“A real woman should…”

How stereotypes keep us from succeeding

While women are trying to embrace the immensity and keep up with everything, the only thing they really need is a proper rest.

Success is somewhat like walking – if you clearly go to the goal step by step, you will quickly reach your destination. If now and then turn aside for various urgent matters, then the time for the same path will take several times more. In women, the second option is more often observed, and the reason for this is traditional upbringing and following family role stereotypes. We talked with psychologist and coach Olga Yurkovskaya and found out what prevents us from achieving success and how to find a way out of the vicious circle of “women’s duties”.

Girls in the post-Soviet space are taught to think that a “real woman” should be able to do everything: build a successful career or business, take care of the comfort in the house and raise children. Have you noticed that there is a completely different approach to raising boys? It is believed that truly “male” tasks are to be strong, successful and in demand, earn a lot and … that’s it?

Boys are not shamed for being sloppy. Not prepared to be caring fathers. They are not taught to be responsible for someone other than themselves. As a result, the boys are focused on a rather narrow range of activities: study, sports, developing sections of interest. Little things like washing dishes and changing diapers exist outside the male picture of the world – this is by default a purely female option, “laid down by nature itself.”

Unfortunately, many people still divide work into “female” and “male”, considering the first easier. For some reason, it never occurs to anyone to calculate the hours spent by girls on typically “female” duties.

Let’s calculate what is added to the eight hours of the average working day for women:

time to take and pick up the child from kindergarten or school;

traveling with children in sections, circles and trainings;

assistance in preparing lessons and extracurricular activities;

cooking and washing dishes;

cleaning, grocery shopping, pet care.

In this situation, there is simply nowhere to take time to develop a business or write scientific monographs. Therefore, women with children in a traditional marriage are less successful: all their strength and time are distributed among a huge number of areas of responsibility.

A noticeable growth in business or career most often occurs either in unmarried and childless girls, or in wealthy families with a staff of servants and governesses, or in women after 40 years old, with grown-up children and in a long-awaited divorce. Everyone else, at their most productive age, is wasting their lives trying to “get it all right” as it should be.

Girls selflessly build perfect time management and fight non-existent procrastination. Non-existent – because in fact they drove themselves. And the only thing that will really help them is rest. And then it would be nice to outsource the maximum of your daily duties for money.

Ways to solve

However, making such a decision is not easy. In order to free yourself from the daily routine of everyday life in favor of success without a sense of guilt, you need to change a lot in yourself. Rebuild thinking, redistribute priorities, remove habitual beliefs.

First, at least at the level of logic, you need to realize that it is unrealistic to achieve noticeable success if 80% of your free time does not belong to you and is spent on serving your family and maintaining domestic comfort. Then it is necessary to revise the “family contract” on the responsibilities of each of the spouses and redistribute the burden more evenly among all family members. If possible, it is better to entrust the lion’s share of all
household worries to robotic household appliances and a housekeeper with a nanny.

Among the remaining cases, you need to correctly prioritize and, first of all, do what is most profitable from the point of view of the long term. For example, investing time in your education, so that later you can do the same work for higher pay.

The most important thing is to stop clinging to social stereotypes about the “real woman”, “good wife” and “ideal mother”. Even the most “real” woman is unable to cancel the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day. If you have a desire to become more successful and have real measurable achievements in business or career, you should give up the bad idea of ​​doing everything at once.

Olga Yurkovskaya