Transcript of There’s an Eruption in My Living Room! The Care Economy, Part 1

Cathy: Welcome to Parity, a podcast for everyone ready for a workplace of true gender parity with equal numbers of women and men at all levels of organizations including the coveted top positions. Women have had the right to vote for 100 years, but experts believe that we will not achieve workplace parity for another 135 years! 135 years is a long time, friends, to wait for equality. The goal of this podcast is to accelerate this change by being a coach, mentor, and trusted friend for all of you who are ready now.

I’m Cathy Nestrick. Waiting for 135 years until we achieve workplace parity is not ok with me, and that is why I was motivated to start this Podcast with my good friend Deborah. 

Deborah: I am your co-host Deborah Pollack-Milgate. I am committed to a workplace where everyone can thrive. Until we collectively address the obstacles in women’s way, we won’t have this workplace you and I dream of. Cathy, I’m so happy to be with you today to address a critical barrier standing in the way of parity, namely, the fact that women are so disproportionately responsible for the caring of others - that women are engaged in a whole other economy aside from our day jobs - called the Care economy.

If you haven’t heard this term before, listeners, here is a definition I like: the care economy refers to “the sector of the economy that is responsible for the provision of care and services that contribute to the nurturing and reproduction of current and future populations.” https://research.american.edu

So we’re talking about the work that someone has to do to raise our children, care for aging parents, and provide other kinds of care for our families, friends, and communities.  We know that women do vast amounts of caregiving and that none of us survive without this care, yet we don’t always value the work that so many women do day in and day out to support caregiving.

Cathy: And this has consequences. When women have the disproportionate responsibility of being a caregiver, we have less time and energy for our careerswork, and too often we have to step back on our potential to rise in the workplace. This invisible work that we do too often prevents us from being, be powerful breadwinners with a seat at the table, and having with influence and power at work and in society.  Because there might be no one else in our eco-system capable of care-giving, so we do what we have always done, we give care for those who need it even if our own careers are sacrificed. So when combined, breadwinning and caregiving are a challenge for one person to handle.

Deborah: Yes, and we intuitively knew that women bore the brunt of caregiving, but the pandemic has made that abundantly clear. It was as if the magma had been building underneath for so long, creating fissures, and that finally led to a full-blown eruption during the pandemic.

Cathy: Magma is not a word that I use very often, but I like where you’re going. Yes - so then after the eruption, the lava was flowing through our houses for all to  see the stark reality of caregiving. Did you see how I continued with your analogy using lava??

Deborah: Ha, yes! I like it!

Cathy: But back to the reality of caregiving - it’s hard work, with little time off- how many times have we joked that toddlers will follow us into the bathroom - but for reasons that defy logic, at least for me, our society doesn’t value this work like we should. I personally think we devalue caregiving for a variety of reasons, but one of the most compelling is that we devalue this work because our culture views it as “women’s work.” Yet, this work is the lifeblood of our society and creates the workforces and families of tomorrow. 

Deborah: But maybe we will begin to value it a little bit more now - because it’s difficult to step around the lava flowing through my house and society should now be appreciating that this work has to be done and not just by womenI appreciate someone cleaning it up. 

Listeners, there is also an important element to this work, namely the emotional intelligence we bring to bear in the process of being a caregiver or nurturer, and that’s why we’ve invited Dr. Nithila Peter to join us for today’s discussion. For our regular listeners, you know that Dr. Peter is a frequent contributor and she joined us in Season 1 to explore emotional intelligence and how EI is a necessary ingredient for our goal to achieve gender parity. Nithila, welcome to the show.

Nithila: Hello dear parity lamplighters - Cathy and Deborah.   So glad to be right here with you’ll - would not miss a conversation on magma, lava and the erupting volcano  for anything - every one of these metaphors mean something to me - as they communicate the enormity of the clean up job we have on our hands - and our resilience through so much foundational heartbreak = the visibly erupting volcano since the pandemic - the care-economy. 

For me, emotional intelligence is the secret twin of the care economy because of its central role in carrying out this work. The care economy is not just about watching the children - it’s about “care” - which means helping us all to grow and flourish.

Emotional Intelligence has come out of the shadows, over the past decade or so, into the mainstream. And that is because of the relentless advocacy of a few voices that risked their careers to recommend the value of an intelligence that proposes that humanity can grow an understanding of emotions.  Mayer & Salovey, Daniel Goleman, Richard Davidson the Dalai Lama etc. come to mind as pioneers who have fronted the criticality of emotional intelligence.  

