September 18, 2024 • 32 mins
We chronically undervalue the invisible domestic tasks that women disproportionately own. Eve Rodsky took this imbalance head on by authoring “Fair Play” and creating the corresponding card deck. She shares how we often view women’s time like sand, and men’s like diamonds. Plus, she reveals insights from her latest research — relevant whether you're a parent, a partner, or just interested in playing a little bit more fair.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright Side.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
If you've ever had a disagreement with your spouse about
who does more around the house, this is the episode
for you. We're joined by New York Times best selling
author Eve Rodsky, and she's out with brand new research
revealing the facts about cognitive labor in the household and
how you can have more effective conversations to find the
equilibrium you need. It's Wednesday, September eighteenth. I'm Simone Boyce.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from
Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to
share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten your day.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Today's Wellness Wednesday is presented by Coliguard.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Listen.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I know I can speak for all of us when
I say we've all been in situations where the work
of running a household has felt a bit unbalanced. I
don't care whether you're married, whether you're living with a boyfriend, girlfriend,
even siblings and roommates. You know, conversations about sharing household
duties can get so tricky to navigate. Well, today we're
(01:13):
getting into all of it, and we've got the best
voice on this topic in the house with us today.
Eve Rodsky is an organizational management expert and the New
York Times bestselling author of fair Play, as well as
Find Your Unicorn Space Reclaim Your Creative Life in a
Too Busy World. I've loved both of her books and
they've been so helpful for me in my own life
(01:34):
as a mom and a wife. And Eve is also
part of the Hello Sunshine fan so you know we
love that.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yes she is.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I don't say this often, but Eve's book changed my life,
and we'll get into that a little bit later. But
in terms of equality on the home front, here's the thing.
Gloria Steinem has always said that women will not be
equal until men do equal work at home. And to me,
that's what Eve's book, her first book, fair Play, is
(02:03):
all about. It's geared toward women who are taking on
the brunt of domestic work, feeling overlooked, overwhelmed, possibly resentful
at their partner. And I think, just like all of
the best books and movements, it starts with one person
saying I've had enough, and that's how Eves started. Because
women do two thirds of what it takes to run
(02:24):
a home and a family, and that was pre pandemic.
So I know how this shows up in my life.
I'm not married or partnered, and when I read her book,
I had a lot of anxiety about eventually being partnered because.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I saw my mom do so much.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
She worked full time, and she did almost all of
the household tasks, and she worked out, and she took
care of us, and she was a friend and a wife,
and I never understood how she did it all, and
I didn't want to do it all.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I don't have the same energy she has.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
And so I picked up Eve's book for the first
time to try to figure that out, and it really
helped it ease my anxiety.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
It made me feel like there was a way forward.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Well, when I think about the landscape of parenting today
and marriage today, I am really encouraged by the research
that shows that millennial fathers are more involved than previous
generations before them. And I really think we have Eve
and voices like hers to thank for where we are
(03:29):
right now. And I mean, I can see this showing
up in my own home. My husband and I try
to take a pretty egalitarian approach to parenting, childcare, labor
around the house, and you know, we do try to
divide things up evenly, and we also each still have
our chores that we do. I think that we've found
(03:51):
a system that really works well for us.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Wait, I want details, Simone.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
What do you mean, like are you in charge of
dishes and trash or like how do you divide this?
Speaker 4 (04:00):
No, I draw the line at trash.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
The feminist leaves my body whenever there's a full trash
can around. So Michael does trash, but I do most
of the cooking, and then he'll do laundry. And then
you know, I'll do stuff like organizational tasks around the house,
or I do a lot of DIY projects, building furniture,
(04:23):
et cetera.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Who makes the doctor's appointments and like the all the
school emails.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
We kind of share that.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
We share that and then to be really transparent, we
don't have this like perfectly ironed out system. Our way
of doing things is a lot more intuitive. So if
I've got free time and I'm able to step up,
you know, the school pickup and drop off that week,
I'm going to do that, and I'm gonna let Michael, you.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Know, rest a little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
If let's say, you know, one of us is really
tired at night, and we don't have the energy to
do the bedtime routine.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Then the other person will step in.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Brenee Brown has a really great illustration of this, where
her and her husband will just be truly candid with
one another and be like, hey, I'm at twenty percent
right now, if you're if you're anywhere above that, I
need you to do bed done tonight because you know
I'm on the verge. So I think we try to
approach it in that way, just with a lot of grace.
(05:23):
And I think a big thing too, is like anticipating needs,
which I can always get better at.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Well, I'm actually kind of shocked to hear that your
household has run so egalitarian, because most of my girlfriends
complain about this, and it's like, no matter how helpful
or nice their husbands are, they feel like the mental
load ends up falling on them, and so they'll like,
you know, the husband pitches in and drives kids or
(05:52):
does dishes, et cetera. But at the end of the day,
like my girlfriends are the ones being like, hey, did
you make the doctor appointments?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I can cross it off my list, Hey did you
do this?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
And there's still that like cognitive load really that exists that.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I just don't know how we release that. That's what
Eve is here for.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I also think, though, it's on the women that you're
speaking about to make the choice to not do everything.
Like I had to make a decision when my first
son was like a year and a half probably, and
let's say I was going out of town for the
longest time. I would spend a ton of extra time
(06:33):
prepping meals for when he was gone, just really going
above and beyond to make sure that Michael's job was
extremely easy and seamless while I was gone. But then
I started to realize, wait, I don't know that I
need to be doing this, Like he's fully capable of
handling feeding the baby, dressing the baby, making sure that
the baby has everything it needs. So I do think
(06:55):
that it is partly on us to say, you know what,
here's where I'm going to draw my line, here's my boundary,
and let's have a conversation about where I feel like
I need more support.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
I'm actually really excited to talk to Eve today because
she has new research out.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
We love new research.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Let's bring her in. Eve Radsky, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Hi guys, so good to see you.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Eve.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
We've been wanting you to come on this show since it.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Launched, since the beginning.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Ah well, I've really really enjoyed listening to you and
your chemistry.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
You.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
My secret is that I and the rest of the
guests are probably the least important piece of this because
actually your banter is like my favorite part.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Oh, Eve, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
That's super sweet.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
That's really nice to hear.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Okay, well, speaking of banter, we were actually just talking
about our experience of the division of labor in our
own lives and what we've observed as both daughters and
then for me as a wife and a mother, Your books,
your card game.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
It all started with a pack of blueberries.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
Yes, did what happened with the blueberries?
