Unpaid work and its impact on organizational gender balance.
By: Kristi Rible
Tags: Organizational Change, Women, Organizational Culture, Unpaid Work, Gender Equality

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

The unequal distribution of unpaid work is still one of the most pressing problems affecting women in our time and, in particular, their economic advancement. Why is it, that today, there is still a gendered division of labor even in the most progressive and equality driven countries? In the US this unpaid work imbalance (defined as child and sick care, cooking, cleaning, and house maintenance), directly and indirectly impacts the kinds of jobs accepted by women, the kind of thinking around what industries women want to work within, and is a primary driver for women not reaching their full economic potential.

Unpaid work falls disproportionately on women and is a global gender equality issue despite the fact that men are doing more housework and childcare than ever before. Every major global organization from the OECD to the World Economic Forum, the United Nations to the International Labor Organization to name only a few, frames unpaid work as one of the most important economic issues of our time and must be addressed in order for women to reach parity with men. Globally, women are responsible for 75% of unpaid care and household work according to the OECD. According to the World Economic Forum, in this year 2020, there is no country where men spend the same amount of time on unpaid work as women. In countries where the ratio is lowest, it is still 2:1. McKinsey’s “The Power of Parity” report estimates that the actual value of unpaid work that is performed by mothers is about $10 trillion globally in USD, which is about the size of China’s GDP. Wow, right?

Photo by Kristi Rible Scobie

In my twenties I lived in East Africa where I saw women’s unpaid work play out on a daily basis. Walking miles to fetch water or firewood, cooking, caring for children, etc. prevents women from going to school and improving their economic opportunities. Instead, those opportunities were either left to boys and men or no one at all. I could see this with my own eyes, it was very visible in almost all the areas I lived. At the time, I viewed this as a “developing country” issue and was unable to see how it affected and impacted more developed societies. Today, I reflect on those experiences in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania on a daily basis. My time in Africa, far more than my time spent living or working in Latin America, Europe or Asia, has shaped my current thinking in every way. And yes, as I’ve grown older and wiser, unpaid work (while it plays out quite differently in the developed industrialized west) indeed has an impact on mothers regardless of circumstance, regardless of geography.

Unlike in Africa where we see women collecting firewood, fetching water, carrying goods on the tops of their heads all while children are strapped to their bodies or trailing nearby, the burden of unpaid work in the developed world is often much less visible. But it is there, and it fiercely co-exists with mothers’ struggles to gain hold in the paid labor market.

Source: Un Women

When we look at the statistics in the US, we find that women average approximately 4 hours a day of unpaid work while men average 2.5 hours. When you calculate how many hours of paid work are lost due to this unpaid work, women are on the losing end of this equation. They are not just losing in terms of health and wellness, but they are time deprived and the impact of this unpaid load on careers and paid work can be devastating.

Dr. Pamela Smock, a sociologist from the University of Michigan states “as long as the phrase ‘he helped’ is used, we know we have not attained gender equality.” A move to more egalitarian partnerships at home (alongside the necessary structural, organizational, and policy changes notwithstanding) can be one major step towards gender balance and gender diversity within organizations and achieving gender equality overall.

Organizations too can have a profound direct impact on whether or not we reach gender equality, particularly in this country, and its trickle down effect can be massive. By developing corporate cultures that value caregiving and by acknowledging the impact it can have on our time (almost all employees will be affected by some kind of caregiving at some point during their job tenure), organizations can begin to shift the dialogue around work-life values, work overload, and time value. Organizations can help by offering gender neutral family policies, and they can help by practicing whole personal leadership. They can help by ensuring that workplaces continue to be flexible for all, and they can help by developing leadership pathways that better mirror life pathways as opposed to ladders that support an outdated linear ascent. And childcare & eldercare? Yes, organizations can help. Until our country has policies in place that can assist families with caregiving, the burden will continue to fall disproportionately on women. So, the move for organizations to develop support structures which assist with childcare and eldercare coverage not only shows the value that they place on families, but the research also shows that employee productivity improves and money is saved. Employers in the U.S. are losing thirty-five billion dollars a year due to caregiving. Studies conducted by Harvard Business School in 2019 found that most employers underestimate the hidden costs of caregiving. The hit that companies take due to their employees’ caregiving responsibilities is twofold. They include two types of costs: (1) Costs associated with turnovers which includes frequency of turnover, lost intellectual capital, and costs associated with temp hiring to cover absent employees and(2) costs associated with productivity loss which includes absenteeism and presenteeism. These costs come from distracted workers tackling care responsibilities in secret during work hours or unexpected care events which, when companies are unprepared, can bear replacement costs. So, in simple terms, the cost of turnover, when combined with the costs associated with reduced productivity form a huge hidden cost for employers. Very few employers are measuring caregiving data and therefore very few understand the real impact that it has … and it’s not just on women.

According to the International Labor Organization, the US is the most overworked nation in the world. Their research shows that Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers.” This has both to do with both the weekly number of hours worked on average and the amount of paid and vacation leave of which the U.S. has next to none. Add the unpaid work on top of the paid work and there are simply not enough hours in the day.

So, lets open up the dialogue around unpaid work. Let’s open up the dialogue within our homes, let’s open up the dialogue within our organizations. Organizations have tremendous power to affect positive change for women personally and professionally and can help improve their economic lives. Importantly, research has also shown that this is not a zero-sum game. In other words, everyone wins … men, women, and organizations.