The Corporate Workplace was Never Designed for Women

Prior to World War I, as corporate America experienced growth, the male dominated fields of secretaries and typists set in motion an interesting dynamic: company owners – men – would look to their male secretaries in a way that resembled a father and son relationship, giving the new, young, white collar worker an opportunity to rise in the company. World War I changed all of that. As male secretaries left their jobs to enlist, women took their places. But when women dominated the pool of administrative staff, that father/son relationship changed to one of husband and wife. White collar became pink collar. Female secretaries became an extension of the emotional labor support that men enjoyed in the home. Change to […]

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How to Stop Doing All of the Emotional Labor

If you do the heavy lifting of emotional labor in your household, then you know that the weight of it can be crushing. If you aren’t sure that you are shouldering the bulk of emotional labor in your household, here’s a review.  Emotional labor is the invisible, unnoticed, unwaged, unwritten, undervalued work women do at home and in the paid workforce. It is the thinking about what’s coming up, what needs to happen, how to look into the future to anticipate birthdays, family meals, holiday dinners, do we have enough toilet paper, how come we don’t have any more ketchup? Granted, all of these little tasks individually are easy to do but also supremely important to the functioning of a well-ordered […]

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How does emotional labor show up in a relationship? 

Emotional Labor showed up in Justine and Jordan’s relationship the moment they started their journey together. After living together, first as college roommates then lovers for seven years, they married and started a family. Two children and twenty years of sharing space later, Justine called me for help to de-clutter and organize her home, her life, her family, her kids.  Within 15 minutes of our call, Justine repeated the now familiar lament: “I just can’t seem to do it all.” To which I replied, “No one can, Justine.”  In my 13 years as the owner of a professional organizing, decluttering, and let’s get you out of the mess company… I didn’t even have to ask Justine what she meant by […]

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The Pandemic: Getting to the Other Side

By: Regina F. Lark, Ph.D. “Calgon® – take me away!” said Loretta. “There’s not enough Calgon® on the planet,” replied Jill. And thus began the joyful noise at the first in-person gathering of my close women friends since the start of the pandemic. You remember Calgon®? The product you sprinkle in the bathtub to soak away your cares and woe, with the promise to take you away! Although Calgon® isn’t explicit about what it will take you from, you can rest assured that women knew, and have always known, that a man can work from sun-to-sun, but a woman’s work is never done. My friends were talking about the toll of the pandemic – how it snatched our best-laid plans […]

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Upsetting the Status Quo

By: Regina F. Lark, Ph.D. It’s been over a year since I posted the blog, “Grim and Grimmer: The Impact of Quarantine on the Lives of Professional Women.” I’d love to say that we’ve learned many lessons in the 18 months of living with COVID-19 it’s more than disconcerting to realize that we still have a long way to go. What I wrote last year remains true, keeping reading to learn about one woman who is calling for radical change in how we do business, and upsetting the status quo. A new word entered our vocabulary this summer: She-Session. C. Nicole Mason, President of the Institute of Women’s Policy Research, coined this term which refers to an economic downturn where […]

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Has it changed? Or is it still the same?

Last year I wrote, “The New Not Normal,” a blog about how the current pandemic has, and continues to impact that lives of women in the home. Today’s essay, Has it changed? Or is it still the same? Is an update from that previous post. In late April, when she heard that schools will remain closed for the duration, Sylvia locked herself in the bathroom and screamed. A few minutes later she was back at the dining room table, making sure the two younger kids were on their screens doing school work, cleaning up breakfast, unloading and loading the dishwasher, starting laundry, and sorting yesterday’s mail. Then she powered up her laptop and got to work. Right. I get it. […]

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