Speaker 5 (08:00):
Thank you for letting me go back, because it does
feel like a before and after moment in sort of
the arc of my life. But my husband Seth sent
me a text that's just said, I'm surprised you didn't
get blueberries. Let's picture the scene of what the context
was when I got this. I'm surprised you didn't get
Blueberry's text. I had a newborn baby at home and
(08:22):
a toddler and a toddler transition program say that five
times vast, and I was racing to get that toddler
when I got that text. Also, I had a breast
pump and a diaper bag in the passenger seat in
my car. I gifts for a newborn baby in the
backseat of my car. I had a client contract in
my lap because I'd started my own law firm, because
(08:42):
I had just recently been forced out of the corporate
workforce by requesting a place of breastfeed and being told
that I would have to breastfeed in a supply closet
and bring my own battery pack if I wanted to
do so.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
So I left.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Now I say it was forced out so the context
of being abandoned by my job and then feeling so
isolated and alone when this world of tasks which I
now call I call myself sort of the she fault,
not just the default, for all the unpaid domestic labor
that we do for our families to care for them,
(09:15):
like return the gifts in the backseat for the newborn
baby and feed up the newborn and try to maintain
a career. I pulled over, and I was late to
pick up Zach that day. Because I just started sobbing.
I started sobbing on the side of the road, thinking
to myself, you know, how had I become basically the
(09:35):
fulfiller of his smoothie needs? That's how I felt, and
every other domestic tasks I said for our family. And
so I think what I realize Simon and Danielle was
that I was living a statistic that I didn't even
know at the time, which was that women in partnerships
with men shoulder two thirds or more of what it
(09:56):
takes to run a home and family. And that statistic
gets worse as women make more money. So we know
it's a gender issue and not a monetary issue. And
I guess if I wish my feeling for back then
is if I had known that, I feel like that day.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Would have gone a lot differently.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
And so I never really wanted women to feel that
type of isolation and blame and shame.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
That I felt that day.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Wow, And it turned out that the thing that was
happening to me that day and the side of the
road had a name we called the second shift invisible work.
There's all these different terms for you know, sociologists who've
called this out, and I give them a big, you know,
shout out for recognizing that this has been an issue
(10:41):
for women since basically in the Industrial Revolution. And so
for me it was an idea of how could I
look at the home the way I did my work,
which was that the home was an organization. And so
if you look at it that way, that the home
is an organization, your most important organization. I know for
(11:01):
both of you that if I came into your office
and you hired me, and I said, Hey, Simon, what
should I be doing today, I'm just going to wait
here to tell me what to do. Hey Danielle, it's
day two. Thank you for hiring me. So what should
I be doing today? I'm just going to wait here
till you tell me what to do. Right, I probably
wouldn't be here on day three for both of you,
and so I just didn't understand how we laugh at that.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Right, we have.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
Literally zero expectations of what's going to happen in our homes.
And so once I wrote that on a post it
that the home is an organization, I'm an expert in
organizational management, so I figured, how great is this? All
you have to do is connect what we've learned for
fifty years, put it in a book, in a card game,
and then the problem is solved. And I don't think
(11:47):
I realized how complicated it was going to be until
I've launched fair Play into the world.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
How so.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Well, I think the biggest reason is because unpaid labor,
domestic labor, is actually tied up in patriarchal notions of
what women should be doing. And we've been trying to
put women back into the home. Really, men have been
trying to put women back into the home in every
country since the beginning of time.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I mean, to be honest, that's what religion is.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Honestly, I get it, Like I get why they're threatened
by us.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yeah, we're amazing and we're powerful and strong, and so
like I got it safer for us to be in
the kitchen and not out here and messing stuff up.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
For you, that's right.
Speaker 5 (12:31):
And so we see this rhetoric, right, lack of access
to birth control and other things that make it harder
for women to compete. So I don't think I understood
that fair Play would be the torch bearer of that
piece of the patriarchy. And I think the hardest part
Danielle was that we have to come to a reckoning
(12:53):
about all of us and how we've been conditioned before
we can even go to the beautiful tools of fair play.
The bottom line reckoning is that in a patriarchal society,
women's time is viewed as infinite like sand, and men's
time is viewed as finite like diamonds. And there's some
(13:14):
listeners out there that don't believe me. Just watch what
happens when women enter a male profession. What happens is
that the salaries automatically come down. What happens when health systems,
even in twenty twenty four, have brochures that say things
like breastfeeding is free even though it's eighteen hundred hours
of a women's time. So what happens when you've conditioned
(13:37):
women to believe that there are time's infinite, women start
to say things that are complicit in their own oppression.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
That was the most revolutionary part of the book for me.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
I didn't realize how much of this I had internalized,
and it's messed up.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
And this is why this is relevant to people. Even
if you're not in caregiving relationships at the moment, or
you don't have children, because we all, whether it's in
our workplace, whether we're the eldest daughter, we've been conditioned
to believe our time is infinite. So here's a spoiler alert.
We can't find time. We're not Albert Einstein. We can't
fuck with the space time continuum. When we start to
(14:14):
say things like that, well, I'll just do it. It's
easier for me to do it. I'll find the time.
What happens is that we continue to be in a
place where we devalue our own time. That's why it's
a movement. Because to even get people to the tools
which work, and we'll talk about that the studies that
we've done to show that fair play works, we need
to look at ourselves first and say, how are we
(14:37):
going to protect our own time and really truly believe,
without guilt and shame that our time is diamonds.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
This is huge.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I told Danielle this earlier that I had to make
a shift in how I handled going out of town
and in trusting my husband with the kids. When I
was earlier on in my motherhood journey, I would pull.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Out all the stops.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
I'd be puring the baby food, it in the silicone
mold in the freezer. I'd be labeling stuff, I'd be
picking out outfits everything. I'd run myself ragged just so
that I could make his job easier. And then I realized,
like you're saying, I had to look at myself and say,
how is my behavior facilitating this like lack of equality
in my home? And once I stopped handholding him, he
(15:21):
got it. He's fine, He's fully capable.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
First of all, thank you for having that realization. It
still makes me tear up because it's a painful realization
to realize that we are, you know, people, actors in
a system that may not benefit us.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I think it's incredibly painful.
Speaker 5 (15:39):
And again, I think it leads us down these wrong paths,
right having like conversations about what's better to be a
working mom as at oh mom, what's better to do this?
