But we also know
from our own experience with our employees that the coronavirus
has made all of these challenges much more painfully obvious. UM.
And in fact, there is this great article in Fortune
that Cheryl Sandberg dig back in May where she smartly
(07:36):
coined the phrase the double double shift, right, referring to
the fact that women who are already doing a double shift,
like I'm going to work working all day long, and
then I'm having to come home and do everything at home.
The double double shift like takes into consideration what's happened
in the pandemic, that there's additional responsibilities of home schooling,
(07:57):
of taking care of elder parents, you know, many of
the things that you talked about. Yeah, you know that
this is exactly true. This pandemic has the potential to
wipe out years of progress that we've made in building
up a pipeline of women. A recent survey shows that
four percent of women considering quitting their jobs due to
family demands created by COVID versus eleven percent of men,
(08:20):
and that pressure is even higher for multicultural women of
Hispanic women and fIF percent of Black and Asian women.
You know, even our own internal survey data at p
AND shows that women are more concerned about caretaking than men,
and it shows up in one of their top three
concerns for more than fifty percent of women and a
(08:41):
little over thirty of men. So this shows up over
and over again. Yeah, there's so much to talk about
on this topic. Our guest today has even written a
book on this and it's a New York Times bestseller.
I'm so excited to introduce all of you to Eve
rod Sky, the author of fair Play a game changing
solution for when you have too much to do and
(09:04):
more life to live. In fair Play, Eve uses her
Harvard Law School training and years of organization management experience
to create a gamified life management system to help couples
rebalance all of the work that it takes to run
a home and allow them to reimagine their relationships, their time,
and their purpose. So, Eve, I'm so glad to have
(09:27):
you here. Thank you for having me. Can you tell
our audience what got you started on the fair Play journey? So, yes,
how did this I'll get started? Well, um, yeah, I
guess you can't. You can't make this stuff up. But this, this,
my whole journey to understanding started with a text my
husband sent me after been my second son was born.
(09:48):
And that text just said, UM, I'm surprised you didn't
get blueberries. So I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries. So
I just had been at a toddler Zach at the
time as well. Um I had that day that I
got this text, I had a diaper bag and a
breast pump on the passenger seat in my car. I
(10:08):
had gifts for a newborn baby to return in the
back seat of my car. UM, So I had a
client contract in my lap where I was marking it
up with a pen, and I'm racing, racing to get
my older son, Zach at our his toddler transition daycare.
And in all that chaos, which reminds me a lot
of what's happening today, UM, where it feels like sort
of the space and time continuum is collapsing on a
(10:30):
lot of seth Um had the audacity to send me
a text saying, UM, I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries.
And it hit me so hard that day that I
pulled over and if I had to pull over to
compose myself because I was crying over this text. UM,
you know, it was pretty bad. But what I was
(10:51):
thinking that day was two things. One was blaming myself that, UM,
I used to be able to manage employee teams and
now I'm in a position and I'm so overwhelmed that
I can't even manage a grocery list. But more importantly,
I was thinking to myself, how had this happened that UM,
(11:13):
I am the default, or as I call in fair play,
the she fault for literally every single household and domestic
task for my family wasn't supposed to happen to me.
I'm a product of a single mom. I vowed from
being her partner in life seven years old, eight years old,
helping her with eviction notices and late utility bills, that
I would have an equal partner in life. And more importantly, Um,
(11:35):
as you said so nicely before, Dana, I'm a Harvard
trained attorney, I'm a mediator, and I'm trained to communicate.
So I think what I realized was that if this
was happening to me, it was probably happening to other women.
And that's the quest that began eight years ago that
I'm still on today to understand what it means to
(11:56):
be the she fault in our society. You know, I
think I think it's such a great story, and this
notion of the she fault is something that um, I
think many can identify with. It's your story amplifies this
whole assumption that caring for home and family is women's work,
or or potentially even worse, you know, the perception that
(12:19):
women are intrinsically better at caring for home and family
than their male counterparts, neither of which is true. You know,
I was at a leadership for him. This was a
few years back with two uh pears in in our industry,
man and a woman who used to work together. And
as the conversation began, you know, they were talking about
their early years together when they would do Saturday morning
(12:42):
store visits, which was kind of a write of passage
for all of us. And as they chatted, the man
said to the woman, you know, I always felt so
badly about you having to leave your kids on a
Saturday morning. To what she smiled and nodded, and the
conversation moved on. I sat there going, wait a minute,
didn't he have kids too? Why aren't we talking about that?
