Forget about the young starters, I will quote you an example of a lady-boss who was too afraid to organise a girl-only sit down to talk about workplace sexual harassment talk because ‘the boss’ will say - ‘this is not a place to make a show of woman power’ - whatever that means in this context. The boss is btw a lech.
Such a biting, sharp and content rich writing. Mahima - #MahaMahima
Haha thank you, I'll admit I'm rather proud of that particular GIF caption 😁
And yes, "this is not a place to show women power" is all too relatable. Can't recall the number of times people have called me "mahila mukti morcha" for pointing out obvious sexism at work.
In the team that I have most recently been in, we had a rotation system for chairing the meeting and taking notes. No nonsense about, oh you are great at notes / chairing. This was a virtual team of 11 across 4 continents.
In a team in a previous role where we were in the same office, we would celebrate birthdays. We had a list of birthdays and the person in the nth position in the list, organised everything for the birthday celebrations of the person in the (n-1)th place.
I cannot think of any better way of democratising 'mum' tasks, especially since the team manager was part of the lists and tasks too.
This one struck a chord. The thing is, at 32 I was 'cake lady' for my batch at a B school. I took it up willingly because I genuinely wanted to eat awesome cakes on every birthday. Besides, I never let anyone in the batch reduce me to that label. As long as someone chooses to perform the housekeeping jobs, man or woman, it's cool. But I sometimes wonder, is a woman shooting herself in the foot when she makes that choice?
I can relate to this in our college cultural groups as well. Girls were expected to do tasks which were "girly" like decorations and everything and boys handled the technical stuff. However, I have just started working in the Corporate and I believe everyone is responsible for similar tasks. It's probably because my team is lead by a woman and more women in our team then men.
Teams led and populated by more women will seldom have such issues. Which is why more representation is always the best solution. More power to your team!!
I can relate to this so well!! I was the designated bouquet buyer for my process for a long time..Until I finally put my foot down..And the irony is even after it was handed over to one of the guys, he would still call me from the Flower Shop asking what flowers to select!!
Very well written, unfortunately I couldn't relate with this one at all.... I am the cake ordering person in the office, the party planner if I may and I see no harm in taking up the job and infact I happily put that down in my performance evaluation. I do understand sometimes this can pile onto your existing responsibilities but that's more about how we manage our work load (no offence meant, my comments are purely based on personal experience). I rather found this post demeaning the 'housekeeping' tasks which on the contrary we should promote to the same level as the office work to create a level playing field for people who are good at 'housekeeping' irrespective of gender.
It's quite all right if you couldn't relate to this post, Samsara. Not everyone needs to relate to every issue for it to be a big enough challenge for most of us :)
I did make a conscious effort to ensure that the piece does not come across as offensive to any role of function. I thought that the storytelling ladies and I had been clear enough that this only applies to people not working in the support teams. That said, I apologise for it still reading as offensive to you. I've added a disclaimer now for good measure, spelling out my intentions. Hope this clarifies.
Thanks for the disclaimer and I took no offence so no apologies needed :)
In no way I meant that its not a big issue, who am I to judge that. I was only narrating my experience. That said, I quite enjoy reading differing viewpoints, it only broadens my mind. All I was trying to convey, albeit poorly, was more about triviliasing these so called 'housekeeping' tasks, widely considered as feminine traits. I wonder if equal weightage is given at workplace to the so called 'serious' and 'non serious' work, would we see more participation from both the genders?
I think more than 'serious' and 'non serious' it is a question of whether these things are in one's job description or not. And if not, how much is the extra effort appreciated by the bosses. Usually these tasks are not.
Wow, I'm really sad that this is the status of so many workplaces. Hope to see things change soon. As always, loved the post!
Thank you Divija! I hope so too!
Aao sakhi notes banayein…killed it.
Forget about the young starters, I will quote you an example of a lady-boss who was too afraid to organise a girl-only sit down to talk about workplace sexual harassment talk because ‘the boss’ will say - ‘this is not a place to make a show of woman power’ - whatever that means in this context. The boss is btw a lech.
Such a biting, sharp and content rich writing. Mahima - #MahaMahima
Haha thank you, I'll admit I'm rather proud of that particular GIF caption 😁
And yes, "this is not a place to show women power" is all too relatable. Can't recall the number of times people have called me "mahila mukti morcha" for pointing out obvious sexism at work.
In the team that I have most recently been in, we had a rotation system for chairing the meeting and taking notes. No nonsense about, oh you are great at notes / chairing. This was a virtual team of 11 across 4 continents.
In a team in a previous role where we were in the same office, we would celebrate birthdays. We had a list of birthdays and the person in the nth position in the list, organised everything for the birthday celebrations of the person in the (n-1)th place.
I cannot think of any better way of democratising 'mum' tasks, especially since the team manager was part of the lists and tasks too.
This process truly needs to be made law! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
This one struck a chord. The thing is, at 32 I was 'cake lady' for my batch at a B school. I took it up willingly because I genuinely wanted to eat awesome cakes on every birthday. Besides, I never let anyone in the batch reduce me to that label. As long as someone chooses to perform the housekeeping jobs, man or woman, it's cool. But I sometimes wonder, is a woman shooting herself in the foot when she makes that choice?
Amazing post Mahima!
I can relate to this in our college cultural groups as well. Girls were expected to do tasks which were "girly" like decorations and everything and boys handled the technical stuff. However, I have just started working in the Corporate and I believe everyone is responsible for similar tasks. It's probably because my team is lead by a woman and more women in our team then men.
Teams led and populated by more women will seldom have such issues. Which is why more representation is always the best solution. More power to your team!!
I can relate to this so well!! I was the designated bouquet buyer for my process for a long time..Until I finally put my foot down..And the irony is even after it was handed over to one of the guys, he would still call me from the Flower Shop asking what flowers to select!!
Can relate with this so much. Loved the memes too 😉
Very well written, unfortunately I couldn't relate with this one at all.... I am the cake ordering person in the office, the party planner if I may and I see no harm in taking up the job and infact I happily put that down in my performance evaluation. I do understand sometimes this can pile onto your existing responsibilities but that's more about how we manage our work load (no offence meant, my comments are purely based on personal experience). I rather found this post demeaning the 'housekeeping' tasks which on the contrary we should promote to the same level as the office work to create a level playing field for people who are good at 'housekeeping' irrespective of gender.
It's quite all right if you couldn't relate to this post, Samsara. Not everyone needs to relate to every issue for it to be a big enough challenge for most of us :)
I did make a conscious effort to ensure that the piece does not come across as offensive to any role of function. I thought that the storytelling ladies and I had been clear enough that this only applies to people not working in the support teams. That said, I apologise for it still reading as offensive to you. I've added a disclaimer now for good measure, spelling out my intentions. Hope this clarifies.
Thanks for the disclaimer and I took no offence so no apologies needed :)
In no way I meant that its not a big issue, who am I to judge that. I was only narrating my experience. That said, I quite enjoy reading differing viewpoints, it only broadens my mind. All I was trying to convey, albeit poorly, was more about triviliasing these so called 'housekeeping' tasks, widely considered as feminine traits. I wonder if equal weightage is given at workplace to the so called 'serious' and 'non serious' work, would we see more participation from both the genders?
I think more than 'serious' and 'non serious' it is a question of whether these things are in one's job description or not. And if not, how much is the extra effort appreciated by the bosses. Usually these tasks are not.