Or that we just go down these paths that actually
don't serve us. And so I think if we can
always just come back to this core notion that we're
human and that our time as diamonds, it really does
(16:01):
change everything. But that's why I need you, Danielle and
Simone and platforms like this to be talking openly and
honestly about how hard these issues are, because otherwise women
internalize quote unquote their failures for not being able to
do it all as internal individualistic problem, when ultimately the
(16:25):
fair play movement is understanding that, yes, we can change
things in our home, and I can give you.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Those tools to do that, and you'll be a cultural
warrior if you do.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
But also what we're doing is we're going to have
to also go out there and fight people and the
policies that want us to stay in the home.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
It's time for a quick break, but don't go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
We'll be right back with Ev Rodsky. And we're back
with New York Times bestselling author Eve Rodsky. We have
seen over the course of the past couple of years
this culture were emerging on social media that pits working
(17:06):
mothers against tradwives. And I'm really interested to hear your
take on the resurgence of tradwives in this whole movement.
And I want to do this delicately because I never
want to add to that animosity that exists between those
two groups. I want all of us to embrace our
choices as mothers and wives and support each other in
(17:28):
those choices. But I also am curious, like, do you
feel like the tradwife movement is antithetical to the work
that you're doing and have done over the past five years.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
Okay, so ultimately fair plays. We've now interviewed tens of
thousands of people for our data. But what we found
in the beginning, when I was really digging deep into
making this more than just an observation about blueberries and
into what's actually happening to me, was that there were
a couple of different personality types. There was the intentional traditionalist.
(17:58):
So what an intentional traditionalist is what I would describe
as a trad wife or a trad relationship. Those are
people who are often governed by some version of God
who tells them you're the helpmate, He's the leader. It's
often relationships between men and women that you don't see
a lot of a talk and discourse about, like say
polyamorous relationships or LGBTQIA couples. We found over time that
(18:23):
those relationships are actually more stable than the relationships for
the accidental traditionalists. So I was an accidental traditionalist. I
was somebody who told Elizabeth Warren And at Harvard Law
School when she was a professor there before she was
a senator that I was going to be simone president
of the United States and a senator from New York
(18:45):
and a Ni City dancer all at the same time.
I genuinely said that that was the enthusiasm that I said,
that's what I was going to do with my law degree.
So that was me at twenty four. I was smashing
all these glass ceilings right one after one. And if
you cut to my life ten years later, what you
saw that, as I described, the only thing I was
(19:06):
really smashing, you know, was like peace from my toddler,
Zach understand, you know, trying to say what happened to
my career? Who did I marry? This is not the
life that I thought I would have. I'm a parent,
I'm a partner, I'm a professional and repeat, but I
don't even know who I am anymore. I wear my
kids fucking initials around my neck. I wear Zach on
my neck like I'm Eve, Like I don't even know
(19:28):
how to even put on my own jewelry with my
name on it. But we see over time that those
are the relationships that are at least stable, where women
do not get what they expected, where they say to me,
I had a very feminist husband who supported my career,
and then he's texting me that I'm the fulfiller of
his smoothie needs, so seth and my relationship is considered
the most unstable. When a woman will say I'm an
(19:49):
accidental traditionalist and I gave up my career unintentionally because
day care was too expensive or because my partner's career
we had to move, those women end up reporting in
our studies the most unhappiness. And then there's the people
who are trying that, the collaborators who really do care,
and who men who believe, Look, your time is diamonds,
and I care about that. I'm just sorry. I thought
(20:10):
asking you for a list was the way you wanted
me to help. But now I know I can do
it on my own, which is similar to how you
reflected your partnership.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
A little bit earlier.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
That's how I'll look at it from the data.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
The data is that a lot of it's about expectations,
and a lot of what happens with the traadwise is
that it looked so nice on social media to be
able to focus on the home.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And what I.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
See from these women is that they tell me later on,
especially when as they get older, that the scariest thing
for them was how much they lost control, because they
lost control of any sort of monetary power in their relationship,
and it can get abusive. So, you know, if you
take this back to sort of fair play, why it
(20:55):
felt so subversive for a lot of people was how
SEF describe. People will say to him, well, how did
you get to a fair division of labor in your home?
And he just says to these other men, we'll just
have you know, your wife write a book about you
and betray you in a terrible light. It's very hard
to talk realistically about your relationship, even if you're not
(21:16):
in a tread wife situation. So even the women who
I felt were really into fair play, and men too,
we're always like, I'm using fair play, but I didn't
really need it.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
You know.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
My husband's wonderful, he's a great guy, you know, but
we needed a little tweak. I mean, over and over
again for ten years, and so I would say, tell
me about your experience with fair play, but I don't
need to hear how great your husband has.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Just tell me your experience.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
So I think the shame of talking about any realistic thing.
We've been able to normalize it in many different ways.
We normalize it and work for women. We've normalized it
with periods, we're doing with menopause. But actually the one
area where I don't think we do it very well
is actually talking realistically about the labor in our homes
(22:01):
and so when you don't acknowledge the reality of what
life is like to actually care for children and TLDR.
It's fucking hard, so fucking hard take care of a parent,
a child, a dog. Caretaking is meaningful, but incredibly incredibly difficult.
The more we get away from that and show these
(22:22):
people frollicking in fields, the more harm we're doing to women.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
It's time for another short break, but we'll be right
back with more from Eve Rodsky.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
And we're back with Eve Rodsky.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Your work pairs qualitative and quantitative research together, which I love.
And in one of your recent studies you decided to
go beyond informal surveys and to measure quantitative.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
Yay, Yes, I'm a nerd. This is my favorite thing
in the world.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
I know.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I can tell well, there's this graph that stuck out
to me, and it lists the gender division. Of the
thirty tasks that you studied, what were the top tasks
for women versus men?
Speaker 5 (23:10):
Okay, it's very exciting what happened. So I'll just back
up and say what fair play is. If people are
still like, what are you actually talking about? What I'm
talking about is that I designed a system for the
home based on organizational management. What if we treated our
homes as the most important organization. If you do that,
you would use organizational management principles, which basically state you
(23:32):
don't manage what you don't measure. So my first task
after the blueberry is like, what was the first thing
I did? I created this should I do? Spreadsheet that
sort of went viral before we had social media. It
was like early Facebook back then, because this was like
what twenty eleven, we just were getting iPads.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I love that you called it that.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
Yeah, And so the should I do spreadsheet was an
Excel sheet that had ninety eight tabs on the bottom
of it and about two thousand items total of invisible
work because you know, you can do a subtab, so
it would be like medical and healthy living, and then
you'd have like brushing your teeth under the subtab of it,
and what that did for me was actually one of
the most important things. It was the first time in
(24:09):
my life, actually since I had kids, that I didn't
feel alone because when I had started the spreadsheet and
started to tell women about the spreadsheet, they started to
give me more should I do, and so.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
It became like, oh, yeah, I forgot I do that. Yes.