(13:06):
And there's just this ingrained bias in society and in
ourselves that somehow we think women are failing their families
when they work outside the home or when they when
they step away from that responsibility. Somehow that gets associated
as a as a female circumstance, even in today's world
(13:28):
and in the world I've grown up in where my
husband has played a much greater role in the caring
for our children, but we don't talk about it that way.
So we know today that women do two times more
unpaid care work than men. The World Economic Forums Gender
Report studies more than a hundred and fifty countries, and
(13:49):
in the last report there were zero countries. That's a
crazy number, zero countries where men do more unpaid care
work than women. And the only way to get it
solveding that is by really getting at the systemic issues
and and getting at this bias in our society. Even
when you were putting together your fair playbook, you you
(14:09):
did a lot of your own research. Tell us a
little bit about that. As you said before, this is
a systemic issue, and I think it requires understanding the
systemic bias. This really comes down to a finding that
was so interesting to me, UM when I interviewed five
men and women that married the U S census. UM,
my core finding of fair Play was that we as
(14:32):
a society men, women, UM, and society, we treat and
we value men's time as finite like and we guard
it like a diamond, and we we value and treat
women's time as infinite like sand. And UM. That sounds
very esoteric, so let me just break it down for
how that that plays out in the real world. Well,
(14:54):
we know that we don't value women's time the same
as men's time because we don't pay women the same
for the same work. Um, if you're a woman of color,
you're getting sixty cents on the dollar to a white man.
So we know women's time isn't valued in the workplace.
But what I was so surprised by was how much women,
especially devalue their own time and the home. And so
(15:16):
these were things that I was hearing what I call
toxic time messages. Um, women from all walks of life
said things to me like, of course I am the
one making the lunch is getting the call from the
school because my husband makes more money than me. Well,
typically se men make more of money than women because
of that pay equity issue we just talked about, So
(15:39):
that's gonna be a losing argument for women. Um, I'm
I'm more trained than my husband, I have more degrees,
but I chose philanthropy. So does that mean because he
chose private equity, that I'm now relegated to doing the
unpaid care in my home forever. Other women said to
me things like, well, you know that once you become
a mother, multitask is our superpower. Where why are differently
(16:02):
for care and for multitasking? So for that one I
went to one of the top neuroscientists in this country,
and Caroline Diana. That was the only other time I cried, actually,
um on this journey. The only other time I really
sab was this day that this old crotch of the neuroscientists,
when I asked him our women, why are differently from
multitasking and care because we've heard, or at least I
(16:24):
saw so many articles that sort of implied that. He
just looked at me with a blank stare and said, um, imagine, Eve,
we men can convince you women, um, that you're better
at wiping asses and doing dishes? Why would I want
to change that perception? But other so other than the multitasking,
(16:45):
the most other popular message, toxic time message was in
the time I would take me to tell him what
to do, I might as well do it myself. So
for that when I went to Dan Arielli, my good friend,
because a behavioral economist, and I said, is it a
good argument to say, in the time it takes me
to tell him what to do, I should do it myself?
And he said that was the worst argument he ever
heard for women. Of course, it makes sense to quote
(17:07):
unquote enlist your partner in the wiping of the asses
and doing the dishes otherwise, otherwise you're doing it yourself
forever at the expense of your finite time. Still, I
heard women saying, and that's my husband's bettered focusing on
one task of the time, and I can find the time.
There's no way to find time, especially when space and
(17:28):
time is collapsing on us as it is in a pandemic.
And so what this just means is that there's a
different expectation over how women are supposed to use their time. Yeah,
you know, in our last episode, we were talking to
Justin Baldoni and one of the things that he said was,
you know, basically you can't get mad at men about
this that you have to in today's world. We have
(17:50):
to approach equality with a sense of compassion. And like,
I'm listening to your story, going, then who do I
get to be mad at? Who am I supposed to
be mad at? Because it's it's frustrating. I think a
lot of us are directing it at our partners. Um
I called the residentometer a lot of resent as at ten.
