The Future Is Equal

I hope everyone enjoyed getting to know a little bit about me in my intro blog. Thank you for the follows, text messages and comments. You sure know how to make a gal feel special.

With International Women’s Day just around the corner (March 8th), I have been thinking a lot about the importance of having balance in my life, both at and away from work. As a mom of three daughters, the theme of this years #IWD2019 #BalanceForBetter, resonates with me personally and professionally. As a society, we have spent the past few years focused on building equality for equivalence predominately focused on the inequalities as it relates to women in the workplace. I am incredibly passionate about ensuring there is equality not just for those of us currently in the workforce but for those who came before us, my daughters and their generations and all those who will come after them.

Over the past year, my focus and emphasis have evolved. While I am still a strong and at times, loud advocate for women and their right to equal opportunity, equal pay, equal expectations, etc, my concentration is now simply broader. How can I personally impact and influence creating balance. Balance in our definitions, characterizations, expectations, thought processes and delivery of experiences. We have an opportunity and obligation to be advocates and facilitators of balance in our schools, communities, workplaces, homes, etc.

We need to challenge our way of thinking. We need to be open to, at times, radically changing how we approach experiences we create for humans regardless of race, age, gender, sexual preference, etc. We need to be part of transforming our world into one where everyone is treated, recognized, provided opportunities and celebrated equally. My intent is the same, again the focus is just broader.

So how or where does one start? For me personally, I am tackling this from two angles. First, I am educating and learning from my daughters and my husband. We are having open discussions about what it means to be balanced as a family. A few years ago our girls would say that their dad was a stay at home dad. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with a dad that stays home. Hell, I actually advocate for a parent to stay home when it’s possible in their family. However, and I know the stay at home parents will agree, they may be “at home” but they work. Boy do they work. I would debate with anyone who doesn’t think their job is as hard if not harder than those of us who work for an organization. As a result, we are building a better infrastructure within our family to create balance so it’s not one parent stays home, the other goes to work. We both work, we both have responsibilities and we both contribute to the family unit.

We leverage each other and the other ones strengths. We balance opportunities to share responsibilities and we advocate for one another every chance possible in hopes our approach helps just one other family find a way to create balance. We are building a new set of experiences for our daughters in hopes building a better future for them. We are helping them see they can have different expectations and it’s not only ok but its a necessity. We want them to behave in a way that reflects what they truly want not what they think is expected.

My second focus is how I can help bring balance to our experiences at work. We spend more waking hours a week at work so why not put as much emphasis and effort as possible on creating experiences that are balanced and make life better for all people? Let’s talk about Parental Leave as an example. Many organizations still refer to this as a “policy” and some still call it Maternity Leave. Given the variations of families today one would think these outdated approaches had vanished. Guess again. I hear from other CHROs frequently about the obstacles they face in moving forward with a more innovative and thoughtful way of approaching something so incredibly important to our people.

Let’s think about this in its most basic form. There are too many elements out of balance with these traditional policies for me to mention so we’ll pick just a few. First, there is a concept of a “primary” and “secondary” caregiver. Or a birth and non-birth parent. Seriously? Now I recognize I am generalizing here but who thinks it is acceptable to say a mother is a primary caregiver and a father is a secondary caregiver? Or that the birth parent has more rights/responsibilities than the non-birth parent? What happens in the case of adoption or foster care? I have seen instances where the father is far more involved and frankly better suited to care for their children than the mother. I also am proud to have two nephews who are raised by their moms. They both equally care for and love those boys. (So does Aunt Lisa I might add). I would challenge anyone to try and determine who the primary and secondary caregivers are in their family? Yep, I would recommend you leave that one alone.

We have a complete inbalance in how these policies work in our organizations which makes it impossible for families to actually do what is best for them. We provide the mother with significantly more time away from work than the father. And if we do provide equal time, we haven’t fostered a culture where the father feels empowered to take the time to care for his new child. We haven’t taken into consideration the variations of the family make up and how that impacts our policies. So what happens when the family is made up of two dads or two moms? How would you handle that one? Seriously, how would you handle that one? I would love to know how your company addresses that scenario.

We have to be forward thinking in our approach to getting rid of these policies and creating experiences that truly make life better for people at and outside of work. I’ll leave you with this last element to consider and we’ll dig into it further in the future. What are the long-term impacts on organizations and families alike if we continue with inbalanced approaches? Will we continue to see less females advancing their careers at the same speed as men? Will we see less men working inside the home raising their children? Will we move the needle at all in the coming months or years? I am hopeful we will. It pays off for everyone involved. The parents, the children and the organization.

Whether you are “natural” parents, adoptive parents or same sex couples, you all deserve balance and equal treatment. And whether you are the mother(s) or father(s) you deserve balance and equal treatment. Go demand it and don’t stop asking for it until you get it.

Until next time, live in the moment, laugh like everyone is watching and be the best you possible.

Mama Llama a.k.a. Lisa