The Broad Experience

In the last episode you heard Jessi Hempel and I ask, what is happening to women’s careers right now? So many of us are still at home, often with family underfoot, attempting to manage children’s schooling or simply care for them while also doing our own jobs. Much has been written about the ‘women’s recession’ and the enormous pressure women are under during this pandemic.

In this show Avivah Wittenberg-Cox offers a more hopeful perspective.

She sees this crisis is an opportunity for organizations to change the way they do things and make the workplace fairer for everyone. She says a generation clash between men is part of the current problem. And she says many of us will undergo a big shift in our careers in the months and years ahead, whether we welcome it or not.

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In this episode I sit down with Jessi Hempel, host of LinkedIn's Hello Monday podcast about the future of work.

If you have family responsibilities the future may have shrunk to this week and managing what's right in front of you. As Jessi puts it, for many of us career questions 'exist in a different plane in time, and we're not existing in that plane right now.' She and I talk about how the last six months have affected women's careers in particular, and what might happen next. We discuss who's able to get ahead right now, and the delights of a supportive manager whose home/work life is as crazy as your own.

We don't have a crystal ball, but we wonder - will this pandemic have lasting effects on women's progress?

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When I first made this show I could never have imagined how large a role both stress and getting outside would play in our lives in 2020.

In this episode I talk to science writer Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix, about how spending time outside can help lower our stress levels and allow us to gain perspective on daily problems. Most of us live and work in urban environments, spending hours a day in front of a screen. Nothing could be less natural. In this show we talk about how spending time outdoors can improve our lives in multiple ways, and how women can benefit even more than men.

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Ainissa Ramirez has loved science since the age of four. But her dreams of becoming a scientist were almost squelched when she got to college. When she graduated she vowed to make other people's journeys through science better than her own. Today, she's helping thousands of people understand and appreciate how the world works - and maybe even go into science themselves. In this episode we talk about the ups and downs of her career, leaving academia to go out on her own, and some of the amazing stories in her new book, The Alchemy of Us.

And she has some solid advice for other women scientists who may be finding their workplaces...challenging.

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A lot of us have been able to work from home during lockdown these last few months. One group of workers that hasn't is paid caregivers - aides, mainly women, who are paid by the hour to help elderly, frail and disabled people accomplish some of the tasks of daily living.

In this show we meet two women who have been doing care work for three decades - Susie Rivera in Texas and Maria Colville in Massachusetts. Their job is one of the fastest growing in the U.S. But it pays poorly and a lot of people don't see its importance...until they need that care themselves. Some clients are grateful and gracious, others less so. Each woman feels called to her role. As Maria puts it, "The opportunity to make an impact in someone else's life," is its own reward.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last month an article appeared in The Atlantic with the title The Coronavirus is a Disaster for Feminism. One striking line reads, ‘The coronavirus smashes up the bargain that so many dual-earner couples have made in the developed world: We can both work because someone else is looking after our children. Instead, couples will have to decide which one of them takes the hit.’

But is that true?

In this episode we meet three married women in Canada, the US, and the UK, and one (male) sociologist, Daniel Carlson, who has studied couples and the division of labour in the home. Kristen Elworthy and Anna Lagerdahl have children and Samantha Murphy doesn’t. Each has found the pandemic has affected her work/life balance in unexpected ways. And it’s not all about housework and childcare - women may be carrying a greater emotional load at this time, which affects many aspects of our lives.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.