Sexuality and Other Sex Issues Nowadays

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220831-situationships-why-gen-z-are-embracing-the-grey-area By Casey Noenickx2nd September 2022 In relationships, people have often avoided the murky middle ground between being committed to a partner and staying casual. Young daters are opting into it. Long gone are the days when seeing a film or sharing a milkshake was all it took to solidify a couple as definitively together. Instead, modern dating has evolved into a delicate – at times complicated – series of ‘baby steps’ for young people. Research has shown that Gen Z’s attitudes towards dating and sex have evolved from the generations before them; they take an especially pragmatic approach to love and sex, and subsequently aren’t prioritising establishing committed romantic relationships the same way their older peers once did. That doesn’t mean, however, that they’re not expressing interest in romance and intimacy entirely; rather, they’re finding new ways to satisfy those wants and needs that fit better into their lives. This shift has given rise to the idea of the ‘situationship’ – a term that describes the grey area between friendship and a relationship. A situationship gives name to a hard-to-define stage of dating that experts say has skyrocketed in popularity among Gen Z. “Right now, this solves some kind of need for sex, intimacy, companionship – whatever it is – but this does not have necessarily a long-term time horizon,” says Elizabeth Armstrong, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan, US, whose research centres on sexuality and situationships, specifically. People are increasingly embracing the relationship classification: the term has hit an all-time high in Google search traffic this year, after starting to gain notable traction late in 2020. There’s a worldwide interest in situationships, across ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations, adds Armstrong. The creation – and continued rise ¬– of this term, especially among young daters, reveals a lot about how Gen Zers are re-framing what love and sex means, in a way that looks different than the generations before them. The concept of the situationship goes against “this notion that being with someone where it’s not going anywhere is ‘wasting time’" – Elizabeth Armstrong (Credit: Getty Images) No need to be ‘going somewhere’ A situationship is an informal arrangement typically between two people that has components of both emotional and physical connection, yet operates outside the conventional idea of being in an exclusive, committed relationship. In some cases, situationships are constrained by time and the idea that a casual arrangement is the best fit for the current situation. This could be the case for two final-year university students, for instance, who might not want to progress into a committed partnership, considering new jobs could take them to new cities after graduating. Armstrong argues situationships are popular because they challenge the ‘relationship escalator’: the idea that intimate partnerships are meant to have a linear structure with the goal of hitting conventional relationship milestones, such as co-habitation, engagement and marriage. The concept of the situationship goes against “this notion that being with someone where it’s not going anywhere is ‘wasting time’”, she says – a sentiment she notes Gen Z is increasingly embracing. Rather, people in these arrangements willingly opt into the grey area of an undefined relationship. According to Armstrong, they believe “the situationship, for whatever reason, works for right now. And for right now, I'm not going to worry about having a thing that is ‘going somewhere’”. Some research chimes with this. In interviews with 150 undergraduate students during the 2020 to 2021 academic year, Lisa Wade, associate professor of sociology at Tulane University, US, observed that Gen Z are more reluctant to define the relationship, or even admit to wanting a relationship to progress. She says her research has shown that “holding one's cards close to one's chest is not unique to today’s young people”, but Gen Z are especially unwilling to share their feelings with each other. On social media, TikTokers and Tweeters – Gen Zers, especially ¬– widely share stories of situationships. On TikTok, videos tagged #situationship have been viewed more than 839 million times, and videos under #situationships and #situationship have also racked up millions of views. References also abound in pop culture: the term appears in popular dating shows such as Love Island UK and in songs, such as Situationship by millennial Swedish singer Snoh Aalegra. “We joke, me and my friends, that we're all living the same life,” says Amanda Huhman, 26, whenever she and her friends compare notes on situationships. Texas-based Huhman has documented the experience of situationships on TikTok. From her own interactions and the engagement she sees, she believes the arrangement is common. “I think it's becoming a really popular part of dating culture, at least for Gen Z and people in the young millennial, Gen Z age.” Huhman has spent more than a year in what she describes as a situationship. When she posted a TikTok about her experience, it garnered close to 8 million views and tens of thousands of comments – many of which were people chiming in about their own situationships. As a healthcare consultant, Huhman works remotely, travels often and moves to new cities for a few months at a time. Being in a situationship, she says, means she has more freedom and autonomy. “Our dating culture today is very chaotic and confusing,” believes Huhman. “[Gen Zers] just live this… busy lifestyle, and I think we've kind of adapted dating to match that.” 26-year-old Amanda Huhman is in a situationship, which she says best suits her life right now (Credit: Courtesy of Amanda Huhman) Prioritising personal trajectory As Gen Z enters the dating world, finding love has a set of modern challenges. For instance, the pandemic has entirely changed the way many people meet partners and date, and a large-scale move towards online dating often takes its toll. Additionally, many young people simply aren’t putting the emphasis on dating intentionally that they were in the past; facing the climate crisis, an unstable economy with surging inflation and political and social upheaval, young people are more involved in advocacy and in search of personal, professional and financial stability first. “Young people would say that relationships are distracting them from their educational and career goals, and that it's best to not get too attached, because you might sacrifice your own trajectory in life for someone else,” says Wade. As a result, situationships can be the best option for Gen Zers looking to explore their romantic and sexual identities without letting other commitments take a backseat. The phenomenon “diversifies the sense of options that people have”, says Armstrong, and it’s become increasingly normal to opt into this grey area instead of avoiding it. But, of course, this murky-by-definition arrangement doesn’t come without precarity – and even risk. In theory, situationships can function as a container for “radical honesty”, says Wade, when two people are open about what they really want and agree on the terms of a transparent situationship. But in practice, it can be difficult for two people’s priorities to align, and situationships can end poorly when each party is not on the same page about what they want out of the situation. Most commonly, she says this happens when one person is ready to progress to a committed relationship, but a fear of change might keep both people from ever discussing this. Regardless, in today’s dating world, the rising interest in situationships indicates a shift in how young people may re-frame love and sex going forward – newly embracing what they feel is a satisfying middle ground that many daters in prior generations avoided. As for Huhman, she’s perfectly content living in the in-between. “It's my choice, it's a decision I'm making and I’m happy. It's working for me,” she says. “As long as people are comfortable and it feels right to them, then don't worry about what the expectations are.” https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220104-are-gen-z-more-pragmatic-about-love-and-sex Are Gen Z more pragmatic about love and sex? By Jessica Klein7th January 2022 Young people aren’t dating and having sex the same way past generations have. Is their approach to relationships more pragmatic? “Are you ready to settle down?” This is the question Yale College student Kyung Mi Lee posed in a February 2020 piece, Settling Down: Romance in the Era of Gen Z, for the university’s Yale Daily News. Would she and her peers follow the millennial trend of delaying marriage? Nearly two years after she wrote the article, Lee feels the answer is yes – but for a potentially different reason than her millennial counterparts. “In my cultural imagination, [for millennials] being averse to long-term relationships [means] people are hooking up a lot,” Lee, 23, says. In other words, it seemed to her that millennials waited to settle down because they were busy taking advantage of the single life. For Gen Z, she figures, “people are averse [to long-term relationships] because they’re more… introspective about the kinds of relationships they want to be in”. An increasing body of research validates this opinion: members of Gen Z seem to take an especially pragmatic approach to relationships compared to prior generations, and they’re not having as much sex. “They realise that they might have different partners at different times in their lives [who] may fulfil different needs,” says Julie Arbit, Global SVP of Insights at Vice Media Group. In her research, which looked at 500 respondents from the UK and US (of mostly Gen Z and millennials, with some Gen X included “for comparison”), she’s found just one in 10 members of Gen Z say they are “committed to being committed”. Other researchers have arrived at similar conclusions. According to a study of Gen Z from India, for example, 66% of respondents accept that “not all relationships will be permanent”, with 70% rejecting a “limiting romantic relationship”. Both researchers and members of Gen Z attribute this to a few factors. First, this