Women's unpaid invisible labor comes at a cost – for all of us
Women's unpaid invisible labor comes at a cost – for all of us
Think about today, just today:
Have you done anything you weren't asked to do in order to make somebody else's life more comfortable?
Did you spend time on some emotional problem-solving to anticipate somebody else's screw up?
How about any detailed mental planning ahead of a conversation in which you're going to ask for something that you're already entitled to?
And – did you consciously realize you were doing it up until now?
Behold one of the most insidious, embedded and historically accepted power games that keep women tired, resentful and exploited: Invisible Labor.
What is Invisible Labor?
Invisible labor is pre-cleaning the house for the cleaner. Invisible labor is prepping the room before the meeting. Invisible labor is taking the time to explain. Invisible labor is being the parent to remember your child’s teacher’s name. Invisible labor is never forgetting to restock the toilet roll, toothpaste and milk. Invisible labor is using your free pockets of time to pick up other peoples’ slack. Invisible labor is spending 45 minutes on hair and make-up before the work presentation. Invisible labor is hiding your feelings. Invisible labor is always smiling.
Invisible labor is an endless catalog of all the “nice” things you do on behalf of others that go unrecognized, taken for granted…and unpaid. It’s why you might feel like you’re in someone else’s movie, playing a supporting role that you never asked for and worse still, never get credit for.
And Invisible Labor is definitely why you never have time or energy to bring to life – or even think about – your own passion projects.
Behold one of the most insidious, embedded and historically accepted power games that keep women tired, resentful and exploited: INVISIBLE LABOR.
Invisible Labor and the Good Girl Autoresponder
It’s astonishing, the amount of time most women spend trying to make others more comfortable so that families, workplaces and, in turn, societies can keep going. And for some students in my classes, it’s where an incredible eighty percent of their attention goes.
Millennia of Good Girl conditioning has done an incredibly thorough job of training women to auto-respond so fast to others’ needs that we’re oftentimes not even actively choosing this response. (Read more about The Making of The Good Girl here.)
A Good Girl sees someone who needs help or something that needs to get done, and instantly takes it on as her own burden, without question. This Good Girl autoresponder, a behavior fostered in us from a place of love by our ancestors who only had our best interests at heart – being a great candidate for marriage – is an outdated algorithm for the modern woman, no matter how much she wants to live in service of others. Because with an autoresponder, there is no choice, and without choice, we're no longer servants of love but slaves. Slaves to a habit that's far older than we are.
The women we teach at The Academy are powerful agents of their own destinies, moving through the world in impressive ways. But the truth is that very, very few escape Good Girl conditioning entirely without the tools to actively catch and disarm the unconscious gender bias they carry around.
Good Girl conditioning at play
Think you’ve never autoresponded as a result of your own Good Girl conditioning? Consider these scenarios.
Instead of saying, “You’re an alcoholic and you need to leave my dinner party right now,” a student will share at length how she made a thousand accommodations for a family member at Thanksgiving. How she rearranged the seating, kept the drunkard’s water glass topped up, and brightly maintained conversation after one of his sloppy rants – then called her guests to apologize the next day.
Another will reveal how, to compensate for her guilt at being a stay-at-home parent, she takes on her husband’s company’s bookkeeping, scouts for potential customers in her own network, charms his most difficult clients, and brings lunch to his staff every day – all without receiving a paycheck. (They both refer to it as “our business,” but he’s the only one listed as an owner.)
Because there are so few socially sanctioned ways for the Good Girl to speak her desires, she often ends up in a situation where it’s easier to (quietly, invisibly) adjust herself to the situation than to risk a difficult conversation, even with her loving and supporting partner.
The scene for women’s Invisible Labor is set long before we enter the traditional workplace, or a domestic setting. Men work hard, but their labor is rarely invisible, and it starts in the way they are socialized in childhood. Little boys are rewarded for “doing”, while little girls are rewarded for “being”. It’s these invisible learned behaviours that continue to impact the way women and men take credit for their work.
Talking about invisible labor can be awkward, painful and confrontational.
But living under the weight of it and going through life with the bulk of your energy and love frittered away is far, far worse.
What to do about it – making the invisible visible
The Academy is a school specializing in the martial art of attention. Because when you start using your attention to pay attention to where and how you use your attention, you start to notice all sorts of invisible things becoming visible.
Here are the three steps to understanding how and where you're performing Invisible Labor, locating whether you are doing it from choice or not, and if not, how to take action to wield your attention, time and energy in more generative ways.
STEP ONE – LOG EVERY INSTANCE OF INVISIBLE LABOR
One of the most surefire ways we can really rile up a class is to ask our students to make a log of everything they do in their lives over the course of a day that isn’t seen, that’s taken for granted or not paid in kind. Download your own free copy of the Invisible Labor Log here to help you carefully and specifically track where your attention goes in 15-minute increments in one day.