Speaker 5 (24:25):
It was like the most wonderful communal exercise that I
ever did in my life.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
It was over nine months.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Anywhere I went, I'd have this like small moleskin and
a pen in my pocket because if I'd be on
the costco line, I'd ask women like what unpaid labor
they do?
Speaker 1 (24:39):
What invisible work they do?
Speaker 5 (24:41):
And it kept on growing, like I'll give you an example,
like again under Medical and Healthy Living that tab I
was telling you. One woman said to me, you know, Eve,
I noticed you put the application of sunscreen to your
kids on there, and you wrote two minutes, But what
about the thirty minutes for the chase. I was like, oh, yeah,
thirty minutes for the chase, right, okay, So I added, oh,
it's actually thirty two minutes to get sunscreen out here,
(25:03):
fucking child, or it would be like, oh, I see
that you have a tab called extracurricular nonsports for your children.
I see all these things like arts and crafts, but
where's girl Scout cookies? Ordering in sales? So from that,
should I do spreadsheet? Ultimately what evolved was a fair
play system. So this should I do spreadsheet involved into
(25:25):
one hundred cards. Okay, so why I bring this up
for the study? We couldn't ask people about all hundred
tasks and a quantitative study because they'd probably like walk
out the door by the time we sort of grab them.
So we asked them about thirty and the thirty we
decided to choose were the ones that women were reporting
that women do tasks like they can't do it their
(25:47):
own timetable.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
So men will, for example, mow the.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
Lawn or repair a garage door, but women are the
ones picking up a child from school if they're sick.
So if something interrupts your life, women do it. Some
men could do on their own timetable they were handling.
So we decided to look at the thirty tasks that
we call daily grinds, things that have to be done
at a certain time aka picking up your child from school.
(26:11):
You can't feel like it at seven pm, so you know,
you have to pick up your kids at a certain time.
You have to take them to a dentist visit every
six months, you have to someone's sick, Someone has to
interrupt their job to come caretake for somebody. So those
types of things were very gender specific. So we decided
to look at those and I think what was so
(26:34):
surprising to us was that what wasn't surprising, right, is
that women's shoulder every single one of these tasks, these
daily grind tasks, except for garbage.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
But this is the sad part. It was actually shared
for garbage.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
It wasn't even like a full male task because women
would still be the one nudging them to put the
garbage liner back in the garbage. So that was a
little depressing. But I think this is the core finding
that I want to explain to you guys, because this
gets to the fun part of where this is. And
you're the first to hear about it, by the way,
so I'm so excited to take it sort of off embargo.
We did it with USC with amazing in their Department
(27:09):
of psychology, and what we were able to find was
that there was a certain fair play concept that was
missing from most other studies, So that fair play concept
we call the life changing magic of mustard. So what
that means is early on in the should I do
spreadsheet life, I started to ask women because I wasn't
getting the right data and should I do spreadsheet land?
(27:32):
When I'd ask women who pick up the kids from school,
like women married to men, the chiming in would be
we both do, or like who gets groceries?
Speaker 1 (27:40):
We both do? And I was like, what is this
Pollyannish like life for everybody?
Speaker 5 (27:44):
When you're telling me you want to divorce your partner,
but now you're telling me you both do everything like
It was so confusing to get to the right data set.
And this actually happened in LGBTQIA couples too, a lot
of this both we're both doing everything. So to get
to the actual finding, I started to ask a question
that changed my life and actually was thank god captured
(28:04):
in the research and the question was how does mustard
get in your refrigerator? We found were again women married
to men were the ones saying that they were the
ones noticing that their second son, Johnny, likes yellow mustard
with his protein. Otherwise you won't need it now In
the organizational management world, we call that conception. People get
paid big bucks to conceive of things. Then we noticed
(28:29):
that women were reporting they were the ones monitoring that
mustard for when it ran low, and they were also
the ones getting stakeholder buying from their families for what
they needed on the grocery list. So we were able
to break out another organizational phase called planning. And then
the reason why people were saying both ding ding ding
was because the partner was going to the store to
(28:50):
pick up the yellow mustard, but he was bringing home
spicy djon every fucking time. And so then what happened
was these women were then according to me, well, Eve,
you want me to trust my partner with my living will,
this dude can't even bring home the right type of mustard.
So what we were realizing is that when you break
up the conception, planning, and execution, that's actually leading to
(29:13):
an erosion of the organizational foundations, which are accountability and trust,
and that's become the core concept of fair play. So
that's what I was trying to test. Is it true
that women hold and shoulder they cp of the e
And sadly or happily, it tracked exactly what we found
(29:34):
ten years ago. Women shoulder the cognitive labor, the conception
and planning for every single task that we measured, except for,
like I said, maybe garbage in the home. And that
is why I believe we are incredibly exhausted because we
do this as eldest daughters.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
You don't have to have kids to do this. We
do this in the workplace.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
We are shouldering the cognitive labor for these emotional tasks,
for these physical tasks for our kids, and it's too much.
That's why this mental load that may have been a
little bit easier in the past is now unsustainable because
you're not just getting the one form that says bring
your kids to school for back to School Day. You're
getting a seventeen different apps with one hundred different forms
(30:19):
and a million different things and logging in here and
checking in here. And that's just for one of the cards,
which is transporting your kids to school. There's ninety nine
other cards that you have to contend with. Life has
just gotten too overwhelming and women are shouldering too much
cognitive labor.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
The schools need to chill out with the inmail house.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah, any school administrators listening.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
One email a day is plenty.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
It's too much, just too much.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Eve, thank you so much for coming on the bright side.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Oh thank you for your vulnerability and for letting me turn.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
The tables and let you answer questions, and for bringing
all that heart.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Thank you, big hugs.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Eve Rodsky is the New York Times best selling author
of fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, we're joined by Hollywood
legend halle Berry. She joins us to talk about her
new horror film Never Let Go, how her menopause symptoms
got misdiagnosed as herpies, and how she feels about all
those halle Berry shout outs in popular music.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Thank you to our partners at Coligard, the one of
a kind way to screen for colon cancer in the
privacy and comfort of your own home. Talk to your
doctor or healthcare provider, or go to coliguard dot com
slash podcast to see if you are eligible to order online.
If you're forty five or older and at average risk,
ask your healthcare provider about screening for colon cancer with Coligard.
(31:44):
You can also request a coli Guard prescription today at
coligard dot com slash podcast. Listen and follow The bright
Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Join the conversation using hashtag the bright
Side and connect with us on social media at Hello
Sunshine on Instagram and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok,
(32:05):
and feel free to tag us Simone Boys and Danielle
Robe
Speaker 2 (32:09):
See you tomorrow, folks, Keep looking on the bright side.
Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright Side.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
If you've ever had a disagreement with your spouse about
who does more around the house, this is the episode
for you. We're joined by New York Times best selling
author Eve Rodsky, and she's out with brand new research
revealing the facts about cognitive labor in the household and
how you can have more effective conversations to find the
equilibrium you need. It's Wednesday, September eighteenth. I'm Simone Boyce.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from
Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to
share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten your day.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Today's Wellness Wednesday is presented by Coliguard.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Listen.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I know I can speak for all of us when
I say we've all been in situations where the work
of running a household has felt a bit unbalanced. I
don't care whether you're married, whether you're living with a boyfriend, girlfriend,
even siblings and roommates. You know, conversations about sharing household
duties can get so tricky to navigate. Well, today we're
(01:13):
getting into all of it, and we've got the best
voice on this topic in the house with us today.
Eve Rodsky is an organizational management expert and the New
York Times bestselling author of fair Play, as well as
Find Your Unicorn Space Reclaim Your Creative Life in a
Too Busy World. I've loved both of her books and
they've been so helpful for me in my own life
(01:34):
as a mom and a wife. And Eve is also
part of the Hello Sunshine fan so you know we
love that.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yes she is.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I don't say this often, but Eve's book changed my life,
and we'll get into that a little bit later. But
in terms of equality on the home front, here's the thing.
Gloria Steinem has always said that women will not be
equal until men do equal work at home. And to me,
that's what Eve's book, her first book, fair Play, is
(02:03):
all about. It's geared toward women who are taking on
the brunt of domestic work, feeling overlooked, overwhelmed, possibly resentful
at their partner. And I think, just like all of
the best books and movements, it starts with one person
saying I've had enough, and that's how Eves started. Because
women do two thirds of what it takes to run
(02:24):
a home and a family, and that was pre pandemic.
So I know how this shows up in my life.
I'm not married or partnered, and when I read her book,
I had a lot of anxiety about eventually being partnered because.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I saw my mom do so much.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
She worked full time, and she did almost all of
the household tasks, and she worked out, and she took
care of us, and she was a friend and a wife,
and I never understood how she did it all, and
I didn't want to do it all.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I don't have the same energy she has.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
And so I picked up Eve's book for the first
time to try to figure that out, and it really
helped it ease my anxiety.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
It made me feel like there was a way forward.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Well, when I think about the landscape of parenting today
and marriage today, I am really encouraged by the research
that shows that millennial fathers are more involved than previous
generations before them. And I really think we have Eve
and voices like hers to thank for where we are
(03:29):
right now. And I mean, I can see this showing
up in my own home. My husband and I try
to take a pretty egalitarian approach to parenting, childcare, labor
around the house, and you know, we do try to
divide things up evenly, and we also each still have
our chores that we do. I think that we've found
(03:51):
a system that really works well for us.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Wait, I want details, Simone.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
What do you mean, like are you in charge of
dishes and trash or like how do you divide this?
Speaker 4 (04:00):
No, I draw the line at trash.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
The feminist leaves my body whenever there's a full trash
can around. So Michael does trash, but I do most
of the cooking, and then he'll do laundry. And then
you know, I'll do stuff like organizational tasks around the house,
or I do a lot of DIY projects, building furniture,
(04:23):
et cetera.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Who makes the doctor's appointments and like the all the
school emails.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
We kind of share that.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
We share that and then to be really transparent, we
don't have this like perfectly ironed out system. Our way
of doing things is a lot more intuitive. So if
I've got free time and I'm able to step up,
you know, the school pickup and drop off that week,
I'm going to do that, and I'm gonna let Michael, you.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Know, rest a little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
If let's say, you know, one of us is really
tired at night, and we don't have the energy to
do the bedtime routine.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Then the other person will step in.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Brenee Brown has a really great illustration of this, where
her and her husband will just be truly candid with
one another and be like, hey, I'm at twenty percent
right now, if you're if you're anywhere above that, I
need you to do bed done tonight because you know
I'm on the verge. So I think we try to
approach it in that way, just with a lot of grace.
(05:23):
And I think a big thing too, is like anticipating needs,
which I can always get better at.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Well, I'm actually kind of shocked to hear that your
household has run so egalitarian, because most of my girlfriends
complain about this, and it's like, no matter how helpful
or nice their husbands are, they feel like the mental
load ends up falling on them, and so they'll like,
you know, the husband pitches in and drives kids or
(05:52):
does dishes, et cetera. But at the end of the day,
like my girlfriends are the ones being like, hey, did
you make the doctor appointments?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I can cross it off my list, Hey did you
do this?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
And there's still that like cognitive load really that exists that.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I just don't know how we release that. That's what
Eve is here for.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I also think, though, it's on the women that you're
speaking about to make the choice to not do everything.
Like I had to make a decision when my first
son was like a year and a half probably, and
let's say I was going out of town for the
longest time. I would spend a ton of extra time
(06:33):
prepping meals for when he was gone, just really going
above and beyond to make sure that Michael's job was
extremely easy and seamless while I was gone. But then
I started to realize, wait, I don't know that I
need to be doing this, Like he's fully capable of
handling feeding the baby, dressing the baby, making sure that
the baby has everything it needs. So I do think
(06:55):
that it is partly on us to say, you know what,
here's where I'm going to draw my line, here's my boundary,
and let's have a conversation about where I feel like
I need more support.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
I'm actually really excited to talk to Eve today because
she has new research out.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
We love new research.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Let's bring her in. Eve Radsky, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Hi guys, so good to see you.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Eve.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
We've been wanting you to come on this show since it.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Launched, since the beginning.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Ah well, I've really really enjoyed listening to you and
your chemistry.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
You.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
My secret is that I and the rest of the
guests are probably the least important piece of this because
actually your banter is like my favorite part.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Oh, Eve, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
That's super sweet.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
That's really nice to hear.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Okay, well, speaking of banter, we were actually just talking
about our experience of the division of labor in our
own lives and what we've observed as both daughters and
then for me as a wife and a mother, Your books,
your card game.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
It all started with a pack of blueberries.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
Yes, did what happened with the blueberries?