generation is entering adulthood during a particularly tenuous time, marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, ever-worsening climate change, and financial instability. Many feel they need to achieve stability for themselves before bringing another person into the picture. There’s also the increased access to relationship information online, empowering Gen Z with the language they need to articulate both who they are as well as what they want from a relationship that doesn’t compromise their identity and needs. Among Gen Z, there’s been a marked decrease in adhering to a gender binary, and an increase in “people willing to explore their sexuality" (Credit: Getty Images) “They’re hyper-focused on themselves,” says Arbit, “and it’s not because they’re being selfish. They know they’re responsible for their own success and happiness, and they know they need to be able to take care of themselves before they can take care of others.” Seeking stability “Back in the 1960s and 70s, your average 25-year-old man could support a family with his income and not expect his wife to work,” says Stephanie Coontz, the director of research and public education for the US-based Council on Contemporary Families. For many Gen Zers, both the idea that a 25-year-old could support an entire family, and that a man would expect a stay-at-home wife, no longer fits contemporary circumstances – and, for some, even seems laughable. Instead, Gen Z is prioritising a solid financial foundation as individuals, which is lengthening the path toward marriage, says Arielle Kuperberg, an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, US. “People are taking longer and longer to settle down because they’re taking longer and longer to reach financial stability.” Lee and her friends agree. She says being in what she feels is “the most unsafe, financially unstable generation in history” contributes to their desire to gain “financial independence” before they settle down with a long-term partner. As a senior at university, Lee says she and her friends are much more likely to prioritise their careers over relationships, in order to reach a more financially stable place. “It’s rare that I have a friend who is like, ‘I’m going to move to this place so that I can be with my partner’,” she says. Rather, they’re focusing on what’s best for their careers, and how they can make relationships fit into that. They know they need to be able to take care of themselves before they can take care of others – Julie Arbit Kuperberg’s research on Gen Z chimes with this; she has found younger people in the throes of establishing their careers are less likely to go on formal dates compared to millennials. “I don't think it’s [that] they don't want to have long-term relationships. I think it's that they’re putting them off,” she says. Additionally, Kuperberg has found current instability in young adulthood has led more young people to move back home with their parents because they can’t afford to live on their own in their 20s. “The rise in more casual relationships and decline in more serious relationships… is because it’s just harder to form [the latter].” Recently, this is in no small part because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated the trend of young adults being unable to live independently. Kuperberg interviewed a Gen Z man in spring 2020 who moved from Washington, DC to North Carolina with his parents shortly after the pandemic hit the country. He told researchers he wasn’t going to date again until he moved back to DC. Soul searching A global Vice Media Group study from September 2020, Love After Lockdown, made up of 45% Gen Z respondents, showed 75% were currently single and not dating during the pandemic. Many reported this was in part because they wanted to take the solitary time to get to know themselves better before pursuing a partnership. “I started thinking about myself, what I want to do and what I don't want to do… and it taught me a lot,” said an anonymous Gen Z man from Italy, quoted in the survey. A Gen Z woman based in the US echoed the sentiment: “I'm physically distant from everyone and I can take a step back and say, ‘Who am I?’” Of course, this attitude may have developed from a lack of choice during lockdowns, rather than a Gen-Z proclivity for introspection. However, members of Gen Z from all over the world do have many more resources to figure out who they are, including social media apps like TikTok, where therapists discussing attachment styles and healthy relationship tips have become commonplace. Members of Gen Z report being more career focused to find financial stability before entering relationships (Credit: Getty Images) Lee, for example, notes her younger sisters (in their first and second years of college, respectively) have developed in-depth language to talk about relationships through TikTok. “Teenagers are going around talking about their attachment styles to their romantic and sexual partners, using language like, ‘I’m an anxious attachment style,’” she says. This marks a very self-aware approach to dating that prioritises finding someone who makes sense for you, versus just someone you find attractive or interesting. While these priorities certainly aren’t unique to Gen Z, this generation have an easily accessible array of resources to more knowledgeably find a partner who fits them well, in ways that older generations might not have known to think about. Evolving attitudes towards sexuality and gender roles are also a factor. Among Gen Z, there’s been a marked decrease in adhering to a gender binary, and an increase in “people willing to explore their sexuality”, says Kuperberg. In her research, seen by BBC Worklife, she’s noted a statistic showing roughly 50% of Gen Z identify as heterosexual, and “many say they’re heteroflexible”. This openness to different types of sexual partners and relationships recalls Arbit’s observations about Gen Z not necessarily looking for their “one and only”, but rather various people to fulfill different needs, whether these needs be romantic, sexual or something else entirely. “Our parents might have looked for someone of the same religion or the same political views,” says Arbit. “This generation is looking for honesty and passion and someone who makes them excited to get out of bed in the morning… compared to older generations, they’re open to dating different types of people and giving people a chance.” A mark of change This holistic approach to relationships differs dramatically from those embraced by much older generations. Coontz, of the Council on Contemporary Families, says when she was interviewing people for her book on women and families in the 1960s and asked women why they decided to get married, “they would look startled… and say, ‘It was just time’”, she recalls. “There was this sense back [then] that marriage was something you did to enter adult life… Now it’s the opposite.” While marriage used to be a passage into adulthood, today, it’s a mark you’ve already achieved it This is a mark of change for Gen Z; while marriage used to be a passage into adulthood, today, it’s a mark you’ve already achieved it. Society’s been moving in this direction for some time, with each generation becoming more flexible with its ideas about a traditional family and its importance in their lives. Whether Gen Z are shaping society with these attitudes, or whether society is shaping Gen Z, is difficult to parse. Of course, these patterns aren’t true across the board. Among college students, Kuperberg has found that a Gen Z person’s race, class, gender and religion can play a role in how they date and seek out relationships. “White people are more likely to hook up. People of colour are more likely to form relationships or have more formal dates,” she says, adding that those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are both more likely than other demographics to engage in casual sexual encounters and form long-term relationships – the latter likely because they “have more resources” to grant them stability. While many signs point to Gen Z delaying marriage or permanent partnerships like millennials before them, their reasons for this seem to come increasingly from a place of pragmatism. Sure, millennials have delayed marriage for practical reasons like fearing divorce (many grew up as children of divorce) and because they can’t afford it. But Gen Z is inheriting an arguably even more uncertain world as the problems that plagued millennials (like climate change) become more acute and new ones (like the pandemic) arise. This might necessitate fostering individual stability as a number one priority for Gen Z even more so than their slightly older counterparts. “We joke about who's going to get married first [in] our friend group,” says Lee, “like it's a funny thing that somebody would be engaged in their twenties.” https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211101-why-demisexuality-is-as-real-as-any-sexual-orientation Why demisexuality is as real as any sexual orientation By Jessica Klein5th November 2021 Some people need to feel an emotional bond before developing attraction. Many people don't accept this as a sexual orientation — but demisexuals say that’s misguided. E Earlier this year, when then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s daughter, Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, came out as ‘demisexual’, she was met with public condescension. Many mocked her demisexuality – a lack of sexual attraction to others without a strong emotional connection. Few acknowledged demisexuality as ‘real’. But although demisexuality isn’t widely known, it’s a sexual orientation like any other, that applies to people across the world. Demisexuality, which falls on the asexuality spectrum, differs from simply wanting to wait for a deep bond to form before having sex with someone; rather, it’s more akin to the experience of being asexual until that type of connection forms, at which point the sexual attraction extends only to that person. For allosexuals, on the other hand (people who aren’t on the asexual spectrum), waiting to have sex until forming a deep connection is more of a preference, and less of necessity to developing sexual desire. Kennedy-Cuomo’s announcement did have positive effects, says Kayla Kaszyca, a demisexual co-creator of the podcast Sounds Fake But Okay, in which she and her asexual, aromantic co-host Sarah Costello discuss love, relationships and sexuality on the asexual spectrum. In some cases, Kaszyca says Kennedy-Cuomo’s statement raised the profile of demisexuality, stoking “more discourse about it”. 