This is incredibly liberating in and of itself. When you start seeing this unpaid, invisible labor as the labor it is, you can start making choices about whether or not you want to do it. And once you start becoming aware of it as a choice you are making, then the people around you start to see it too.
If you are doing something for someone else with full awareness, you can put your full heart and your full love and your full intentionality into it. But if there's something hindering your ability to put your full love, full intentionality and full heart into it, or any underlying feelings of resentment, it's time to change what you're doing.
STEP TWO – STOP, SEE ME, PAY ME, HELP ME
Unconscious thought patterns and autoresponders keep us in a place where we don't know what emotional state we're in. And if we can't locate what state we're in, we definitely can't know which one we'd like to get to. It's far better to know that we're furious, that we've been cheated, that we suddenly realize we hate doing this with a passion, than to be unaware.
Once you have your Invisible Labor log filled out, analyse each item. Imagining yourself in a totally imaginary world with zero consequences, mark them up into the following categories: Stop, See Me, Pay Me, Help Me.
We talked earlier about how men’s labor is more visible than women’s. Take a leaf out of a man's book for how to draw attention to your labor and write ‘See Me’ against anything that you want to be recognised for. Write ‘Pay Me’ next to anything you want to stop doing for free. Write ‘Help Me’ next to things you refuse to do alone anymore. And simply write ‘Stop’ next to any behaviours you will no longer continue.
It may be that you have none. Maybe you feel seen for everything you did today, or you feel properly reciprocated for your labor in the way that you like.
But maybe not.
If you feel filled with rage, and find yourself overwhelmed with the urge to say, "Hell no – I want to stop doing this." Or "Hell no – pay me for this." Or "Goddamnit – see me for this", it's a good moment to check and see if you are consciously making a full-hearted choice to pour your love into an action that you're performing on behalf of another.
STEP THREE – ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT
After Stop, See Me, Pay Me, Help Me, it’s logical that there will be themes and conversations emerging that you know you should have with the people in your life.
Yes, talking about invisible labor, attention and money can be awkward, painful and confrontational. Yes, there are risks that come with stopping, or even just asking for help or recognition.
But living under the weight of invisible labor and going through life with your life force frittered away is far, far worse.
We're going to have to be really brave right now, and ask for things that we were never willing to ask for before. This is why the Asking Practice – learning how to command, invite and entice – in order to build support from the people in their lives is such a foundational tool of The Academy. (Read why Asking is a foundational key of power here.)
Because every time we can’t ask for what we ourselves need in relationships, other people don't get to experience the pleasure of fulfilling our desires, nor seeing us for who we truly are. This kind of "hidden" self-sacrifice ends up turning into resentment for both sides, because it doesn't get rewarded or taken care of.
While Good Girl conditioning may have helped our ancestresses survive, it won’t help us – or even the people we love – thrive. Each time our Good Girl Autoresponder makes us respond to a need that doesn’t actually need us, we send our life force to places where it cannot be appreciated or grow.
And life force is all you’ve got.
Women’s INVISIBLE LABOR comes at a cost – for all of us.
The world needs unbound women.
Why do we care so much about ending women’s unconscious, unpaid and invisible labor?
Because we need you. The world needs you. And we need all of you.
Right now, the world needs women who are self-directed, strong and acting in their best interest. We need women who are using their life force to redefine what it means to be a woman today: leading from a place where they're full, not from a place where they're empty, exhausted and not asking anybody for support.
Because women, unbound, and wielding the full strength of their life force create the most organic, generative, unstoppable generosity imaginable.
We are the women of the pivot. We live in a time where what it means to be a woman is changing. And one of the first steps is just to become aware of the invisible labor that you do. The beautiful thing about starting to become aware of invisible labor is how quickly it can be alchelmized into more generative expressions of life force.
You can stop doing it. You can ask for help. You can ask to be paid. The choice is yours, and that's the key. Without choice, there is no free will and without free will, there is no freedom. And you deserve that freedom.
As a woman, it’s your birthright.
Right now, the world needs women who are leading from a place where they’re full, not from a place where they’re empty, exhausted and not asking anybody for support.
Because women, unbound and wielding the full strength of their life force create the most organic, generative, unstoppable generosity imaginable.
Curious to know how much of YOUR life-force is spent on invisible labor? Download our free invisible labor log and start tracking it now, plus get tools to help you to stop, be seen, helped or paid.
Throughout centuries, women have been trained to give away their power.
The Academy teaches women to take their power back.
Watch Kasia’s TED Talk, ‘One Simple Trick to Reclaim Your Power’.
Get your first free video lessons – The Keys to Power – from Kasia here.
