The future of the economic woman has never looked brighter. She is bold and beautiful and has come out of the shadows and onto your LVII Super Bowl halftime stage. This past Sunday, her name was Rihanna.
Rihanna’s pregnancy did not hold her back from performing on platforms high above the field, her pregnancy confirmed via her rep after the fact as some minor nuance like a new mole or an extra wrinkle. The trailblazing economic women of our time see their fertility as a simple characteristic — like the color of their eyes or tone of their voice. And all society, clutch your pearls because these women are going to live their fullest, most adventurous, and meaningful life…and do it on their terms.
Women have achieved bold, colorful paint-brush-stroke strives in terms of gender equality outside the home. Even though we have been stuck hovering slightly over $0.80 to the dollar in earnings compared to our male counterparts, we are chipping away at gendered earnings inequality. Younger women are reducing the gap as we challenge gender discrimination in the workplace. There is more gender diversity in occupations and family roles than ever before. There are, for example, more women in aviation and the military (did you see the all-female pilot crew flyover during the Super Bowl) and more men in nursing. There are more women in corporate boards and as CEOs, and more stay-at-home dads.
And even though the biggest challenge to gender equality in the workplace these days in motherhood, the roles and societal expectations around care and caregiving have become more fluid as a younger generation of men step up into more active parenting and domestic partner roles. The modern woman is here today jointly with her partner to mold a society and lifestyle around one that works for her.
We’ve all heard about leaning in causing anxiety when daunting family care demands make it almost impossible, only after trial and error to come to the realization that we can’t have it all. But what does that even mean? Jacinda Ardern, the 40th prime minister of New Zealand and latest high-profile woman to choose other economic aspects of her life (family, health, and personal passions) over her job in office, has always had it all.
If women continue to compare their career selves to the privileged older (often white) traditional man, they will always lose because women have never been afforded the privilege to offload care and domestic duties and responsibilities to someone else the way men have. We can agree that women should be able to equally choose what tables they sit at and what roles they want to play. But, if you want women to look like men outside the home, then men need to step up, move over, and actively create space. They need to do the work within the home to make this happen.
If, instead, what we want is more economic equality, we must acknowledge the disproportionate amount of caregiving and domestic responsibilities engaged in by women for what it is — actual work. Women are, after all, more economically active than men, they just don’t get paid for it. For example, women working full time outside the home for a paycheck engage in one additional hour of unpaid economic activity each day within their home compared to their male counterparts. Over the course of one year, these women have accumulated an entire month of extra economic activity relative to the men. No wonder working women, especially mothers, are so burnt out.
It is time we recognize that a move towards more equality in shared domestic responsibilities inside the home and an economic accounting system that acknowledges women’s unpaid work is the new black.
These two moves will (1) reduce earnings inequality in the workplace by freeing up time for women to engage more in paid work outside the home, and (2) acknowledge the full depth of women’s economic contributions by accounting for traditionally ignored economic activity in all spheres inside the home and out. By doing this, we put recognition and, eventually economic power, where it rightfully belongs. These two moves can make us all a bit more balanced, and women more accurately acknowledged for their economic contributions to society.
But we won’t wait around for you to realize this. The Rihanna’s of the world are already living their best life with what they’ve got, and that was on full display this past Sunday. The 21st century challenge to our gendered selves is to figure out how we support women who act as if they rule the world, in whatever sphere inside or outside the home they dominate in, and I hope you all take that challenge up.
Note: This article can also be found here on Medium.com.