28-year-old Elle Rose says she didn't come to terms with her demisexuality "for a really long time" (Credit: Elle Rose) On the other hand, the broadened discussion also brought detractors and spread misinformation. “I think the word [demisexuality] is definitely more out there and known, but the proper definition might still be unclear to a lot of people,” says 24-year-old Kaszyca. For instance, many still dismiss demisexuality, insisting it’s ‘normal’ not to be sexually attracted to someone until you form a deeper, emotional connection with them. “Someone might tell you, ‘Isn’t everyone like that?’” So, says Kaszyca, “you have to start myth-busting”. People who identify as demisexual, like Kaszyca and others who share content related to their orientation, are actively working to clarify that definition. It’s an especially tricky task when discussing an orientation that hasn’t even had a name for all that long, and whose definition often confuses people. But their work is making a difference, and during the past several years, discussion about demisexuality has proliferated on Facebook groups, Instagram posts, Discord servers and among organisations dedicated to the asexual spectrum across the globe. Someone might tell you, ‘Isn’t everyone like that? You have to start myth-busting – Kayla Kaszyca ‘I still didn’t come to terms with it for a really long time’ People often trace the origin of the term demisexual to a 2006 Asexual Visibility & Education Network (Aven) forum post. “I think it is a word that emerged primarily out of the Aven site and asexual advocates, not necessarily out of academics,” says Anthony Bogaert, a human-sexuality researcher and professor at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, who’s written multiple papers about asexuality. At that time, people on the Aven site were figuring out just how diverse the asexual spectrum could be – new terms began emerging as people who’d previously identified as asexual noted unique circumstances in which they could experience sexual attraction. “There is a tradition of allowing people with different kinds of identifications and lots of variability to come to the Aven site,” says Bogaert. These people helped move forward the discussion about asexuality by identifying various aspects of the asexual spectrum. In doing so, they offered information that wasn’t available elsewhere on the internet. However, asexuality was – and still is – more widely discussed than demisexuality. This is in part because the former is easier for people who aren’t asexual to conceptualise. Someone who’s asexual “experiences little to no sexual attraction”, says Kaszyca. “It’s a pretty easy tagline to use.” But adding on top of that “except when they develop a deep emotional connection”, can sometimes leave allosexuals scratching their heads. Elle Rose, a 28-year-old based in Indiana, US, began identifying as demisexual after describing their sexuality to a friend a few years ago. “She looked at me and was like, ‘Elle, you’re describing demisexuality’,” says Rose. “I still didn't come to terms with it for a really long time.” Fearing the complications to their dating life if they were openly demisexual, Rose often described themselves as ‘pansexual’, leaving out the demisexual identity. Kayla Kaszyca is the co-host of podcast Sounds Fake But Okay, where she and co-host Sarah Costello relationships on the asexuality spectrum (Credit: Sounds Fake But Okay) ‘People can see themselves represented, finally’ Rose partly attributes dismissive attitudes towards demisexuality in the US to “purity culture”, in which women are at once highly sexualised in the media, but also expected to save themselves for the right person (or marriage, particularly in religious settings). Conceptually, this neatly aligns with abstaining from sex until forming a deep bond with a partner. But this is still ultimately a preference, with which demisexuals don’t identify. This lack of understanding often breeds loneliness. Cairo Kennedy, a 33-year-old in Saskatchewan, Canada, grew up “not experiencing sexual attraction the same way as my peers, and you kind of feel broken”, she says. “It became this big secret and source of shame.” When she discovered there was a name for her sexual orientation just a few years ago, she felt “kind of good, but then there was no information”, she says – at least none talking about demisexuality from the perspective of someone with lived experience. There were enough Aven posts for her to read and think, “‘Oh, this is me’, but not so much, ‘Oh, there’s a whole bunch of us’.” [My friend] looked at me and was like, ‘Elle, you’re describing demisexuality’. I still didn't come to terms with it for a really long time – Elle Rose Kennedy decided to fill this gap, starting a “demisexual lifestyle” blog. Through it, many other demisexuals have contacted her – people ranging from teenagers to those in their 50s, who live mostly in the US and Europe. “I was really surprised by how many people seem to relate,” she says. “I think the term is more popular because of social media,” says Hawaii-based therapist specialising in human sexuality Janet Brito. She only first heard the term demisexuality during her post-doctoral studies at the University of Minnesota, US, in 2014, “even though it’s describing [a sexual orientation] that’s been around for so long”. Though Brito acknowledges demisexuality spans all age groups, her openly demisexual clients tend to be in their earlier twenties. “They have more exposure to social media,” she says, “[where] it’s more acceptable to talk about this spectrum.” That exposure breeds validation. “Social media opens up the door to many other voices that we would have not been exposed to in the past,” she adds. “[People] can see themselves represented, finally.” Klaus Roberts, 30, who lives just outside Helsinki, credits the internet for helping him put a name to his orientation about five years ago. “Finland’s a little bit behind in a lot of these things, because we’re a relatively small country,” he says. He’d been identifying as asexual, but meeting people in multi-national LGBTQ+ communities online helped him realise that demisexual described him better. “People who know anything about these terms, it’s easier for them to understand me when I use that.” 33-year-old Cairo Kennedy says she grew up not experiencing sexual attraction the same way as her peers, and felt "kind of broken” (Credit: Cairo Kennedy) ‘Understand the nature of sexuality better’ When mainstream establishments fail to provide information about a variety of sexual orientations, these online voices become crucial for education. Kaszyca and co-host Sarah Costello started their podcast while they were undergraduates at the University of Michigan, US, where only their friends listened to support them. Today, their reach has expanded to other English-speaking countries and Europe. Kaszyca estimates Sounds Fake But Okay now gets around 7,000 listeners per week. She adds it’s not only those on the asexual spectrum who tune in – their parents, partners and friends do, too, so they can learn. “Our episode with the most listens is our ‘Asexuality 101’ episode,” says Kaszyca. “People have said they've sent that to their friends or family after coming out, to help educate them and… ease the education process.” This education also helps demisexuals navigate other parts of society, like dating. For example, Kaszyca says apps have made dating while demisexual easier, because you can include your orientation in your dating profile. This avoids an otherwise heavy first date conversation. “A first date is supposed to be casual,” she says, “then you’re like, ‘hey, let’s have an in-depth conversation about my identity, and I’m probably going to have to teach you what it is because demisexuality is so unknown’.” Overall, talking and learning about the “the variability that exists in the broader asexual community”, says researcher Bogaert, is crucial to avoiding the alienation of sexual minorities. But it’s also crucial because “it allows us to understand the nature of sexuality better” as a whole. The women forced to 'choose' self-employment By Kate Morgan25th October 2022 In the US, more women are working for themselves. On the surface, it seems empowering – but there’s a dark narrative driving this rise in self-employment. D Dr Amaka Nnamani loved her work as a paediatrician in Hershey, Pennsylvania, US. She describes it as a “dream job”. Nnamani, 38, had two young children, then eight and six, and was pregnant with a third when the pandemic struck. She was hit with the “harsh reality” of having to home-school her older children while recovering from the summer 2020 birth of her son. “We didn’t have a lot of help,” she says. By October, Nnamani and her husband were both back at work outside the home. Unable to find a childcare centre amid the pandemic, the couple struggled without regular care. Soon, she says, “it just became too much for me to handle. I still loved my patients. I still loved my colleagues, but it was not sustainable. So, after much thought and prayer, I turned in my resignation.” Today, Nnamani is self-employed as a consultant, breastfeeding educator and author. She’s joined the growing ranks of people who have left traditional employment amid the pandemic. According to the US Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), there’s been a major spike in the number of Americans who report being self-employed. The most significant rises were for women – especially women of colour – and workers with children younger than age six. Of course, entrepreneurship offers a lot of opportunity and benefits, including the flexibility workers increasingly crave in the pandemic era. Yet there is a dark narrative behind the data. For women like Nnamani, leaving traditional employment seemed less like a choice than a necessary decision. In the wake of the pandemic and the midst of an ongoing childcare crisis, women – especially mothers – are being pushed out, seeing self-employment as less a desire than a necessity. Who’s striking out on their own – and why