Speaker 5 (08:00):
Thank you for letting me go back, because it does
feel like a before and after moment in sort of
the arc of my life. But my husband Seth sent
me a text that's just said, I'm surprised you didn't
get blueberries. Let's picture the scene of what the context
was when I got this. I'm surprised you didn't get
Blueberry's text. I had a newborn baby at home and
(08:22):
a toddler and a toddler transition program say that five
times vast, and I was racing to get that toddler
when I got that text. Also, I had a breast
pump and a diaper bag in the passenger seat in
my car. I gifts for a newborn baby in the
backseat of my car. I had a client contract in
my lap because I'd started my own law firm, because
(08:42):
I had just recently been forced out of the corporate
workforce by requesting a place of breastfeed and being told
that I would have to breastfeed in a supply closet
and bring my own battery pack if I wanted to
do so.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
So I left.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Now I say it was forced out so the context
of being abandoned by my job and then feeling so
isolated and alone when this world of tasks which I
now call I call myself sort of the she fault,
not just the default, for all the unpaid domestic labor
that we do for our families to care for them,
(09:15):
like return the gifts in the backseat for the newborn
baby and feed up the newborn and try to maintain
a career. I pulled over, and I was late to
pick up Zach that day. Because I just started sobbing.
I started sobbing on the side of the road, thinking
to myself, you know, how had I become basically the
(09:35):
fulfiller of his smoothie needs? That's how I felt, and
every other domestic tasks I said for our family. And
so I think what I realize Simon and Danielle was
that I was living a statistic that I didn't even
know at the time, which was that women in partnerships
with men shoulder two thirds or more of what it
(09:56):
takes to run a home and family. And that statistic
gets worse as women make more money. So we know
it's a gender issue and not a monetary issue. And
I guess if I wish my feeling for back then
is if I had known that, I feel like that day.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Would have gone a lot differently.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
And so I never really wanted women to feel that
type of isolation and blame and shame.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
That I felt that day.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Wow, And it turned out that the thing that was
happening to me that day and the side of the
road had a name we called the second shift invisible work.
There's all these different terms for you know, sociologists who've
called this out, and I give them a big, you know,
shout out for recognizing that this has been an issue
(10:41):
for women since basically in the Industrial Revolution. And so
for me it was an idea of how could I
look at the home the way I did my work,
which was that the home was an organization. And so
if you look at it that way, that the home
is an organization, your most important organization. I know for
(11:01):
both of you that if I came into your office
and you hired me, and I said, Hey, Simon, what
should I be doing today, I'm just going to wait
here to tell me what to do. Hey Danielle, it's
day two. Thank you for hiring me. So what should
I be doing today? I'm just going to wait here
till you tell me what to do. Right, I probably
wouldn't be here on day three for both of you,
and so I just didn't understand how we laugh at that.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Right, we have.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
Literally zero expectations of what's going to happen in our homes.
And so once I wrote that on a post it
that the home is an organization, I'm an expert in
organizational management, so I figured, how great is this? All
you have to do is connect what we've learned for
fifty years, put it in a book, in a card game,
and then the problem is solved. And I don't think
(11:47):
I realized how complicated it was going to be until
I've launched fair Play into the world.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
How so.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Well, I think the biggest reason is because unpaid labor,
domestic labor, is actually tied up in patriarchal notions of
what women should be doing. And we've been trying to
put women back into the home. Really, men have been
trying to put women back into the home in every
country since the beginning of time.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I mean, to be honest, that's what religion is.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Honestly, I get it, Like I get why they're threatened
by us.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yeah, we're amazing and we're powerful and strong, and so
like I got it safer for us to be in
the kitchen and not out here and messing stuff up.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
For you, that's right.
Speaker 5 (12:31):
And so we see this rhetoric, right, lack of access
to birth control and other things that make it harder
for women to compete. So I don't think I understood
that fair Play would be the torch bearer of that
piece of the patriarchy. And I think the hardest part
Danielle was that we have to come to a reckoning
(12:53):
about all of us and how we've been conditioned before
we can even go to the beautiful tools of fair play.
The bottom line reckoning is that in a patriarchal society,
women's time is viewed as infinite like sand, and men's
time is viewed as finite like diamonds. And there's some
(13:14):
listeners out there that don't believe me. Just watch what
happens when women enter a male profession. What happens is
that the salaries automatically come down. What happens when health systems,
even in twenty twenty four, have brochures that say things
like breastfeeding is free even though it's eighteen hundred hours
of a women's time. So what happens when you've conditioned
(13:37):
women to believe that there are time's infinite, women start
to say things that are complicit in their own oppression.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
That was the most revolutionary part of the book for me.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
I didn't realize how much of this I had internalized,
and it's messed up.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
And this is why this is relevant to people. Even
if you're not in caregiving relationships at the moment, or
you don't have children, because we all, whether it's in
our workplace, whether we're the eldest daughter, we've been conditioned
to believe our time is infinite. So here's a spoiler alert.
We can't find time. We're not Albert Einstein. We can't
fuck with the space time continuum. When we start to
(14:14):
say things like that, well, I'll just do it. It's
easier for me to do it. I'll find the time.
What happens is that we continue to be in a
place where we devalue our own time. That's why it's
a movement. Because to even get people to the tools
which work, and we'll talk about that the studies that
we've done to show that fair play works, we need
to look at ourselves first and say, how are we
(14:37):
going to protect our own time and really truly believe,
without guilt and shame that our time is diamonds.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
This is huge.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I told Danielle this earlier that I had to make
a shift in how I handled going out of town
and in trusting my husband with the kids. When I
was earlier on in my motherhood journey, I would pull.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Out all the stops.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
I'd be puring the baby food, it in the silicone
mold in the freezer. I'd be labeling stuff, I'd be
picking out outfits everything. I'd run myself ragged just so
that I could make his job easier. And then I realized,
like you're saying, I had to look at myself and say,
how is my behavior facilitating this like lack of equality
in my home? And once I stopped handholding him, he
(15:21):
got it. He's fine, He's fully capable.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
First of all, thank you for having that realization. It
still makes me tear up because it's a painful realization
to realize that we are, you know, people, actors in
a system that may not benefit us.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I think it's incredibly painful.
Speaker 5 (15:39):
And again, I think it leads us down these wrong paths,
right having like conversations about what's better to be a
working mom as at oh mom, what's better to do this?
Or that we just go down these paths that actually
don't serve us. And so I think if we can
always just come back to this core notion that we're
human and that our time as diamonds, it really does
(16:01):
change everything. But that's why I need you, Danielle and
Simone and platforms like this to be talking openly and
honestly about how hard these issues are, because otherwise women
internalize quote unquote their failures for not being able to
do it all as internal individualistic problem, when ultimately the
(16:25):
fair play movement is understanding that, yes, we can change
things in our home, and I can give you.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Those tools to do that, and you'll be a cultural
warrior if you do.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
But also what we're doing is we're going to have
to also go out there and fight people and the
policies that want us to stay in the home.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
It's time for a quick break, but don't go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
We'll be right back with Ev Rodsky. And we're back
with New York Times bestselling author Eve Rodsky. We have
seen over the course of the past couple of years
this culture were emerging on social media that pits working
(17:06):
mothers against tradwives. And I'm really interested to hear your
take on the resurgence of tradwives in this whole movement.