EI empowers human beings at work and in their lives, to be authentic and compassionate - and EI is nourished by the care economy and nourishes it too.  It is the beating heart and mind of the care economy.

Cathy: Welcome Nithila. I had not thought about the connection between EI and the care economy until you mentioned it, but yes, this makes so much sense. The people caring for our children and others in society who need support ideally will have strong emotional intelligence.  

Nithila: Yes, and despite all the horror and disaster we had to confront with the pandemic, the one silver lining for me has been that it has made EI's twin - the care economy visible!  This eruption you are talking about is finally so real. Every home and hospital could see who was straining the most, providing for care.  And I deeply appreciate the parity podcast joining the voices in leadership, advocating for a platform to discuss the care-economy, the backbone of our market economy.  

Cathy: Absolutely, and we need a strong and vibrant care-economy because without it, we won’t have a strong and resilient workforce - we have to speak up for it, front and center. And listeners, 80 to 90 percent of the people handling the care-economy are women.  And this disproportionate burden on women holds us back in our careers. Both formally and informally, women can’t do all they want to do in the world, for the world on equitable terms, because of the invisible burden they carry - of the care economy.

Deborah: You are so right about that. Listeners, in today’s episode, we will be discussing why the care economy erupted cracks in the care economy and our solutions. This is part 1 of a 2-part series and we will discuss 3 causes of this eruption in each episode - we will refer to these causes as fissures cracks because that’s what causes a volcano to erupt and I think it’s fair to compare the eruption of the care economy to a volcanic eruption. And of course, none of these fissures have been corrected and so long as they exist, wein each episode - and these are fissures that will continue to have eruptions. if we are not mindful of both the demands of the care economy and the opportunities that EI presents for a flourishing economy.

Nithila: Deborah, we have a lot of ground to cover, but let me continue to elaborate on your metaphor of the volcano - because I can picture the state of this economy so clearly as a volcano. The pandemic put the outer world at arm’s length - while sequestered in our homes each of us experienced in different ways the full intensity of the eruption. An astounding strength of women is our capacity to birth and nurture life.  And an astounding strength of humanity is to be nurturing. If protected, supported and honored -  Mothers/ parents/ care-givers -  probably make for the best workforce in the world, both in their roles as caregivers and breadwinners. 

Deborah: Nithila, you mentioned the strength of the caregiving skills and their relevance to the workplace more generally - what were you referring too?

Nithila: Intriguingly, studies show that there are leaders at the very top of the income earning pyramid, who have been promoted for being empathetic and skillful at recruiting and sustaining world class human potential.  So there are caregivers at the very top - who have been promoted for their ability to be empathetic leaders. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft is one such example.  Satya consciously developed the ability for empathetic listening and compassion, dealing with the birth of Zain, his firstborn who had cerebral palsy.  He calls that transfigurative moment in his life - “hitting the refresh  button” - he caught himself being self-centered/ self-piteous - or lets say Anu, his wife, called him out for it.  He instantly recognized that she, as Zain’s caregiver, had allowed herself to be transformed by the diagnosis.   He allowed his wife Anu to lead him, with her good cheer and zest to being the best parent their son, Zain could have.  And he brings this experience entirely into defining himself as the CEO of Microsoft. 

Deborah: We just aren’t calling them caregivers - instead, we call them mentors, coaches, or managers.

Nithila: Right. But they are caregivers. As such, caregivers seem to enjoy somewhat of an extreme fate.  They are either thriving and flourishing at the top of organizations or isolated at the bottom and “one eruption” away from catastrophe.

Cathy: And the pandemic was that eruption. Listeners, at the top of the episode we mentioned that fissures caused this eruption because we don’t have a good foundation for parents to both work and care for their loved ones. Some of you may have experienced this eruption collapse at home and part of our goal today is to let you know that this is not your fault. We don’t have the right support structure for success for enough women and others who are trying to be both caregivers and breadwinners.

Deborah: That’s such an important point, Cathy. As women, we too often blame ourselves when things don’t go well. But when so many women dropped from the workforce as a result of the pandemic, this was more about the fissures that were laid bare and less about us as women. I love the word fumarole - those small vents that release bits of steam - they seem harmless until the steam builds up too much.

Cathy: Fumarole! I don’t know that I have ever used that word before or ever will again, but yet - we could all use vents to release steam every now and then. Listeners, the first fissure we’re going to talk about is the fact that while the work of caregiving is necessary and important, it is not supported in our society. When I was raised, my mom stayed at home. She did the work of caregiving while my dad was the breadwinner. They had very clear and separate lines of responsibility, as did many families back in the day. 