Between 2019 and the first half of 2022, the share of self-employed Americans within the total employment pool grew 4%, amounting to an uptick of 600,000 people, according to the CEPR researchers. And the biggest jump in this pandemic-era data was among women, who reported becoming newly self-employed at about twice the rate of men. The biggest contributing factor to whether women moved to self-employment was whether they had primary school-aged children Some of the spike can be attributed to people “reinventing themselves” and their work situations during the pandemic, says Misty L Heggeness, an associate professor at the University of Kansas School of Public Affairs and Administration, US. “A traditional office nine-to-five, even if it went remote during the pandemic, wasn’t really working, especially for mothers,” she says, “in part because it's really difficult to work, even if you're teleworking, while your children are still in your household.” A need for more flexibility, adds Heggeness, made self-employment desirable to mums particularly. “I think there are moms who really got exhausted from having to kind of juggle it all, but yet wanted to stay engaged in work and their career. They decided one way to do that was through self-employment,” she says, “trying to figure out a better work-life balance through becoming one's own boss.” This pursuit of a better work set-up accounts for some of the million-plus US women who left the workforce during the pandemic, says Heggeness – some left, she believes, simply because they could. “When it all came bearing down on them, they either had enough resources and savings, or had a spouse who had a high enough income that they were able to back off from work to deal with the childcare.” But for scores of others, forgoing an income wasn’t an option, though neither was staying in a job that made it impossible to take care of their families. “It’s like choice under constraint,” says Heggeness. “There were a lot of mothers who didn't have the luxury to stop working. The fact of the matter is, their income is critical and essential to the wellbeing of that household. That income is needed to buy food and put it on the table, put a roof over their family's head, to put clothes on their family’s back. These are the women who may be disproportionately taking on self-employment.” According to Julie Cai, an economist who contributed to the CEPR research, the biggest contributing factor to whether women moved to self-employment was whether they had primary school-aged children. There are upsides to self-employment, like flexibility, but many women have needed to take up freelance work due to a lack of care infrastructure (Credit: Getty Images) “Even after controlling for a lot of factors,” says Cai, the CEPR data shows “parents with kids under six present at home have a higher likelihood to be self-employed”. This was especially true among lower-earning women and those without a college education. As she explains, low-wage workers faced the most difficulty keeping positions during the pandemic because those jobs were the most unpredictable. “Some of those hourly workers faced involuntary volatile working hours,” Cai says. “The employer might demand more hours or cut them without much advance notice.” There’s a racial disparity at play, too, adds Cai. “In research I’m currently doing, we’ve found that non-white women were more likely to experience volatile hours during the pandemic. That could be a big part of the story.” In fact, the CEPR research showed the demographic with the most total gains in self-employment rates between 2020 and 2022 was women of colour. It makes sense that they’d be the biggest group to make the shift, says Cai, because women of colour tend to be one of the larger groups represented in those unpredictable jobs. Volatile hours make finding childcare especially tough, and that’s the main driver for these women to leave. Heggeness agrees. “You have a ton of women in this country who are bearing the brunt of this [employment] dysfunction, and they're doing the best they can,” she says. “They’re making choices around their career that they might not have made otherwise, to try to manage this crisis that their family is having.” The childcare crisis continues When Nnamani first went back to work in late 2020, after giving birth to her son, she and her husband tried to piece together a schedule that allowed them both to work without childcare, which was nearly impossible to find due to pandemic closures. “My husband changed his shifts to work from, like, 3 p.m. to 11 [p.m.], and my neighbours would watch the baby for the hour or two before I got home from work,” she says. “It was all pretty crazy, and extremely stressful.” Ultimately, that lack of childcare pushed Nnamani over the edge and made her decide to resign. She’s certainly not alone. An ongoing labour crisis in the childcare industry has left many families without qualified care for their children while they’re at work. “Childcare is a major problem; it has been for a long time,” says Heggeness. “It’s very, very expensive, and spots are limited or non-existent in so many portions of the country. You have scenarios where people are getting pregnant and going on the waitlist for a day-care centre [before the baby is born].” In the US, 2018 data shows more than 51% of people live in “childcare deserts”, which the Center for American Progress defines as a census tract where there are more than three times as many children as day-care slots. And, of the 6.38 million parents who rely on childcare, 2020 data shows 57% pay $10,000 or more a year. The expense for parents, when they can even find slots for their children, is a number many families simply are unable to shoulder. The chronic understaffing of childcare centres is exacerbating the problem for mums who do want to stay in the workforce. Even with Covid-19 waning, childcare centres are still continuing to haemorrhage workers and failing to make up pre-pandemic ground. More than 100,000 jobs were lost in the sector between February 2020 and September 2022, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Some anecdotes from childcare providers detail losing employees to retail and other service positions, where many companies are offering high hourly rates and bonuses. Of the 6.38 million parents who rely on childcare, 2020 data shows 57% pay $10,000 or more a year Combined, this all has a notable effect on the choices women can make for their own employment. “It’s a broader issue for the entire economy and for economic growth and our ability to flourish as a nation,” says Heggeness. “The fact is that we continue to stifle people’s – predominantly women’s – ability to engage to their fullest extent in the labour market.” The search for a solution Despite these facts, some mums are still finding a silver lining to self-employment. Nnamani says she’s been able to spend more time with her children and continue to exclusively breastfeed her youngest. For income, she’s formed a company around breastfeeding education; she consults for hospital systems on a freelance basis, and recently published a children’s book on the subject. “I do miss being in the office and seeing those kiddos,” says the former paediatrician. “What I do love is the flexibility of my time and the freedom I have. But I absolutely miss those relationships with my patients.” Yet, says Heggeness, even this benefit of flexibility may have underlying drawbacks. “We’re seeing a greater proportion of women in occupations where there's this type of flexibility to pick and choose when and how you work,” she says. Studies show women prefer remote work, for instance, at a higher rate than men do, “But the negative side … is that sometimes we are steering people into types of work that put them in vulnerable situations.” For instance, she explains, self-employed people are much less likely to have health insurance coverage or a retirement-savings plan, two benefits anchored by largely full-time employment in the US. “There's benefits that come along with being an employee in an established firm,” she says. There are additional vulnerabilities that may come with striking out on one’s own, she adds. The median income of self-employed people is more than $6,000 lower than those working for an employer, and initial investments and business start-up costs mean a self-employment income can take several years to build. This figure also doesn’t account for the monetary value that employer benefits provide only full-time employees. Nnamani has felt these effects, despite the professional progress she’s made in self-employment. “Something I actually miss a lot is just that regular income and sense of security,” she says. “I was the higher earner in the family, so that definitely was a big blow to our finances. I've since had to make a lot of adjustment, like we're having to think twice before making certain decisions. We used to have a budget for the kids’ college funds and for stocks. We pretty much had to put a hold on a lot of those things. It has been a huge sacrifice.” Overall, Cai says the simplest solution for keeping women from turning to involuntary self-employment is for employers to provide stability in the form of both more predictable hours and childcare programmes. This, she adds, can be particularly important for women with lower incomes or less education. And, ultimately, while self-employment offers benefits to women who found traditional employment unsustainable, asking women to work – even if it’s for themselves – and simultaneously parent still leaves mothers unable to reach their full working potential. “Self-employment and flexible work options are not going to be enough for women with children,” says Heggeness. “It's really difficult to work, even if you're teleworking, and even if you’re self-employed, while your children are still in your household.” By Aysha Imtiaz26th August 2022 Heightism is hard to identify. Yet there’s evidence that our biases around stature help shape our careers. I In 2010, when Imran found work as a security guard at a private university in Karachi, Pakistan, he threw himself into it wholeheartedly. Working the graveyard shift, he strove to project assertiveness and protect the property from theft or vandalism, while also being friendly, as the first point of contact for early morning visitors. It