And I want to do this delicately because I never
want to add to that animosity that exists between those
two groups. I want all of us to embrace our
choices as mothers and wives and support each other in
(17:28):
those choices. But I also am curious, like, do you
feel like the tradwife movement is antithetical to the work
that you're doing and have done over the past five years.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
Okay, so ultimately fair plays. We've now interviewed tens of
thousands of people for our data. But what we found
in the beginning, when I was really digging deep into
making this more than just an observation about blueberries and
into what's actually happening to me, was that there were
a couple of different personality types. There was the intentional traditionalist.
(17:58):
So what an intentional traditionalist is what I would describe
as a trad wife or a trad relationship. Those are
people who are often governed by some version of God
who tells them you're the helpmate, He's the leader. It's
often relationships between men and women that you don't see
a lot of a talk and discourse about, like say
polyamorous relationships or LGBTQIA couples. We found over time that
(18:23):
those relationships are actually more stable than the relationships for
the accidental traditionalists. So I was an accidental traditionalist. I
was somebody who told Elizabeth Warren And at Harvard Law
School when she was a professor there before she was
a senator that I was going to be simone president
of the United States and a senator from New York
(18:45):
and a Ni City dancer all at the same time.
I genuinely said that that was the enthusiasm that I said,
that's what I was going to do with my law degree.
So that was me at twenty four. I was smashing
all these glass ceilings right one after one. And if
you cut to my life ten years later, what you
saw that, as I described, the only thing I was
(19:06):
really smashing, you know, was like peace from my toddler,
Zach understand, you know, trying to say what happened to
my career? Who did I marry? This is not the
life that I thought I would have. I'm a parent,
I'm a partner, I'm a professional and repeat, but I
don't even know who I am anymore. I wear my
kids fucking initials around my neck. I wear Zach on
my neck like I'm Eve, Like I don't even know
(19:28):
how to even put on my own jewelry with my
name on it. But we see over time that those
are the relationships that are at least stable, where women
do not get what they expected, where they say to me,
I had a very feminist husband who supported my career,
and then he's texting me that I'm the fulfiller of
his smoothie needs, so seth and my relationship is considered
the most unstable. When a woman will say I'm an
(19:49):
accidental traditionalist and I gave up my career unintentionally because
day care was too expensive or because my partner's career
we had to move, those women end up reporting in
our studies the most unhappiness. And then there's the people
who are trying that, the collaborators who really do care,
and who men who believe, Look, your time is diamonds,
and I care about that. I'm just sorry. I thought
(20:10):
asking you for a list was the way you wanted
me to help. But now I know I can do
it on my own, which is similar to how you
reflected your partnership.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
A little bit earlier.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
That's how I'll look at it from the data.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
The data is that a lot of it's about expectations,
and a lot of what happens with the traadwise is
that it looked so nice on social media to be
able to focus on the home.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And what I.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
See from these women is that they tell me later on,
especially when as they get older, that the scariest thing
for them was how much they lost control, because they
lost control of any sort of monetary power in their relationship,
and it can get abusive. So, you know, if you
take this back to sort of fair play, why it
(20:55):
felt so subversive for a lot of people was how
SEF describe. People will say to him, well, how did
you get to a fair division of labor in your home?
And he just says to these other men, we'll just
have you know, your wife write a book about you
and betray you in a terrible light. It's very hard
to talk realistically about your relationship, even if you're not
(21:16):
in a tread wife situation. So even the women who
I felt were really into fair play, and men too,
we're always like, I'm using fair play, but I didn't
really need it.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
You know.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
My husband's wonderful, he's a great guy, you know, but
we needed a little tweak. I mean, over and over
again for ten years, and so I would say, tell
me about your experience with fair play, but I don't
need to hear how great your husband has.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Just tell me your experience.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
So I think the shame of talking about any realistic thing.
We've been able to normalize it in many different ways.
We normalize it and work for women. We've normalized it
with periods, we're doing with menopause. But actually the one
area where I don't think we do it very well
is actually talking realistically about the labor in our homes
(22:01):
and so when you don't acknowledge the reality of what
life is like to actually care for children and TLDR.
It's fucking hard, so fucking hard take care of a parent,
a child, a dog. Caretaking is meaningful, but incredibly incredibly difficult.
The more we get away from that and show these
(22:22):
people frollicking in fields, the more harm we're doing to women.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
It's time for another short break, but we'll be right
back with more from Eve Rodsky.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
And we're back with Eve Rodsky.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Your work pairs qualitative and quantitative research together, which I love.
And in one of your recent studies you decided to
go beyond informal surveys and to measure quantitative.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
Yay, Yes, I'm a nerd. This is my favorite thing
in the world.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
I know.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I can tell well, there's this graph that stuck out
to me, and it lists the gender division. Of the
thirty tasks that you studied, what were the top tasks
for women versus men?
Speaker 5 (23:10):
Okay, it's very exciting what happened. So I'll just back
up and say what fair play is. If people are
still like, what are you actually talking about? What I'm
talking about is that I designed a system for the
home based on organizational management. What if we treated our
homes as the most important organization. If you do that,
you would use organizational management principles, which basically state you
(23:32):
don't manage what you don't measure. So my first task
after the blueberry is like, what was the first thing
I did? I created this should I do? Spreadsheet that
sort of went viral before we had social media. It
was like early Facebook back then, because this was like
what twenty eleven, we just were getting iPads.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I love that you called it that.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
Yeah, And so the should I do spreadsheet was an
Excel sheet that had ninety eight tabs on the bottom
of it and about two thousand items total of invisible
work because you know, you can do a subtab, so
it would be like medical and healthy living, and then
you'd have like brushing your teeth under the subtab of it,
and what that did for me was actually one of
the most important things. It was the first time in
(24:09):
my life, actually since I had kids, that I didn't
feel alone because when I had started the spreadsheet and
started to tell women about the spreadsheet, they started to
give me more should I do, and so.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
It became like, oh, yeah, I forgot I do that. Yes.
Speaker 5 (24:25):
It was like the most wonderful communal exercise that I
ever did in my life.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
It was over nine months.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Anywhere I went, I'd have this like small moleskin and
a pen in my pocket because if I'd be on
the costco line, I'd ask women like what unpaid labor
they do?