But when I think is we have to also look
(18:11):
at our own our own bias, and part of this work,
really is this idea of UM using our voice. Because
I think the thing that hurt me the most in
this research UM was even more than understanding how women
treated their own time as sand and didn't guard it
as diamonds, including myself, where I had some of those
(18:34):
toxic time beliefs that I was somehow a multitasking superhero
for being able to do dishes and have my own
firm and have pinches perfect, um clothes are my kids?
You know, all these unrealistic expectations that ultimately lead us
to crash UM. The other thing that made me really
sad was that women did admit to anger and rage
(18:59):
and sadness UM, but when I asked whether it correlated
to using their voice in their home, many women said
it did not. It did not correlate, And I think
that was a really hard finding for me to accept.
You're exactly right, I mean it is I myself have
been guilty of this. And you know, one of the
things that Caroline and I have talked a lot about
(19:20):
as we talked to women that we work with, you
hear things like, UM, I have to hurry up and
get home and make dinner, and so I do think
women carry a bit of you know, whether it is
we carry the same bias that everybody else has about
what our responsibility is, or we get something for having
(19:40):
the leadership and the accountability at home. Right. But um,
I do think that that women have some reframing to
do as well in this whole area. Yeah, I mean,
I think that's so right. I think both men and
women have to shift their assumptions in terms of, you know,
the work at home and raising a family and all
(20:01):
of that. I'll give you an example of that. You know,
my husband is the best partner I can imagine, certainly
the best partner for me when our children were younger.
With both of us working, I had a heavier travel
scheduled than he did. And there was one day that
I got home early, a miracle, right, a miracle happens
you never get home early. And I was so excited
(20:23):
because I was there. And so as we finished dinner,
I said, who's having a bath, Who's whose homework has
to get done? Let's go. I was. I was ready
to roll and uh, and my kids stopped and they
kind of looked at my husband, and then they looked
back at me, and they kind of sat there like
I was speaking a completely foreign language, and then looked
(20:44):
at my husband. And then at one point, my husband
looked at the kids and he said, in a very
loud stage whisper, it's okay, guys, Mom's home. She thinks
she's in charge. He said, just just go with it.
She's going to be traveling again next week and it'll
all be back to normal. And the kids thought this
(21:05):
was the funniest thing in the world, and you know,
tripped merrily away to go do homework and have a
bath because Dad had just um very much put mom
in her place. And and for me, what I hadn't
internalized until that moment was that my husband was the
one who was managing the day to day. I got
other responsibilities. We both played a great role in in
(21:26):
bringing up our kids, you know. But he got that
day to day responsibility, and I got things that worked
on my travel schedule, and that was theater costumes and
birthday parties and the big projects and you know, the
dreaded college applications. I still think he got the better
deal than I did on that one. But that notion
of both of us figuring out our role, figuring it
(21:49):
out in a way that worked for us equally, UM
took some took some to and frowing from both of us,
but very definitely from me. I love that so much. Yeah,
you know, one of the concepts that you talk about
that I found so interesting was this notion of fixed
time and flexible time. So I think it's such an
important conversation when you think about what women and men
(22:13):
do at home. Absolutely, typically women are doing work in
the home that cannot be said at their own timetable.
And we know that now, especially in this pandemic, that
UM women are subject to far more interruptions than men
are UM, and men often choose the task that they
can do UM at times at work for them and
(22:35):
so I call that in the book the Daily Grinds.
So here the from my survey of a hundred men
and women, what is causing the most consternation in the
home right now? Laundry, groceries, meals, home supplies, who's ordering
the hand sanitizer and wipes, tiding up, cleaning dishes, and garbage.
(22:55):
If you have children, you would add discipline in in
screen time, homework which has now become homeschool watching of children,
whether it's toddlers or even teenagers. That dirty doesn't are
the other tasks that are the hardest, and typically those
are the ones Diana, that fall on women because they're
(23:16):
not ones that can be done on your own timetable.
