An Employee Experience Where Mom Can Thrive: 3 Tips For International Women’s Day

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I read Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In before I had my first child. In 2014 I got married, and the following year was laid off from a Fortune 100 company. When it happened I cried, not knowing that the severance they gave me would allow me to build my own business which would come the same year as the birth of my daughter. I had no idea that having my own business and being a mom would be such a positive thing.

I am able to “lean in” when I need to — traveling to distant lands for a speaking opportunity but doing turnaround trips because most of my speaking is in the U.S. There is no better example of me leaning in than when I traveled to Norway extremely pregnant with our second child, as Coronavirus fears started to surface. After almost 20 hours of travel, many time zones ahead of PST, I hobbled off the airplane and did the speech with a smile.?

While sometimes I lean in, sometimes I simply “lay down,” rest and recover from the stresses of work-life and mom-life. I can do this because I call the shots for my own employee experience. My husband and I are married entrepreneurs, and we share in the domestic and work responsibilities. As I see my friends struggle with work and home, I realize how some companies make it very hard for women to continue at the same pace before they had children, largely because we live in a world where business is generally unsympathetic to working moms.??

The U.S., where I live, is the world’s largest economy, yet we still treat mothers and women worse than countries with much less wealth. Why? Working moms are not making these political decisions, shaping experiences for millions of women.?

With not enough women making decisions that impact the younger generations of women, we are making it very hard to have what our mother’s fought for in the 80s; “having it all.” I can tell you first-hand, trying to “have it all,” is often exhausting, even in the best of circumstances.?

The Exhausting Reality Of Being A Working Mom

The world health organization has now categorized “Burnout” in an update to the International Classification of Diseases handbook. 40% of American workers are suffering from burnout, and these are the people who actually admit they are burned out.?

Today there can be a “motherhood penalty,” where women are not supported at work or are passed over for opportunities if they have children or are pregnant. The stress of being a mom (particularly in households where the spouse is not doing their share of the housework) and trying to not let anyone at work see you sweat, is exhausting.

That said the phrase “working mom” is a misleading phrase, because simply being a mom means you are working. In fact many women recognize that being a mom is much harder than a job outside the home, because your boss is demanding and unsympathetic, doesn’t understand boundaries, and certainly doesn’t respect the 9 to 5 work policy.?

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A Society That Values Motherhood?

If we had a society — where women’s work was rewarded — we wouldn’t need to fight for maternity leave in America, we wouldn’t need to fight for higher pay for our teachers, or pay an insane amount for preschool. Many of my friends who are teachers and have children realize most of their pay would simply go toward hiring a nanny, so they quit their jobs as the pay isn’t high enough to make it worth it for them to go back to their teaching jobs. Everyone was once a child, and had a mother at one point. I find it puzzling that society does not support mothers and women better than it does, considering the one experience we share is being a child and having a mother.?

The Importance Of Content Produced By Women, About Women, For Women

In every arena where women must speak and lead, they are outnumbered by men. When we think of our cultural fabric, much of that is shaped by the content and media we consume. What does it mean to live in a world where women are not creating content about women’s lives, from a woman’s perspective? There are very few shows that feature the story of being a mother, or pregnant women on TV. We’ve disappeared mothers from TV and film and it’s time we stop doing that. According to a report from the San Diego University's Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, female protagonists led 31% of the movies in 2018, but women still had only 35% of all the speaking parts. What are the long-term effects of little girls not seeing women talking on stages and microphones of all kinds? Millennials are now moms who grew up when these statistics were even worse, where the female played the girlfriend or love interest, and rarely the intelligent, problem-solving, thoughtful lead. Particularly stories of pregnant problem-solving women. I remember hearing an interview with actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus about her life and career and her time at “Seinfeld.” She said her greatest regret on the show was that when she was actually pregnant in real-life, they hid it on “Seinfeld.” She would stand behind a big couch in many of her scenes, hiding her belly. She wished she could go back in time and work that story of pregnancy into the show.

We know making women into objects on-screen damages the way girls and women see themselves. I am so grateful for shows like “Workin’ Moms,” and “The Letdown” on Netflix, that give accurate portrayals of the struggles of new moms, and allow women to bare it all. These are both shows written and produced by women. They did not see the representation of their stories in media, so they created them. What does this have to do with work and employee experience? When the population consumes more content that is created by women, for women and about women, they understand the modern challenges of working moms, and they might be more empathetic when creating experiences for women. Also we women simply want more content that makes us feel like we are not the only one white knuckling our way through life.

Work On Your Employee Experience To Be More Inclusive On International Women’s Day?

According to the website, International Women’s Day’s mission is (officially celebrated March 8th): “An equal world is an enabled world. How will you help forge a gender-equal world? Celebrate women's achievements. Raise awareness against bias. Take action for equality.” My advice is to consider how you create your employee experiences in the workplace. You’ve read above about how some women — like me — find it easier to simply work for yourself and raise children, most women work for other people. If employers and businesses want to create a world where women can thrive, they need to involve women in all decision-making processes when it comes to employee experience.?

Here are a few tips for those of you in the business — world who don’t know where to start:

• When you design your employee experience, have moms involved who know what moms of little kids go through — ask your female employees and moms for feedback on their experiences, and encourage honest and raw feedback
• In meetings, call on female employees who don’t frequently share
• Every conference, meeting, town hall, executive video to employees — should have women speakers

In the U.S. 47% of workers are women. It should not be up to women to lean in. It is the responsibility of businesses to rise to the occasion and create experiences that are more suitable for moms and working moms everywhere, so we can have a more inclusive, fair and balanced society. And if you’re writing the next “Seinfeld,” let Elaine play out a pregnancy story on screen, in front of the couch rather than behind it.?

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