Nithila: Cathy, your mother did that work, and as “women’s work” I’m not sure how much weight it had socio-economically or politically.  Quoting the scholarship of Anne Marie Slaughter, one of the first voices I engaged with, advocating for the value of the care-economy - she spoke of the time when she had been Dean of Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, she asked her male and female students their perspective on the value of care.  She reports that with the unfiltered artlessness of the young, they  compared the value of the work of a caregiver  to the work  of a janitor - something that isn’t well-compensated for - that requires a very low skill set.  Students, she discovered, are reluctant to equate caregiving with other more important work, like learning to code. 

Most of my friends, who have dedicated a good chunk of their life energy to care-giving, are not surprised to hear that their work might be compared to the work a janitor does.  It speaks to them of the low value and status that their effort is given by society.  And this does break my heart.  I know how many lives these friends of mine, both women and men - have saved.  But they are philosophical about that work, barely getting notice.

Deborah: Well, I can tell you firsthand that working at a daycare facility is hard work and takes a lot of skills - story about being a caregiver/complexity of job. It’s one thing to make sure that children don’t hurt themselves but it takes skill to understand the personality and a lot of other skills involved from an emotion intelligence perspective.

Cathy: We have a definite problem with society placing a low value on caregiving, so let’s now talk about solutions. One solution is to re-allocate caregiving responsibilities so that all genders are responsible for care. That way, it is less about “women’s work” and more about important work that needs to be done. In my family, we did this. I’ve talked many times about the A+ caregiving that my husband does. As a couple, we had to challenge gender stereotypes and abandon the idea that women are the only gender with the innate skills necessary to give care. 

When he first stepped into the caregiving role, I did have feelings that he was doing work that I was supposed to be doing. But I got over that because it was the right thing to do for my kids. What do you think about this idea?

Nithila: Yes men and women need to proactively take the  opportunity to access skills for both breadwinning and caregiving.  But there is another process I’d like to add to that mix, and that is men and women have to develop the humility to understand that there are complex skills involved in caregiving too. 

Cathy: We talked about the skills that parents learn from caregiving and how those skills are so useful in the workplace. Skills from time management all the way to developing empathy so that parents are better caregivers and managers are better bosses. We talked about these and other skills during Season 1 - listeners, we will drop a link to that episode in the show notes.

Nithila: Yes, and there is a bias about learning “woman’s work” i.e. “caregiving work”... Most of us, once educated  and advanced in our breadwinning journey, might refuse to learn any skills or allow for any feedback, of how those we care for - feel about the experience!  Whether it is children or the infirm or the elderly. One way we transform how we value the care-economy, will be to recognize the skills involved in doing it meaningfully.  Women and men must be open to getting feedback, about improving their skills to provide better care.  

I’ve been frequently surprised how little I knew, when I first journeyed into the work of giving care, intentionally and deliberately. It took me time to “open” up to the learning required, in giving care to the emotions I attend to, in situations, relationships, my clients and myself - I find I have to check on my unconscious bias that  caregiving is not  “rocket-science”.  For me, today it is - its is “rocket science” Some of the individuals I’ve been providing care for, for over 3 decades - are still not that easy to figure - I continue to have to stay open to learning… This is why I compare it to the study of physics, or rocket design!!

Cathy: And all of this will require that we ignore gender stereotyping. If we need men to be caregivers, we don’t want gender stereotyping to discourage them from having a seat at the kitchen table. Listeners, we did an entire episode about challenging gender stereotypes.

Deborah: So let’s move onto crack number 2. Cathy, you talked about your mom working in the home. But when we moved away from this structure of mom at home raising the kids and dad at working making money, we didn’t put any support systems in place. 

Cathy: That’s right. Lawmakers just didn’t think about it, which is the danger of having too many politicians of one gender. And we also didn’t have a big group of voters raising their hands saying “hey, we’re going to need some additional support for caregivers if they will be caregiving AND working outside the home. 

Deborah: If you’re lucky, you can pay for the necessary care. You can hire nannies and pay others to help raise your children but for most of us, that is not possible.

Cathy: That reminds me of a friend of mine who was working for a large Fortune 500 company when she had her first baby. She was on a fast track and her company wanted her to travel. She actually hired a nanny to travel with her so that her baby could stay with her - she paid out of pocket for airplane tickets and hotel rooms for the nanny. This worked for maybe a year, but ultimately, she realized that she was spending every dime that she was earning just to take care of her child and this just didn’t make economic sense so she quit. She was smart, ambitious, talented - and the economy missed out on all her skills - because we didn’t have a structure to give her the support she needed to stay in the workforce.