hasn’t all been plain sailing. At just shy of 5’2” (157cm), Imran is only a few inches shorter than the average Pakistani male. Yet workers trickling in have assigned Imran nicknames they consider funny. “Munna bhai!” one exclaimed, a local term of endearment for a small, young brother. “Bona,” called out another – Urdu for pygmy or dwarf. Imran, whose full name is being withheld for job security, says he’s proud of who he is, and can ride out “ups and downs” related to his height. But there’s one area where he suspects his height has a particularly negative impact: his pay. “When it’s time for a pay rise, I’m compared to the new guards. I’ve served this institution for so long; I shouldn’t be in the same [wage bracket] as them.” Nobody has linked the two outright, and even Imran sometimes wonders if it’s a figment of his imagination that his height has played a role in being passed over for promotion. But as he finds himself grouped in the same salary band as newly recruited guards for yet another year, he can’t help but wonder if evaluations based on his stature – not his work – are holding him back. Height discrimination is one of the least-known or discussed biases, and one of the hardest to confirm. Like Imran, many wonder if making that leap is ludicrous, and question whether anyone could ever reasonably conflate short stature with negative qualities. Even those with ‘normal’ or above-average stature find it hard to believe they’ve ever held biases based on height or benefited from them. Yet research shows that on a professional level, stature affects both men and women in tangible, albeit slightly different, ways. Studies show height correlates with higher income: recruiters favour taller candidates and height influences promotion opportunities. Research demonstrates we perceive taller men and women as more 'leader-like', deeming them more dominant, intelligent and healthier; tall men are more likely to attain managerial positions. Still, heightism is an implicit bias, one we may subconsciously harbour or, indeed, internalise, without realising it. And it’s this covertness that makes it particularly difficult to eradicate. Some research demonstrates we perceive taller men and women as more 'leader-like', deeming them more dominant, intelligent and healthier (Credit: Getty Images) Standing tall and falling short We know there are various forms of discrimination linked to how we look, such as weight discrimination or having a baby face. But we also discriminate against people based on stature, because we view certain heights as better than others. Dr Omer Kimhi, an associate professor at the University of Haifa, Faculty of Law, who has researched heightism, believes heightism has roots in evolutionary biases, due to the importance of height and strength in the animal kingdom. “If you’re bigger, you’re the head of the group. Some of that remains engrained… and we perceive height as connected to authority, strength and a higher position,” he says. Our reverence for height may indeed be instinctive ¬– a remnant of primitive ways we mapped social hierarchies in the past. In ancestral societies, fitness and being physically imposing were important leadership traits. But, says Dr Erin Pritchard, a lecturer in Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University and core member of the Centre for Culture & Disability Studies, there are multiple ways we entrench heightism in modern society. “Countries have their own optimal height based on the curve, and it becomes what everyone ‘should’ be. If you’re below it, we ask ourselves [if something is] wrong – but we revere tallness,” says Pritchard. Heightism even infiltrates language, which is full of idioms highlighting the virtues of being tall, while associating negative qualities with shortness. To ‘fail’ is to draw the short straw, fall short or be short-changed; ‘winning’ at life means we can stand tall, fulfil tall orders, grow into great, tall oaks from little acorns and be head-and-shoulders above the rest. Subconsciously, we form beliefs about people that link height to both cognitive and physical qualities. We subliminally view taller people as more capable and risk-tolerant, dominant, extraordinarily talented and even charismatic. On the other hand, explains Pritchard, “People who are shorter are not taken as seriously. [They’re] not respected and can be the butt of the joke.” Heightism is an implicit bias, and it doesn’t fit our mental template of discrimination as an intentional and harmful act Still, people generally don’t recognise their own heightism or perceive it as a form of discrimination. That’s because heightism is an implicit bias, and it doesn’t fit our mental template of discrimination as an intentional and harmful act. Managers, for example, may have no inkling that the way they perceive a particular employee – and the employee’s prospects – is in any way linked to their height, making the issue particularly hard to tackle. In Imran’s case, he wouldn’t even know how to raise the issue of whether his height was a factor in his pay progression with his superiors. “Who do I talk to? I’m blessed with a lot of important work, [so] what would I say? How do I start without messing everything up?” he comments. The impact at work Despite difficulty pinning down this form of discrimination, heightism has profound – and measured – impacts on workers’ success. Research on systemic discrimination in hiring decisions has shown employers may reject shorter candidates even if their resume is similar to a taller applicant’s, and they subconsciously associate positive workplace traits like confidence, competence and physical ability with tallness. Once hired, meta-analysis shows rates of promotion are positively related to height. Kimhi references Malcolm Gladwell’s widely-quoted survey of Fortune 500 CEOs in his 2005 book Blink. “In the US population, about 14.5% of all men are six feet or over. Among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, that number is 58%,” wrote Gladwell. Height can also contribute to a wage gap. Studies from the UK, China and the US all show a correlation between greater height and greater pay, though exact numbers vary. There’s also a gendered component. Research conducted by Inas R Kelly, professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University, California, revealed marked differences in the effect of height on mean income by gender. “White men face a much larger premium for each additional 10cm than white women,” she says, and that gap is even more pronounced for African Americans. Heightism can also affect women, particularly tall women, who may be perceived as intimidating (Credit: Getty Images) This links into the idea that women can be too tall, and that tall women face discrimination in a way tall men don't. According to a study of tall female college students, their above-average height resulted in ‘unintended intimidation’. “If there’s a woman towering over others, they might view her as a threat … As a woman, if you show dominance, it’s considered aggression. It could be problematic,” says Pritchard. On the flip side, men are more vulnerable to heightism. As Kelly’s findings suggest, taller men have more to gain than women by being tall, but shorter women have less to lose by being short, as the wage premium commanded by their taller female peers is smaller. This may be because women slightly shorter than average can be still be deemed ‘small’ or ‘petite’, explains Pritchard. Of course, heightism doesn’t only manifest in external judgements of an individual. Research suggests there are other height-linked factors that shape people’s behaviours, which can in turn affect outcomes at work. Kelly points out that many experts argue height is in fact positively associated with cognitive ability, and is simply rewarded in the labour market. She also suggests the larger question is whether shorter individuals might have faced discrimination in a way that affected their self-esteem, mental health and emotional stability – which can feed into promotions and pay. For instance, taller children may have higher self-esteem because of more opportunities to participate in team-building sports at school, whereas shorter students may have been bullied, leading to less enhanced interpersonal skills and lower self-confidence. Similarly, being tall may also fuel other successes – such as in the realm of romance or perceived attractiveness – nurturing more confidence and spawning a self-fulfilling prophecy. “It’s difficult to rule out discrimination at some stage – if not at the employer stage, then at a stage earlier in their lives,” she says. ‘Like most -isms’ Given how entrenched ¬– and yet covert – heightism is, finding concrete ways to tackle it may be challenging. Existing legislation surrounding height only exists in a few jurisdictions, such as Michigan’s comprehensive Elliot Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of height in hiring and compensation. Laws prevent height from being listed as a necessary pre-requisite unless it is a bona fide occupational qualification required for normal operation of the business. But even in places where the legislation exists, very few cases are filed. If there’s a woman towering over others, they might view her as a threat … As a woman, if you show dominance, it’s considered aggression – Erin Pritchard Kimhi points out that because height discrimination is so hard to identify, it’s data that is needed. Many companies already keep data on gender and race so they can track inclusion and progression at firms. While it may seem like a long shot, Kimhi believes including height in this data and pushing companies to publish height-specific salary variations will help them become mindful that this sort of discrimination occurs. “And if they notice, things will change,” he believes. Pritchard is hopeful that remote hiring via Zoom or video CVs could reduce biases that creep in during the hiring stage. “When you’re online, you just see [a candidate’s] head and shoulders, so you can’t make subliminal judgments,” she says. “And if they do hire someone and they turn out to be a great person, by the time [employers] find out the person doing this fantastic work is only 5’2”, the worker will have already built a solid reputation.” More broadly, experts suggest it may also be time to reconsider our