The World Economic Forum reports that, at the current rate of change, it will take 170 years to achieve gender parity, so why are we willing to wait this long, asks Claudia Reuter
Many of the conditions to which we are seeking alignment have not really been around that long. But when we work to change them through the traditional system (i.e., legislation), change can be a very long time in coming.
While women achieved the right to vote in 1920, more than 50 years passed before some of these other changes took hold. We now look at the daunting statistics on the lack of women in leadership positions and wonder how to resolve it.
According to research from the World Economic Forum, at the current rate of change, it will take 170 years to achieve gender parity. In other words, at rate of change, we won’t see equity in my lifetime or my children’s lifetimes. All of these challenges, though, are simply by-products of the first Industrial Revolution and its shift to a factory schedule, which preceded the internet and advances in communication we have today. So why do we continue to align to them, and why should we be willing to wait for things to change?
Books like Tim Ferriss’s The 4 Hour Workweek have stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for years, because people are looking for ways to escape the 9-to-5 grind. It’s a factory mindset, after all. Meanwhile, books like Sandberg’s Lean In or Lois Frankel’s Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office call for women to double down on their careers, buying into the very structures that others (mainly men) are already working to disrupt. What’s more, the very advice to lean into careers has created a ‘lean in or lean out’ debate among many women.
A scarcity mindset
All of this seems to enforce a scarcity mindset that says there are not enough slots or enough prosperity for all of us. I think that while we’re debating how to conform to the existing constructs, others will completely reboot the system with new advances and potentially leave us the scraps of however the new system is designed. But Sandberg’s point is correct that we need not just step away from any career aspirations because the structures that are in place are challenging.
When I made a decision to start a company, I set my own hours. I worked on my website while my kids were napping. I brought them with me to the bank where I opened my first business account. I drafted my first business plan in the wee hours of the night when my second child would wake up and I couldn’t go back to sleep, until long after I was confident he was asleep. While I remember feeling like I had to hide my personal situation from customers, I never hid my business from my family. They were aware at very young ages of the work I was doing, and they were part of it. Even now, all these years later, as I’ve developed a podcast project and am writing this book, my kids are aware and engaged. My older son helped me figure out the best way of soundproofing to record my interviews, and my younger son will often do his homework at the same time I’m working on my book. He doesn’t seem to mind when I toss an idea at him to elicit his feedback.
While I can hyper focus on work and personal activities, I don’t feel the need to compartmentalise them. Work is woven into my personal experiences in ways that provide additional opportunities for us to engage with each other, and I hope to provide my children with learning experiences they may not have had traditionally.
For example, I’ve walked them conceptually through various contracts I’ve worked on over the years to hear their thoughts on the fairness of certain revenue-share models, and, believe it or not, their gut responses are often just as helpful to me as I think things through as they may be to them to learn. When I’ve had to attend conferences, I’ve often tried to have them join me, if not at the actual event, then at least on the trip, so they experience the travel and understand what I am doing when I’m away from them on other occasions.
The start-up mentality
The earliest parts of a business are not typically in a traditional corporate office. In fact, the startup culture embraces the idea of the company created in a garage. Why not in a living room? Most early company development is focused on research, on product development, initial customer acquisition, and fundraising – all activities that take similar amounts of time that people might spend on things like surfing Instagram or digging into Facebook.
In hindsight, I spent a significant amount of time with no pay working to build a business. But I was able to do it with the kids and when the company was in a position to grow, I felt like my kids were growing with it.
I recently interviewed author Laura Vanderkam for my podcast, and her perspective on time management is one I unknowingly leveraged years earlier, and one that all of us would be well-served to consider as we work to achieve or do more. Laura has pointed out that we focus on the idea of the 40-hour workweek, as if there are only 40 set hours in which to accomplish professional activities.
The remainder of our time must surely go to leisure activities or sleeping. But as Laura describes in her book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, there are actually 168 hours in a seven-day week, and assuming you sleep for eight hours a night, that leaves you with 112 hours to do with whatever you’d like. Even if you are still working at a traditional 40-hour-week day job, you still have 72 hours per week to accomplish things apart from and conscientious with your own time, you actually have much more than you think, whether you are currently a stay-at-home parent or a professional working a 40-hour workweek. You not only have time to start a business, you have an opportunity to rethink how you’ll use your time in your new business.
So rather than select an option based on ‘opt-in’ or ‘opt-out,’ I think women have a real opportunity to rethink the systems among which we are choosing and hone our leadership skills to create our own businesses that work for us.
This is an edited extract from Yes, You Can Do This!: How Women Start Up, Scale Up, and Build the Life They Want, by Claudia Reuter (Wiley, 2020).
Claudia Reuter is an experienced entrepreneur, executive, podcast host, and board director. Recognised by the Boston Business Journal as a 2016 ‘Women to Watch in Science and Technology,’ Claudia is currently a General Manager for Techstars and a member of the Board of Directors for Lessonly. She created and hosts The 43 Percent podcast, featuring notable guests such as Lisa Oz, Nataly Kogan, Sarah Lacy, Laura Vanderkam, and more. You can follow her at @reuter_claudia.