Deborah: So let’s talk about solutions to this glaring problem. This is an area crying out for solutions - is it regulation we need? Cathy, did you mention reading a book about Iceland and steps they’re taking to support the care economy?

Cathy: Yes! Iceland is considered the most gender equal country in the world according to the World Economic Forum. One reason they’re #1 is because they have a system of regulations that support families - they have longer maternity leave, paternity leave is not only offered but it is expected that men will take this leave, and there is government subsidized child care - so childcare is plentiful and affordable. Listeners, the book that I read is called Secrets of the Sprakkar by Eliza Reid who is the First Lady of Iceland. A sprakkar, by the way, is an Icelandic word that means “extraordinary or outstanding women.” This is really a good book if you’re interested in reading about a society that truly supports women and families. I’ll drop a link in the show notes.

Nithila: I agree that we must have policy in this area and if we do so, women will stay in the workforce longer. And  if the government doesn’t take action, organizations can offer support. I have a  story of the Former CEO of Pepsi, Indra Nooyi’s - who defines her career as the result of paid “caregiving” leave.   At the start of her career at BCG, a consulting firm, her father was diagnosed with a serious illness.  She was about to quit work to take care of him. Before she could do that, her boss proactively called her to inquire about her personal dilemma and creatively gave her 6 months of paid leave to support and care for her dad.  For a junior employee, this used to not be done.  This transformed her sense of feeling valued in the workplace, her commitment only grew to return to work and she forged a path for herself to reach the heights at PepsiCo.  Once she has retired she continues to flourish  as an advocate for the “care-economy” some 30-40 years later.  She calls the “care-economy” the main artery of the market economy not the side-show.

Cathy: I love her reference to the “side show.” I also received the support I needed to stay at work. When I was pregnant with Chase, my 2nd child, I approached the managing partner at my law firm and told him I didn’t know how I could keep going. On top of being pregnant with a 2 year-old at home, my husband Rob also had significant back issues which ultimately resulted in surgery. If the law firm had not given me the support I needed in that moment, I would have dropped from the workforce. 

Deborah: So clearly, organizational support is critical - and government funding could be helpful. We have to pool our resources here - because it’s not easy to pay for all of this. It will take a lot of creativity and will to make improvements.

Nithila: Listeners, let’s move onto the third fissure that has been bubbling up for a long time. Here, I offer a gentle critique of feminism. Anne Marie Slaughter’s r book, Unfinished Business,  first highlighted this fissure for me - the fact that feminism completely ignored the care economy.  Anne being a product of the 1960’s and 1970’s feminist movement, recognized within herself, that she was compelled to dismiss the contribution women and men make to sustain the care-economy.  Feminists had put all their energy in giving women our rightful space in the world as breadwinners.

Deborah: And feminism did so by driving the care economy underground.

Nithila: Yes, that generation of feminists,  encouraged us to be all we can and want to be in the workforce, but it was silent about the invisible burden of caregiving, that is mixed into a woman’s portfolio of work as a breadwinner - typically - in so many cases she is both, breadwinner and caregiver.  

Feminism has lost whole populations of women, who are not sure they are feminists any more, since they work more for the care-economy - and that feels less like a lesser choice. Has feminism taught us it will be foolish to spend time acquiring caregiving skills?  I remember feeling ashamed about wanting to do anything domestic - it didn’t feel important enough.  Have you both felt this way, and had to work through this bias?

Cathy: For me, feminism has instilled a duty to stay in the workforce and advance. I felt compelled to go as far as I could go not for myself but for all the women. I never felt a duty from feminism to be a caregiver - if anything, my caregiving was standing in the way of my ultimate goal of career advancement.

Deborah: I agree but I wonder if we shouldn’t flip this: Does work stand in the way of our caregiving?

Nithila: As a feminist, my work with emotional intelligence and compelling leadership journeys, has advocated from the beginning, for the relevance of the work of care. Without human beings having known care, they cannot mature emotions, cannot learn to read emotions and definitely cannot learn to understand emotional  consequences. So EI - and the workplace too will be stunted without the care-economy.

Cathy: - That reminds me of the book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg which was an important feminist missive encouraging women to lean in - lean in during meetings and calls, raise your hand for the next project or promotion. Sheryl Sandberg did not tell us to lean into motherhood.

Deborah: in fact, she recommended that we not lose our focus during our pregnancy and those early years of motherhood.

Cathy: I also want to mention as a resource a woman - and caregiver- named Blessing Adesiyan who is the Founder and CEO of Mother Honestly. Like us, she is talking about the need to redress the care economy and would be a great resource for you to follow on LinkedIn.