evolutionary glorification of height by critically evaluating the differences between modern and ancestral environments, and challenging whether the qualities we once deemed vital to success are actually relevant to professional achievement in today’s workplaces. But given the deeply ingrained nature of our beliefs, that may be too tall an order. Overall, as long as people still believe that success, leadership – and even discrimination – look a particular way, the problem won’t go away. Ultimately, change, as clichéd as it sounds, will come from within – by challenging implicit biases and self-correcting when people find themselves placing height on a pedestal. Still, combating heightism will be a long journey. As Pritchard says, “Like most ‘-isms’, it’s going to be an ongoing process.” Equality Matters | How we work Why women have to sprint into leadership positions By Katie Bishop8th June 2022 If women don't secure senior jobs in the first decade of their careers, they often can't do so later. But this dash to climb the ranks early takes a toll. I It’s well known women are much less likely to end up in leadership positions than their male peers. Unconscious biases, the tendency for women to take on greater childcare responsibilities and outright discrimination mean women still hold just 23% of executive positions and 29% of senior manager positions globally, in spite of making up 40% of the workforce. But new research suggests timing could also play an important role in women’s likelihood of reaching the corner office. Women aiming for leadership roles (defined in this study as a director or C-suite-level position) are most likely to secure them in the first 10 years of their career. After that, their chances tend to plummet. The pressures women face to have children, combined with the fact that once they become mothers they often shoulder the majority of childcare, mean many women feel compelled to ‘sprint’ early on in their careers. While their male counterparts might have the luxury of time, women often establish themselves as early as possible. This puts them in a better position to take time off or reduce their hours once they become mothers, without fear of financial hardship or stalling their career while still in a junior role. These career sprints show up clearly in the data – women who make it to leadership tend to do so faster than men. But sprinting can take an enormous toll on even the women who make it to the top. Sprinting to avoid the ‘motherhood penalty’ There is immense pressure for women to reach a certain level of career and financial success before becoming parents, says Karin Kimbrough, Chief Economist at LinkedIn, who conducted the research into the 10-year window to leadership. Kimbrough calls this process a “sprint” to leadership, meaning that women who don’t scale the leadership ladder very quickly are less likely to make it to the top at all. This might mean they end up overworking or making enormous personal sacrifices in order to ascend to C-suite level during this crucial decade. Much of this urgency to sprint – and the exhausting overwork it involves – stems from women needing to make sure their careers don’t sink once they begin families. They are racing the clock against the so-called motherhood penalty. In this phenomenon, women find their careers stalling in areas such as promotion and pay once their children are born (while, conversely, men’s careers accelerate after becoming fathers). This effect, as well as the enormous burden of caregiving responsibilities that women take on, is well documented (and similarly affects other types of caregivers, like looking after ageing parents, says Kimbrough). Women are sprinting to avoid the biases that hold them back after the first decade of their career (Credit: Getty Images) The transition into motherhood also affects how managers perceive caregiving female workers. Women who are mothers receive competency ratings that are, on average, 10% lower than non-mothers, and are six times less likely to be recommended for hire. And while 26% of men are promoted or moved to a better job in the first five years of parenthood, just 13% of women can say the same. “There’s a biased perception of pregnant women and mothers – that they’re less committed, less competent and less dependable,” says Christine Spadafor, a visiting lecturer on strategic leadership at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, US. She says these biases creep into performance evaluations, which can hold back women from top spots after the first decade of their careers. Additionally, structural issues, such as no paid parental leave and no available or affordable childcare, also “prevent women from progressing after the first 10 years”. As a result, women remain much more likely to work part-time than men, facing wage, benefits and progression penalties for doing so. Data from 2019 shows the gap is so significant that only 27.8% of women in the UK are in full-time work three years after the birth of their first child, compared to 90% of men. For ambitious women, sprinting to avoid these biases and their subsequent effects becomes paramount, which means women go full force in the race to the top, while men are more able to take a walking pace. The mental and emotional toll of the 10-year sprint Women who manage to sprint to leadership within the first decade of their careers might feel a sense of relief to have secured a senior role. But the achievement is often hard-won. With statistics showing that working women tend to be more burned-out than their male counterparts, experts emphasise the enormous toll of career sprinting. “Achieving as much as possible in the first 10 years of a career can cause burnout and stress for women as they focus on producing good work, building a good reputation and advancing to leadership roles,” says Spadafor. This can lead to a toxic storm of physical and social stress as well as mental-health problems that can last for years. And while women who explicitly hope to have children might experience very high levels of pressure to establish themselves early, research shows women generally are often discriminated against depending on their potential fertility – even if they don’t plan to have kids. This means employers often make hiring decisions based on whether they think a candidate is at ‘risk’ of becoming pregnant. Women are also often discriminated against depending on their potential fertility – even if they don’t plan to have kids Since the average age for a woman to have their first child in Europe is around 30, it makes sense that this discrimination could intensify in the second decade of most women’s careers. Spadafor points out this is just one of the many prejudices that women, both parents and child-free, face when it comes to fighting for leadership roles. Essentially, women are fighting an ongoing uphill battle; they are forced to sprint on a steep track from the very start of their journeys, and also face hurdles even when they secure top spots. “Prejudice plays a role in the perception of women’s leadership potential in general, even before it begins to decrease over time,” she says. “Women are deemed less capable and competent to lead than men. They are held to higher standards. Women need to prove themselves more and achieve more before getting promoted. It’s exhausting.” Opportunities for change The research might make women’s path to leadership appear bleak, but experts are optimistic that this doesn’t have to be the case. Some countries are doing better than others, with Sweden, the US and France reporting the highest proportion of women in leadership roles. Yet even in these countries, the path to leadership remains relatively narrow after 10 years. Kelly Shue, a professor of finance at Yale School of Management, who recently headed up research on why women are often judged as having less leadership potential than their male counterparts, argues that the onus is on companies to do better. “I think that there’s too much emphasis on what women should do to help themselves,” she says. “Much of the discussion concerns how women could do better by acting like men, such as by aggressively networking with superiors, or boasting about their management potential. I wish that the discussion were centred around what firms could do differently instead.” Shue says that some of the ways that companies can change is by re-assessing how they evaluate employee potential for higher-level positions as well as offering longer protected maternity leave, greater flexibility around working hours and stronger support for childcare. Both before and after they have children, women have an uphill climb to reach and maintain and top positions (Credit: Getty Images) These measures could not only ensure that more women make leadership roles after the 10-year mark, but also would have the knock-on effect of alleviating the pressure that women face in the first decade of their career. But there are also deeply ingrained prejudices that must be addressed. “We need to shift away from the mindset that if someone is juggling a ton of responsibilities outside of work – as many women are – that somehow they are less ‘committed’ to the job, and move towards a mindset that appreciates and recognises that oftentimes these life experiences are what make us more thoughtful contributors and effective collaborators,” says Kimbrough. For now, the path to leadership remains a double-edged sword for women. They face an uphill struggle, and potentially a compromise to their physical and mental health, to reach leadership within the first decade of their careers. Yet if they fail to achieve their goals within this period, their chances of reaching the upper echelons of their company become vanishingly small. But Kimbrough hopes there is space for change, and that the many shifts that workers are currently seeing within the post-pandemic workplace – from more widespread remote work to a greater demand for work-life balance – could recalibrate the way that women move into leadership roles. “The pandemic has called into question a lot of our old assumptions about work, like that you need to be in a physical office five days a week to be productive,” she says. “In years past, offering flexibility [for caretakers] may have seemed ‘risky’, but workers today have proven they can get the job done on their