Speaker 1 (24:39):
What invisible work they do?
Speaker 5 (24:41):
And it kept on growing, like I'll give you an example,
like again under Medical and Healthy Living that tab I
was telling you. One woman said to me, you know, Eve,
I noticed you put the application of sunscreen to your
kids on there, and you wrote two minutes, But what
about the thirty minutes for the chase. I was like, oh, yeah,
thirty minutes for the chase, right, okay, So I added, oh,
it's actually thirty two minutes to get sunscreen out here,
(25:03):
fucking child, or it would be like, oh, I see
that you have a tab called extracurricular nonsports for your children.
I see all these things like arts and crafts, but
where's girl Scout cookies? Ordering in sales? So from that,
should I do spreadsheet? Ultimately what evolved was a fair
play system. So this should I do spreadsheet involved into
(25:25):
one hundred cards. Okay, so why I bring this up
for the study? We couldn't ask people about all hundred
tasks and a quantitative study because they'd probably like walk
out the door by the time we sort of grab them.
So we asked them about thirty and the thirty we
decided to choose were the ones that women were reporting
that women do tasks like they can't do it their
(25:47):
own timetable.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
So men will, for example, mow the.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
Lawn or repair a garage door, but women are the
ones picking up a child from school if they're sick.
So if something interrupts your life, women do it. Some
men could do on their own timetable they were handling.
So we decided to look at the thirty tasks that
we call daily grinds, things that have to be done
at a certain time aka picking up your child from school.
(26:11):
You can't feel like it at seven pm, so you know,
you have to pick up your kids at a certain time.
You have to take them to a dentist visit every
six months, you have to someone's sick, Someone has to
interrupt their job to come caretake for somebody. So those
types of things were very gender specific. So we decided
to look at those and I think what was so
(26:34):
surprising to us was that what wasn't surprising, right, is
that women's shoulder every single one of these tasks, these
daily grind tasks, except for garbage.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
But this is the sad part. It was actually shared
for garbage.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
It wasn't even like a full male task because women
would still be the one nudging them to put the
garbage liner back in the garbage. So that was a
little depressing. But I think this is the core finding
that I want to explain to you guys, because this
gets to the fun part of where this is. And
you're the first to hear about it, by the way,
so I'm so excited to take it sort of off embargo.
We did it with USC with amazing in their Department
(27:09):
of psychology, and what we were able to find was
that there was a certain fair play concept that was
missing from most other studies, So that fair play concept
we call the life changing magic of mustard. So what
that means is early on in the should I do
spreadsheet life, I started to ask women because I wasn't
getting the right data and should I do spreadsheet land?
(27:32):
When I'd ask women who pick up the kids from school,
like women married to men, the chiming in would be
we both do, or like who gets groceries?
Speaker 1 (27:40):
We both do? And I was like, what is this
Pollyannish like life for everybody?
Speaker 5 (27:44):
When you're telling me you want to divorce your partner,
but now you're telling me you both do everything like
It was so confusing to get to the right data set.
And this actually happened in LGBTQIA couples too, a lot
of this both we're both doing everything. So to get
to the actual finding, I started to ask a question
that changed my life and actually was thank god captured
(28:04):
in the research and the question was how does mustard
get in your refrigerator? We found were again women married
to men were the ones saying that they were the
ones noticing that their second son, Johnny, likes yellow mustard
with his protein. Otherwise you won't need it now In
the organizational management world, we call that conception. People get
paid big bucks to conceive of things. Then we noticed
(28:29):
that women were reporting they were the ones monitoring that
mustard for when it ran low, and they were also
the ones getting stakeholder buying from their families for what
they needed on the grocery list. So we were able
to break out another organizational phase called planning. And then
the reason why people were saying both ding ding ding
was because the partner was going to the store to
(28:50):
pick up the yellow mustard, but he was bringing home
spicy djon every fucking time. And so then what happened
was these women were then according to me, well, Eve,
you want me to trust my partner with my living will,
this dude can't even bring home the right type of mustard.
So what we were realizing is that when you break
up the conception, planning, and execution, that's actually leading to
(29:13):
an erosion of the organizational foundations, which are accountability and trust,
and that's become the core concept of fair play. So
that's what I was trying to test. Is it true
that women hold and shoulder they cp of the e
And sadly or happily, it tracked exactly what we found
(29:34):
ten years ago. Women shoulder the cognitive labor, the conception
and planning for every single task that we measured, except for,
like I said, maybe garbage in the home. And that
is why I believe we are incredibly exhausted because we
do this as eldest daughters.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
You don't have to have kids to do this. We
do this in the workplace.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
We are shouldering the cognitive labor for these emotional tasks,
for these physical tasks for our kids, and it's too much.
That's why this mental load that may have been a
little bit easier in the past is now unsustainable because
you're not just getting the one form that says bring
your kids to school for back to School Day. You're
getting a seventeen different apps with one hundred different forms
(30:19):
and a million different things and logging in here and
checking in here. And that's just for one of the cards,
which is transporting your kids to school. There's ninety nine
other cards that you have to contend with. Life has
just gotten too overwhelming and women are shouldering too much
cognitive labor.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
The schools need to chill out with the inmail house.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah, any school administrators listening.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
One email a day is plenty.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
It's too much, just too much.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Eve, thank you so much for coming on the bright side.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Oh thank you for your vulnerability and for letting me turn.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
The tables and let you answer questions, and for bringing
all that heart.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Thank you, big hugs.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Eve Rodsky is the New York Times best selling author
of fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, we're joined by Hollywood
legend halle Berry. She joins us to talk about her
new horror film Never Let Go, how her menopause symptoms
got misdiagnosed as herpies, and how she feels about all
those halle Berry shout outs in popular music.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Thank you to our partners at Coligard, the one of
a kind way to screen for colon cancer in the
privacy and comfort of your own home. Talk to your
doctor or healthcare provider, or go to coliguard dot com
slash podcast to see if you are eligible to order online.
If you're forty five or older and at average risk,
ask your healthcare provider about screening for colon cancer with Coligard.
(31:44):
You can also request a coli Guard prescription today at
coligard dot com slash podcast. Listen and follow The bright
Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Join the conversation using hashtag the bright
Side and connect with us on social media at Hello
Sunshine on Instagram and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok,
(32:05):
and feel free to tag us Simone Boys and Danielle
Robe
Speaker 2 (32:09):
See you tomorrow, folks, Keep looking on the bright side.
Hosts And Creators
Simone Boyce
Danielle Robay
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