Deborah: I agree that modern feminism has been primarily focused on how to advance women in the workplace. And related to this third fissure- one solution is to have more conversation about caregiving in the workplace. In order to shift direction, caregiving and all that it entails needs to be more visible. As mothers, we need to talk more about our responsibilities, and we need men to talk openly about their parenting responsibilities. 

Cathy: Good point. We can’t continue to go to work and act like we don’t have children at home with needs. We need to talk about what is going on in our home lives so that the work of caregiving is not only more visible but it also becomes more normalized to talk about it. We’re not living in the 1950s anymore, many employees do have caregiving responsibilities, and leadership needs to support that. 

Nithila: Indra Nooyi, who we spoke of earlier, says when she found it difficult to find women at the top, who could take her position,  she looked into the research as to why so few women made the tough climb to the top. What she found is pretty remarkable. She said that the problem is more than a "leaky pipeline" of female talent. She said that it’s far more accurate to say that the pipeline is completely broken. Many women who spoke to her,  also discussed how they move out of high intensity roles in the organizations, because of how anxious they feel about caregiving responsibilities they have to fulfill to build and sustain the family. Yet, she noticed that when she spent time with men at the top or organizations, she says, “I found that the people with real power — who are almost always all men — never talked about family as a driver of global progress.”

Deborah: Of course not - because they often aren’t participating in the care economy. There are many more men in leadership roles, particularly in male dominated fields, and those men are often enabled by wives or other women in their lives who are taking care of children and elderly parents, or they have the resources to pay someone else to do that work.

Nithila: Right, Deborah! She said that these male leaders talk more about finance, politics and flying to Mars - discussion about families is “fringe” or non-existent. They don’t discuss the intricacies of the care-economy or how to ensure we have a thriving population and energized workforce going forward.  

This gives us more insight on why caregiving is in the shadows at work. In part, feminism drove it underground. And when leaders don’t talk about it, nobody talks about it.  So the care-economy remains invisible.

 Cathy: We definitely need to talk more about the care economy so that it is no longer invisible, but traditionally, that has been taboo. Reminding people that we’re mothers has cut against us. We lose out on opportunities because people think we’re too busy with mothering. The only way this works is if allies support us and help ensure that we are not penalized. We need allies to lean into these kitchen table issues with us.

Deborah: Workplaces need to recognize that some of their workers may have a second full time economy to attend to. Incidentally, this does not mean that families without children should offset the work that working parents can’t do. For me, this is simply about a lot of flexibility. And being able to say - and receive empathy - I need to stay home, bring baby to work, or whatever, because - I need to.  And now is the time to do this - because most of us had some lava in our living rooms during the pandemic. So we’ve learned this is an issue that is acutely in need of a solution.

Cathy: Listeners, this concludes part 1 of our 2-part series. By way of recap, we discussed the unfortunate low value society places on the care economy, the lack of a support structure, and the need to make this care work more visible and elevated. We also discussed solutions, including that regulation, organizational change, and a shift to value this work as not only critical at a basic level, but also the linchpin of a functional and thriving society.

Deborah: We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode as much as we enjoyed creating it. I have certainly expanded the way that I think about how to be both a caregiver and a breadwinner. Nithila, as always, it is such a treat to work with you. Thank you for joining us today and for your ongoing contributions supporting Parity.

Nithila: The 3 fissures we discussed today continue to be dear to my heart.  This time with you’ll, Cathay and Deborah - gave me the excuse to look more deeply into the “care economy”  as the backbone of the market economy.  I’ve also been talking to my circle of friends, family and clients about this critical issue and this podcast - all our listeners do speak the word about this podcast - we do need to improve our understanding of what is at stake and make decisions that make parity for the care-economy a reality.

Cathy: Nithila, thank you so much for joining us. I couldn’t agree more with Deborah - it’s always such fun and a learning experience when you join us. Listeners, please know that we are here to help you. Tune in after you call the caregivers in your lives and thank them for their selfless, tireless work! We’ll have more fissures and solutions in Part 2 as we go deeper into the bias against mothers, the effect of an overturning of Roe v Wade on the care economy, and examine the problem of a workplace that wasn’t created to accommodate the care economy. As a reminder we have time-stamped show notes. You can find links to resources that we mentioned in today’s episodes, as well as links to find us on social media and our webpage.

Deborah:  Thank you for supporting the Parity Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, then please, rate and review us on Apple and Spotify, and give us a shout-out on social media and with your friends. With your help, we are building the perfect community for our ongoing discussions. We hope to connect with you again soon so that we can make progress with the Parity Prescription!