own terms. Employers should be leaning into this, which will ultimately keep more women in the labour market and give them more pathways to rise up in the ranks.” Women breadwinners: Why high-earners compensate at home By Katie Bishop6th April 2022 An increasing number of women are taking home bigger cheques than their male partners. Yet breadwinning still causes feelings of insecurity and discomfort for both parties. When Erin first got together with her boyfriend, they both worked in minimum wage jobs. She was a student working part-time in customer service, while he worked as a chef. In 2020, she got what she refers to as her first “big girl” job in local government, and was catapulted up the career ladder. At 27, Erin now earns significantly more than her partner. “When I got the phone call to say I had got the job, we immediately spoke about the salary,” says Erin, who lives in Yorkshire, UK. “I asked if the fact that I was earning more was going to make him feel bad. He said that yes, he likes it when he can do things for me that I can’t afford to do, because it makes him feel like he’s taking care of me. But he doesn’t feel emasculated by my higher pay. He just wants me to be happy.” Although it’s not unusual for women to out-earn their partners, Erin remains in the minority as a female breadwinner. In the UK, only around 26% of women were making more money than their partner in 2019, and in the US this was around 30% – hardly surprising, as working women still earn 16% less than men on average. That’s why Erin, and many women in heterosexual relationships like her, feel the need to have conversations about how their partner feels about their higher earning-power, and protect them from any negative emotions or feelings of emasculation – talks they likely wouldn’t feel the need to have if the situation were reversed. Women’s earning power may have surged in many instances, yet attitudes towards female breadwinners still lag behind. As well as facing external judgement, women who out-earn their partners still often shoulder the majority of traditionally ‘female’ labour, such as housework and childcare, leaving them chronically overworked, under pressure and fighting to protect their partnership against negative emotions and perceptions. All this can take its toll – research shows that heterosexual marriages with a female breadwinner are more likely to end in divorce. But experts point out that this doesn’t have to be the case. The domestic burden of women breadwinners Historically, men have almost always out-earned their female partners. Women, often entirely excluded from the workforce, tended to instead shoulder the majority of domestic labour, including housework and childrearing. But evidence suggests that since women have entered the workforce en masse, the imbalance in domestic duties hasn’t really been redressed – even when women make more money than their partners. Women may feel compelled to compensate for violating traditional gender roles as a breadwinner by redoubling their contributions at home – Raina Brands Some researchers have found that in the UK, 45% of female breadwinners still do the majority of household tasks, compared to just 12.5% of male breadwinners, and that the average female breadwinner spends the equivalent of an entire working day taking care of the house on top of their full-time job. Additionally, research carried out in Australia and the US showed that although women decreased their housework as their earnings increased, this was only true up to a certain extent. Once women started to out-earn their partners, researchers found that couples often reverted to more traditional gender roles, with women picking up a disproportionate share of housework. “Feeling like we are violating society’s expectations about what it means to be a woman or man can be very uncomfortable,” says Raina Brands, an associate professor at the UCL School of Management, whose research focuses on gender stereotypes. “Women may feel compelled to compensate for violating traditional gender roles as a breadwinner by redoubling their contributions at home,” she continues. “But what couples should keep in mind is that feelings of discomfort can lead to some very irrational household decisions, such as women opting to earn less or leaving paid work entirely (which takes away from the financial security of the household), or taking on more than their fair share of household work (which leads to unhappiness).” Women might do more at home to compensate for out-earning their partner, say experts, but this may have consequences down the line (Credit: Getty) External judgements Even when a couple have the best intentions of splitting labour in an equitable way, external judgements and perceptions can get in the way, argues Siran Cao, the co-founder and CEO of Mirza, a London-based fintech company that focuses on the gender pay gap. This can leave female high-earners picking up extra work and responsibilities. “Schools still tend to call the mum, even if the dad is listed as the primary contact,” says Cao. “It’s crucial for men to disrupt these caregiving gender norms, so that they have the opportunity to parent.” This isn’t the only situation in which external perceptions of high-earning women have a negative impact. Rowan, 24, works as an accountant, and currently out-earns her fiancé. She says she often faces judgement from others about their current set-up. “I’ve had reactions of ‘it must be hard’ or people saying that it’s admirable that I don’t mind supporting him,” says Rowan, who is based in Birmingham, UK. She says she tries to avoid bringing up the topic, and that she’s learned not to let hostility or negativity bring her down. This kind of judgement is extremely common, particularly for high-earning mothers. One 2013 study showed that 16% of Americans believed that raising a child in a family where the mother is the primary earner would have a negative effect on kids, and 59% of adults still say that children are better off when one of their parents stays at home with them. Forty-five percent of these people said it was better if the stay-at-home parent was the mother, with only 2% favouring the father. It’s no surprise these deeply ingrained outlooks can affect how couples talk about their own earning power. Some research even supports that couples are so aware of the societal perception of female breadwinners that mixed-income spouses tend to lie about their respective earning power when a wife out-earns her husband, exaggerating how much the man earns. Some couples go even further, with women actively choosing not to be the breadwinner; in couples where a woman’s income has a greater potential to exceed her partner’s (for example, if she has qualifications in a higher paying industry), she is still less likely to engage in paid work, and tends to earn below her potential when she does. Research shows dissatisfaction is high in couples in which the female breadwinner spends more time on chores (Credit: Getty) The divorce factor For most couples, their relationship is truly tested when and if they have children – a milestone Erin and Rowan have yet to reach. Couples already going against the norm in terms of their earnings balance must make important decisions about whether they will also choose a non-traditional balance of childcare, with the lower-earning father taking on more of the caring responsibilities. The data suggests most don’t – after all, even though around a quarter of women are the primary earners in the UK and US, only about one in 10 men say they are the primary carer of their children – significantly less than one might expect if earning power directly correlated to household labour. Like many facets of gender inequality, it seems that the most significant gaps and judgements emerge once women become mothers. And while some couples with a female breadwinner do manage to find an equitable – and happy – balance, data shows that for many couples this isn’t the case. Despite decades of work to empower women financially, some research shows heterosexual couples are still more likely to divorce if the female spouse out-earns her husband. Judgement and the difficulties of dividing household labour both also play a huge part in the complicated dynamics of these relationships – studies have shown men who earn less than their female partner are more likely to cheat, with researchers positing that this is a way of restoring masculine gender identity. And in couples where the female breadwinner spends more time on household chores, marital dissatisfaction is at its highest. In a world in which women have worked hard to overcome gender biases, this might make the outlook for female breadwinners seem bleak. But Brands argues it’s important for couples not to get caught up in the overarching statistics, and to focus on how a relationship can be as equitable as possible for them. “The main takeaway is that gender roles are not destiny,” she says. “Couples that push through the discomfort of non-traditional arrangements and negotiate a fair split of household chores relative to financial contributions are more likely to achieve equity in a broader sense, too, meaning both the woman and the man have financial security and independence from their partner, the ability to pursue meaningful careers and being able to balance both their career and family life.” Erin and Rowan’s last names are being withheld for privacy reasons https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210507-asexuality-the-ascent-of-the-invisible-sexual-orientation Asexuality: The ascent of the 'invisible' sexual orientation By Jessica Klein11th May 2021 Long in the shadows, asexuality is finally becoming increasingly visible. It could help young people find themselves and their identities, and change the way we think about sexuality. As we head into 2022, Worklife is running our best, most insightful and most essential stories from 2021. When you’re done with this article, check out our full list of the year’s top stories. In a live video stream on 6 April, UK-based model and asexual activist Yasmin Benoit moderated a panel featuring participants from Belgium, Brazil, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal and Nigeria. All of them identify as somewhere on the asexual (“ace”) and/or aromantic (“aro”) spectrum. The panellists discussed their