You may be able to mow the lawn, who cares
of the grasses a little long, But you can't put
your child to bed without dinner consistently. Otherwise child Protective
Services is going to come to your house. It's just
the reality. And so inviting men to the table for
(23:36):
those dirty dozen those are where you can really get
the most relief. But that requires um not only using
your voice, but it requires understanding that Um, this is
more than just a list list of loan do not work,
but what does work is systems. And if you can
treat your home as your most important organization, if you
(23:57):
can start thinking of your home with some respect and rigor,
like my aunt Marian's Magen group has more clearly defined
expectations in the home. If you don't bring snack twice
to that group, you're out. But the whole we're all deciding,
as Carol, you're said in your beautiful story, Okay, who's
doing what? Who's setting the table for dinner? Who wants
to take the first bath. We're dying in decision fatigue,
(24:19):
and if we are not making those decisions, then it's
gonna she fault right in this gendered way. So the
answer is to treat our home is our most important organization,
to treat it with some respect and rigor, and to
customize our defaults. You don't walk into your boss's office
and say, hey, what should I be doing today? And
I'll just wait here to you tell me what to do.
(24:39):
It's just not gonna fly with you. I know it. It
It would definitely not fly with you, Caroline. I know that. Um.
But what you're doing, and why you're such effective managers,
right is you're giving ownership to the people who work
around you. You're giving them autonomy. And that's why this
doesn't work for men either. Why fair Play became a
love letter to men because no man told me that
the current system was working for them. The number one
(25:02):
thing men tell me they hate about home life is
quote unquote nagging. The number one thing women tell me
they hate about home life is that they can't shut
their minds off. The only way you do you cure
that is by starting to customize your defaults. Were in
advance you know who's handling a task in your home
from start to finish. We'll be back after this break.
(25:33):
I love your system for working this UM Conception Planning
and execution. I'd love you to tell everybody about this
because I think it's simple. It's sticky in that it's
easy to remember, and it's really easy to learn, uh.
And it's a way to have such an important conversation
and dialogue and just to get clear on who's gonna
(25:56):
do what. So tell us about CPE can Option planning
and execution. CPS really the basis of their play. And
this is what I mean by it. What I mean
is that the domestic conversation so far UM in modern
history is all about fifty fifty. And I want to
(26:19):
tell you that I think fifty fifty is a very
dangerous equation because it automatically leads to score keeping. What
if we change the score keeping mindset and instead adopt
an ownership mindset. What I mean is that set when
we first started playing fair play, we first started to
(26:39):
have these conversations. He genuinely felt that he was in
charge of our son's extra picular sports because he was
showing up to the little league field on the weekend.
And so when we finally sit down and said, thank
you for executing that piece, right, I appreciate you showing up. Um.
But here's the behind the scenes task. I'm serving our
(27:02):
kids to see what sports they want to play and
what sports leagues they want to be in. I am
logging onto some crazy portal UM that always locks me
out to try to register them on the same team
at the same at six am in the morning when
the portal opens up. UM. I am ordering cleats or
getting cleats from friends who have outgrown their cleats and
(27:24):
going to pick them up. I'm returning that those cleats
or though that equipment when it doesn't fit. UM. I'm
organizing for three days a week practices for you know,
cumulative between both of our kids, UM, and the car
pulling to and from those practices. I'm organizing a coach's
gift for all of us do once once every couple
(27:46):
of times. I'm snack mom, which is I hate that term.
I'm snack parents. UM. Those are the things. I'm researching
their birth certificate or trying to make five copies of it,
and some I don't have a xerox copy machine in
my house. Um, those are the behind the scenes conception
and planning tasks that take that take us to that
(28:08):
little league field. Those are was required to get us
to that little league field, along with sunscreen and maybe
a protective helmet so they don't have to use a
communal helmet, because of course, my kids will be the
ones that come home with life. Um. And I think
it was that understanding that your own to to move
to an ownership mindset, that it would require taking over
(28:30):
everything the conception, to the planning, to the execution of
that entire task. And then if something fell through the cracks,
the blame would not be the she fault. It would
not come back on me. You would carry through your mistake.
You don't bring the equipment you have to go back home.
You don't say eve, I can't believe in and bring
me the equipment. You carry through your own mistake. That
(28:51):
is really the basis of what CPE is. It's just
another way of saying, um, we're here to start looking
at the home in a different way into adopting an
ownership mindset as opposed to a fifty fifty score keeping mindset.
