You need to know how to say no to overwhelming tasks – 10/01/2024 – Lorena Hakak
This week the 5th Meeting of the Family and Gender Economics Society took place at Insper, organized by GeFam. This meeting has been an important space for the exchange of ideas and discussion of work between Brazilian and foreign researchers. Women made up 70% of the speakers at the meeting. Furthermore, the participation of foreign professors and researchers, especially Latin Americans, has grown year after year, reaching 34% of speakers.
A new feature was the mentoring session with students from various regions of Brazil, 35% from the North and Northeast. The event also featured the participation of two renowned international researchers in the field, Marianne Bertrand and Lise Vesterlund.
Lise Vesterlund’s talk, based on her book “The No Club”, still untranslated into Portuguese (co-authored with Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser and Laurie Weingart), addressed how women end up accepting tasks that overload them, but do not count towards career progression, what the authors call non-promotable tasks (NPT). This happens both in the corporate world and in academia.
Tasks such as organizing company parties, resolving conflicts between co-workers or participating in hiring committees are some examples. They are important, but they are less visible within companies. However, activities such as developing a new product or closing a large deal are visible because they are directly linked to the companies’ objectives. Lise presents studies that show that women end up accepting more TPN than men. The point is that we need to learn to say no.
Another point raised by Lise was the difference in the allocation of tasks to women at the beginning of their careers. Women tend to be assigned tasks that make them invisible in the eyes of those who will decide on their career progression. This difference in task allocation leads to a salary differential that starts small, around 4% in the first year, but increases over time, reaching double digits.
Bosses and supervisors need to equally value their employees’ skills to avoid this difference in task allocation. A possible solution would be to randomly allocate tasks among new employees to avoid any type of implicit bias. This subject was addressed by me in the column “Prejudices are stronger than we think: unconscious bias”.
On the last day of the meeting we had a lecture by economist Regina Madalozzo. She was one of the first economists to study the topic in the country and recently released the book “Iguais e Differents: Uma Jornada pela Economia Feminista”, providing an overview of gender differences in Brazil. She worked for more than 20 years as an economics professor and researcher. However, a few years ago, he chose to change career and is completing his psychology course.
During the session, the discussion turned to the experiences women face throughout their careers. The difficulties, biases and imposed barriers that they suffer. It was a moment of reflection. The meeting was so productive that we are already looking forward to next year’s event. Thank you to everyone who participated in the GeFam meeting.
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