involvement in their respective countries’ asexuality community, as part of an event honouring the first ever International Asexuality Day. Their experiences vary, from well supported to outright dangerous. In Belgium, Martine said she’s found support and inclusivity from her government and the country’s wider LGBTQ+ organisation; on the other end, Jan in Nigeria noted that laws “criminalise queer gatherings”. But, regardless of global location, the issue of visibility was at the core of nearly all their responses. Indeed, asexuality – defined generally as not experiencing sexual attraction – has been called “the invisible orientation”. It tends to be misunderstood and under-discussed; people may not believe someone can really be asexual, or they dismiss asexuality entirely. Common misconceptions about asexuality include that asexuality equates to celibacy (it doesn’t), or that it’s a choice (it’s an orientation), says Michael Doré, a member of the global Asexual Visibility and Education Network’s (AVEN) project team. Some also incorrectly believe that someone is only asexual if they never experience sexual attraction or have sex. But asexuality is a spectrum, where some may identify as demisexual, for example, meaning they don’t experience sexual attraction until forming an emotional bond with someone. It’s also not synonymous with aromanticism, which applies to those who don’t experience romantic attraction. Despite confusion and dismissal, asexual voices have been getting louder and demanding recognition over the past decade. Individuals, activists and groups have begun telling their stories to larger audiences, and marching in Pride parades worldwide. Now, asexual activists’ efforts lie in keeping up this work, and amplifying asexual voices outside Western, English-speaking countries, where the majority of asexual activism and stories have come from. As a result, along with the new international holiday, initiatives are popping up to take asexuality out of the shadows – making it easier for people to come out as asexual all over the world. 34-year-old Anahí Charles is the admin of an asexuality Facebook group in her home country of Mexico (Credit: Anahí Charles) ‘It’s not such a big deal as before’ A limited awareness of asexuality has made it harder for past generations of young people around the world to realise their identities – even as recently as millennials. Anahí Charles, 34, who lives in Mexico, first began to learn she was different from her peers in middle school. While they all fawned over members of the US boy-band Backstreet Boys, Charles couldn’t quite see the appeal. They looked “aesthetically nice”, she says, but she couldn’t grasp what it was that made her friends so crazy about them. It took Charles several years – well after this incident in her youth – to learn about the orienntation and find her place on the ace/aro spectrum. Without resources about asexuality, Charles says she was “in denial” about not experiencing sexual attraction to anyone. Even after she first learned about asexuality through a post on the Facebook page Have a Gay Day, in 2013, she still questioned whether something was “wrong” with her. Charles got medical examinations and hormone checks to try and figure it out. She was completely healthy. Her clean bill of health served as a catalyst for self-acceptance. She found more information about asexuality on Facebook, and realised just how much she related to it. A year later, she became the admin of an asexual Facebook group in Mexico. Similarly, in the US, Marisa Manuel, 28, struggled to name her orientation. She first heard the term “asexual” when she was in high school, but says she was “misinformed” about its meaning. “Someone told me it meant people who wanted to be alone,” she recalls. “I like being around people.” In college, she met someone who identified as ace, which prompted her to learn more about what it really meant. She realised how much she related to what she found, and has since embraced her identity wholly – she’s gone on to write articles about identifying as ace as well as review books by ace authors. Although things are changing, asexuals and aromantics have historically faced challenges with visibility and recognition (Credit: Alamy) Fortunately, younger generations may now be set up to find out about asexuality sooner – and may also be more empowered to vocalise their identities. The number of resources and amount of representation has grown significantly since Charles and Manuel were growing up. Along with increasing information available writ large, people also readily identify as ace on social media platforms, and are keen to share details about their experiences with other users. ‘Representation is a resource’ Increased representation is key for enabling people to recognise and understand asexuality as well as normalise the orientation. “Representation is a resource,” says Manuel. And although some resources have increased, representation – especially in mainstream media – isn’t where it needs to be, she adds. However, there are other places visibility is increasing. People with bigger platforms, such as UK model Benoit, drag queen Venus Envy and Twitch streamer 5up, all talk openly about identifying as ace to their large fan bases on various social media channels. There’s increased representation in literature, too; authors on the ace spectrum include Darcie Little Badger, Akemi Dawn Bowman and Maia Kobabe. Fictional characters also help, like Todd Chavez of Bojack Horseman, of whom Manuel has a plastic figurine. Manuel is trying to add to this growing pool of representation. Leading up to International Asexuality Day, she created AceChat, an Instagram account where she regularly shares stories by different people who identify as ace. It’s garnered positive reception, and she keeps hearing from people who want to tell their stories. There are now about 100 people involved. Manuel says the next step is to expand AceChat’s reach. People from France, Russia, Vietnam, the UK and Canada have already begun to reach out, and translators have also joined the effort. And translation can be critical, because some locations have smaller ace communities than others, meaning they often have fewer resources and less information available for people seeking to learn about asexuality in their language. We had even people from the LGBT community pitying us, saying, ‘it sucks to be you’. But we didn’t give up – Anahí Charles In Moscow, Daniel, 20, who is withholding his surname for saftey concerns, says the ace/aro community he’s a part of only has about 50 members. “Not so many people know about terms like ‘asexual’,” he says, perhaps in part because of the country’s intolerance of LGBTQ+ communities. Since so many ace stories and materials are in English, Daniel has been working to translate them into Russian. He’s optimistic that asexuality will get more recognition in the coming years, even in his home country. ‘We didn’t give up’ Along with ace communities’ historical struggles to gain wider visibility, they’ve also had to work to be seen within LGBTQ groups. This may be surprising, since the asexuality identity is also often included when referencing queer communities (for instance, in the inclusion acronym ‘LGBTQIA’, in which ‘A’ stands for ‘asexual’.) Charles, who’s hosted asexual gatherings in Mexico City, experienced this first hand. She says her group first marched as a collective in Pride in 2015, but the larger LGBTQ community there hadn’t quite accepted people identifying as ace with open arms. “We had even people from the LGBT community pitying us, saying, ‘it sucks to be you’,” she says. “But we didn’t give up.” Groups like Charles’s and their subsequent educational initiatives have indeed helped move the needle. Charles says that when she returned to Pride with a larger group the next year, “we were better welcome because there was more information”. “It wasn’t like, look at the weirdos, they’re marching again,” she says. “It was like, look at the asexuals, they’re marching again.” In this push for acceptance, asexuality groups have been growing and thriving. One of the most prominent international asexuality groups is AVEN, founded in 2001 by US-based asexual activist David Jay. Michael Doré, who joined the organisation in 2009 in the UK, says AVEN came into existence with two main objectives: “building community and… legitimising asexuality as a sexual orientation”. Its growing membership currently numbers 135,539, according to Doré In the US, 28-year-old Marisa Manuel struggled to name her orientation, but has now embraced the asexual identity (Credit: Courtesy of Marisa Manuel) Now, opportunities to educate and raise visibility have stretched even further. AVEN, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, seized on the increase in virtual communications during the pandemic to strengthen its global connections. These international, virtual chats eventually turned to establishing a single day dedicated to celebrating asexuality all over the globe: International Asexuality Day (IAD). “We felt this day was needed,” says Doré, who makes it clear that IAD is not owned by AVEN or any single organisation. “It’s a genuinely international thing.” The creation of the holiday not only establishes a yearly day of visibility, but also marks the flourishing of an intensive international effort to bring together an under-recognised community. It helps asexual individuals and groups in countries where information and representation is lacking gain access to resources These days, says Doré, there’s growing awareness of asexuality in countries across Asia – particularly India, he notes, where the Facebook group Indian Aces is thriving. New groups dedicated to asexuality have been popping up across Africa over the last few years as well, he adds. While this is a good sign for progress, people continue to misunderstand asexuality. Manuel says she wrote an article about asexual dating for the Huffington Post two years ago, and it was well received. However, when the article was recently re-shared, “there were so many more negative reactions”, she says, in the piece’s comments section. People called her confused, insisting that she was really looking for friends, not dates. “That made me realise that as far as we’ve come with representation and visibility, we’re not there yet,” she says