You know, the other thing on this one is that
you have to be open to different ways to do things.
My experience with that, before I knew what it was called,
(29:14):
was when my kids were older and my husband retired,
and at one point my daughter came to me and said, Mom,
I'm out of clean underwear. Can you talk to dad.
Dad said he's only doing laundry once a week, and like,
that's just not going to work. At which point I
went to my husband and I said, like, really, our kids,
they got to have clean underwear. And he said, no, no, no,
(29:36):
my responsibility. The kids need clean underwear. I understand that
I'm going to do laundry once a week. We need
a different solution. We're going to buy more underwear. And
we did. It was a different solution. It worked beautifully
and everybody was happy. But in terms of the CPE,
the concept, planning and execution, you've got to be open
(29:59):
to different solutions as long as you're clear on what
I think you call it the minimum standards. You know,
what's that minimum standard of care that you agree on,
and then you've got to be willing to let other
stuff go. It doesn't have to be it doesn't have
to be done your way. It just has to be
done in a way that works. Yes, and I think
that that's what so shaming to women, because every article
I was seeing up until that point, Caroline was things
(30:21):
that said, like, women, you have to lower your standards
where men your standards suck and you have to raise
your standards. Were Oftentimes it's just ridiculous. It just wrong.
It's wrong because this is not a zero sum game.
You know, we're trying to redefine teamwork here. This is
not I win and you lose. So the way what
you said before is such a beautiful way to think
about a minimum standard because guess what I talk about
(30:44):
this in fair play. Our legal system, our trillion dollar
legal system works on minimum standard. Our medical system they
talk a lot about minimum standards of care. This is
something that works everywhere else, So why not bring these
concepts into the home. You're exactly right that this idea
that there's this shaming around men's standards versus women's standards
is completely counterproductive. What I said to Seth is here's
(31:06):
what the CP is for extracurricular sports. The only thing
that I care about is that when they show up,
if it's possible that they could be wearing a helmet
and not the communal helmet and then sets like, sure,
of course, you know, I'll get them there on time,
which was important for him, and that was something I
wasn't doing for the minimum standard of care. I would
always get them to their games when they're batting, like
(31:27):
second inning. He said, please, the minimum standard for me
is yes, protective gear, but also getting them there on time.
And that was not a hard conversation to have. One
of the things that Caroline and I have been talking
about a great deal is that there is a relationship
between everything that you're talking about, like how do you
renegotiate things at home so that there's more equity, there's
(31:51):
more opportunity for women, for the person who's taking on
the majority of the unpaid care work. So there's a
relationship between what you're talking about and then inside a
company creating a culture that supports that transition. And um,
it's really it's I started this off saying, you know,
I'm a real I'm very committed to the concept of
(32:15):
paid paternity leave. It's really paid parental leave. What paid
paternity leave does is it's it starts to create the
expertise across both people. Right, So where is the diaper
bag how do you change a diaper? To your point,
we have no diapers, right, like, oh my god, how
(32:35):
did that happen? I don't know. I'm not believing you
for you know, I could have accountability as well, exactly.
But inside the workplace, it also what the man has
to go through is what women have to go through.
So I now have to go to my boss and say, hey,
my family is going to bring a child into you know,
into our home, and I'd like to take paid paternity
(32:59):
leave that I hope can we talk about is there
a job on the backside of this for me? Um?
And I have to think about how my work is
going to get done while I'm gone, and then I
have to do the reentry into the workplace again. When
men go through that cycle, they are infinitely better managers
of women who go through that cycle, right it, Carolyn said,
(33:22):
it's a big empathy builder. It's an enormous sympathy builder.
But the other thing that we are like working on.
I was at this conference a couple of years ago.
