Time Was

The Work Culture Women Never Had

Back in 2016 I remember being struck but not surprised by a feature in the Financial Times showing that women view workplace culture as the biggest impediment to their careers. Although much progress has been made since then this is still largely true. And the reason is that certain conditions have gotten if not worse, more intense. 

Here’s what I mean. Work-life balance is still a hot topic of public discussion, even with more of us than ever either working from home or working hybrid. And women continue to systematically report that “a workplace culture designed by and for male advancement” is the primary barrier to their own rise.

So what do we mean when we talk about workplace culture? It’s primarily a set of expectations, values, and behaviors that shape how people organize their work, build professional relationships, and structure their time. And looking at time is a logical place to start. 

It has always seemed to me profoundly ironic that women began entering the workplace in significant numbers and achieving positions of authority and influence at precisely the historical moment when work was becoming unusually time-consuming and intense, in particular during the early and mid-90s. We all know the reasons. They have nothing to do with gender: portable technologies that enable work to penetrate 24/7. The constant learning curve that keeping up with ever-changing tools and applications requires. The spur of global competition, which impacts even local businesses. The need for incessant innovation that’s the defining characteristic of a knowledge-based economy.

Of course there was no cause and effect between women’s entry into the workplace and the ramping up of workplace expectations. It was a coincidence of history, which is precisely why it’s ironic. Yet given that research shows women continue to bear more responsibility at home than men, it also means that the toll of pressure is often greater for women.

The culture of workplace intensity has been with us now for decades, so it’s not surprising that people often assume that work has always been a pressure cooker, at least for those seeking significant achievement. We’ve come to take it for granted that the price of success has always been high.

But it hasn’t always been this way. One has only to re-read, as I did recently, The Organization Man, William Whyte’s classic 1954 study of young executives in big companies (what we might today call high potentials) to see how dramatically our work culture has shifted. The lives of the men Whyte profiled (yes, they were all men) are barely recognizable to us. Suburbanites then would catch a leisurely 9am train into the city, participate in meetings, dictate notes to their secretaries, enjoy long lunches with colleagues or clients, and then arrive home before 5:30, having enjoyed a cocktail or two at lunch or aboard the train. Their evenings centered on playing catch with the kids or a bit of lawn care before dinner with the family and a snooze in front of the television. 

With the exception of traveling salesmen, who mostly used their cars to visit clients, Whyte’s strivers rarely traveled for work. When they did, it was a festive novelty along the lines of Don Draper and Roger Sterling’s joyous escape to sunny California in the episode of Mad Men entitled Jet Set. Then there was nothing like the continual pressure experienced by today’s road warriors, male and female, who must tear out of the house before dawn to to catch a flight before a day of meetings, returning to their hotels to face a cascade of emails.   

While undoubtedly conformist and casually misogynistic, daily life in the 1950s-era organizations Whyte depicts seems almost a paradise in contrast to today: a paradise that women almost entirely missed out on.

It’s important to bear this in mind when we talk about work-life balance, which is often viewed as something women unrealistically seek. In fact, balance was the norm until fairly recently, in part because work was less intense and organizations less focused on wringing every cent of “value” out of the workforce, and in part because someone was at home with the kids.

These big structural problems are interrelated: they will need to be resolved together, rather than alone. For the most part, we have lacked the will to address them. This is the big underlying reason that employee engagement remains at an all-time low and companies still struggle to attract and retain talented women. Despite gauzy talk about purpose, meaning and passion, workplace demands can feel unremitting. And women notice.

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