One of the main speakers is he's a CEO of
a very large company, and he is one of the
men that is, you know, genuinely out trying to have
a voice in you know, in gender equality and what
is the role of men. And for the most part
(33:42):
it was a really good conversation, but at one point
he said, Um, you know, I tell the women who
work for me that they can have it all. They
just can't have it all at the same time, right,
And there's kind of silence, and then they moved on, right,
(34:05):
and um and right. That's so perplexing because I would
bet my life on the fact that that is not
the coaching that the men in his office are getting
at all. Right, So it perpetuates the belief and the
bias that everything that's going to happen on the back
side of that child coming in is the responsibility of
(34:27):
the woman and she's just got to navigate when and
how she can have it all, whereas men get offered
it all. And so the you know, there's a lot
of work that has to be done inside the workplace
to support the exact work that you're talking about that
needs to be renegotiated at home. And I think that
(34:49):
you know, Dianna, you you brilliantly gave the example of
parenting leave and how important that is because it really
cements the opportunity for a man to be a dad
all the way through a child's life. But there's so
many also, there's so many other ways that men and
partners can can do this work. And you know, we
(35:11):
spend a lot of time talking about the need for
flexibility and flexible policies for start time and work from home,
and certainly what we've all experienced during this pandemic is
the ability to be flexible and agile and figure out
how to cope with it. And what's really important is
that we continue to learn that way and continue to
set this expectation that we need to give flexibility to
(35:34):
women and two men. So we've we have this initiative
called flex at Work that Caroline is talking about, and
it's my own little way to, you know, try to
make change over the last several years. Every time that
every time we've done any sort of um visual around
flex at work or um in in the materials that
we put out, I'm just like, find me the man
(35:56):
and let's put his next flexibility. I want the sure
and it's it's really important, it's really important. What I
love about that is the modeling. So what was so
beautiful was I got to be with you. UM in
Davos that the World Economic Forum, and I had all
these male ceo has come up to me, UM and ask,
(36:19):
you know, what is the number one thing you recommend?
So of course it's always you know, fraternity leave, right,
but Um, but modeling is a big part of it.
So if it was a CEO of it was a
very high level man that asked me that question, I say,
put your put your name as first and emphasize that
you are the number one only person to call when
(36:39):
your child is sick from the score or needs something
from the school, because the modeling of having a male
leader be interrupted, because that is where the motherhood penalty
comes from. It comes from this bias that, um, we
are women mothers, we are the responsible party for the eruptions,
(37:00):
the daily disruptions, which makes us less committed to the workforce.
And that's how we're losing five of our wages for
every child that we bring into the world, where men
increase their wages by six percent for every child they
bring into the world. So just in our peak earning years,
when women are having children, all of a sudden we
become oftentimes the secondary earners because of these motherhood penalties.
(37:23):
So how transformational if you see the leader uh in
the middle of a giant presentation where the clients say,
I had to step out, my school is calling. We
know that what people see, like what they see in advertising,
or what they see on film or what they see
on television is enormously important in framing how we all
(37:43):
think about this. And so Carol and you are like
really at a real center point in terms of what
goes on air and are advertising in North America. You
want to talk a little bit about that and like
why that's important to us? Exactly as you said, this
is all about setting new expectations. So whether the new
expectation is woods the school phone when somebody's sick or
(38:06):
there's an issue at school, Um, who goes to the
doctor's appointment, But setting that expectation creates a new norm.
It's a new normal. And one of the things that
we're really intentional, very deliberate about doing is really showing
men as equal partners in the home in our advertising.
(38:27):
You know, we are the world's largest advertiser. We have
a an amazing portfolio of brands, so we need to
show men doing laundry, changing diapers, swiffering floors, and we
when we do that, we do that in a way
that's very natural and just part of the everyday living.
We show dads as caregivers, but we're very intentional in
(38:49):
assuring that we we have walked away from these outdated
stereotypes and we really make room to create this better,
more equal world. I'm proud of so many of our
brands for that tied swiffer, Pampers, you know, Pampers, ads
have moved their target from moms to parents. It's you know,
(39:09):
it's it's wonderful, and it's modern, it's relevant for today's world.
It's about it's about diapering parents. It's not about diapering moms,
you know, cleaning homes. You used to only see mums
doing dishes. It's like, no, we're not going to do
that anymore. We are really going to showcase this new
world and this new expectation that men can play an
(39:29):
equal role here. Uh. And that's good for everybody, you know.
I think the conversation CPE is so important and and
when families and couples get it right, it has huge impact.
You both know that I got divorced when my kids
were very young. I mean they were eight, four and
(39:50):
three when Tony and I split up and when we
first um. When we first split up, we had um.
Back then, it was a really traditional way of thinking about,
you know, split families. Tony had the kids every Wednesday
night for dinner and had them every other weekend. And
but what that meant for me was that I had
(40:11):
them all the time. And I love my children, but
I was exhausted. I was literally exhausted because the cpe
predominantly fell on me. You know, at some point, Tony
and I, for a lot of reasons, for him, for me,
for the kids, moved to a week on, week off
model of parenting. I had to let go of everything
(40:36):
I believed I was supposed to be as a mother.
I mean, we've talked about this all through here, that
women have to really reframe their role at home. Um,
if you want to get to equality, but I will
tell you this, my life changed when we made that decision,
and so did Tony's. But for me, it you know,
I got to get some sleep. Um. I knew when
(40:58):
I could travel, I when it was my week. I
knew that doctor's appointments and parent teacher conferences and sports
were my responsibility, but when it was his week, they
were his responsibility. And UM, and you know, I say
it was life changing, but it also changed the trajectory
of my career because my ability to do my job,
(41:22):
to plan my weeks, to um, you know, be excellent
at what I do at home and excellent at what
I do at work. And I wouldn't recommend that, you know,
people get divorced in order to get that. I mean,
I think, Eve, what you're laying out for us is
a way to navigate the equality at home and equality
(41:43):
at work without having to be drastic. UM. But I
think it's a really really UM. The intervention of CPE
is such an important uh concept for everyone to take on.
Even this has been such a great converse station, Like,
you're so amazing. You have a podcast coming up this fall.
You want to tell us really quickly about it. Oh,
(42:05):
thank you. It's called the fair Play Files. Um. We're
basically looking at this idea that the home presents itself
really small, but recognizing that, UM, the presenting problem is
never the real problem. So really looking at these greater issues,
whether they be issues about UM, the three things that
(42:26):
seem to prevent people from getting to this place of equity,
and those are really boundaries that you know, women believing
that they have a permission to be unavailable for things
that they care about. Systems, as we talked about a
lot um, the idea of owning the full grocery situation,
the CPE, and then also communication, how do we use
(42:47):
our voices? So I'm really excited to explore um what
I believe is really the key to mental health for women,
and that's boundaries, systems, um and communication. So that's what
we're gonna be doing in the fall with the podcast.
I can't wait to hear it. Thank you so much, Eve,
It's been such a delight talking with you today. I
appreciate your being here. So is there one final thought
(43:11):
you'd like to leave us with? One final thought? What
I'd like for us all to take a moment to
think about is do you believe an hour holding your
child's hand at the pediatrician's office is just as valuable
to society as an hour in the boardroom. If you
believe that, then you also believe that all time is
(43:34):
created equal, that women and men's time are both diamonds
and it should be treated as such. That's amazing, beautiful.
Thank you so much. Eve, It's been delightful talking to
you today. What an incredible conversation. I learned so much
(43:56):
today listening to Eve, Caroline Indiana. Here are my takeaways. First,
equality at work begins with the quality at home. As
we've said in other episodes, now is the time to
reframe our thinking and debunk old stereotypes. Both men and
women can play an equal role at home, and children
and families will be the better for it. Second, to
(44:19):
encourage equality at home, consider a system or tool that
actually gets you there, such as eaves CPE. It's a
simple and effective plan that calls for owning an activity
from start to finish, conception, planning, and execution. Finally, we
need to carry this message into the workplace. We need
(44:39):
policies that treat men and women equally on topics ranging
from flexible work for men and women to paid parental
leave that equally supports new moms and new dads. Join
us next week, when Caroline and Diana talked to Tina Chen,
president and CEO of Times Up, about dealing with harassment
at work and creating workplace is that are safe, fair,
(45:01):
and dignified. You're Listening to Seneca Women Conversations on Power
and Purpose Brought to you by the Seneca Women Podcast
Network and I Heart Radio with support from founding partner
of PNG. Listen to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and
(45:23):
Purpose on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts, and please support this podcast
by telling your friends, subscribing, and rating us. For more
information on Seneca Women, follow us on social media, visit
our website Seneca Women dot com, and check out the
Seneca Women app free in the app Store. Have a
(45:43):
great day.
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