Crina and Kirsten Get to Work

The AI Advantage: Unlocking Opportunities for Women in the Workforce

In this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, get ready to dive deep into the world of artificial intelligence! We're here to get you psyched about the endless possibilities AI brings.
But hold on, before we can fully embrace AI, there are a few things standing in our way. Maybe it's our lack of awareness or understanding that's holding us back. Or perhaps it's concerns about privacy and security. And let's not forget those resistant-to-change folks out there. But hey, just like any other skill, we can overcome these obstacles with a little practice and training.
Here's some mind-blowing news for you: a recent Goldman Sachs report reveals that generative AI could impact a whopping 300 million jobs every year across various industries. We're talking healthcare, education, social work, finance, law - you name it! That's HUGE.
But guess what? AI isn't just a game-changer for everyone; it's a game-changer for women too. From inclusive hiring practices to learning platforms for skill development, remote work support, and empowering women entrepreneurs - AI has their back.
Now, we can't ignore the potential downsides either. If AI is trained on biased data or designed without considering equality, it could perpetuate gender bias. That means discrimination and inequality might become part of AI's programming. And who knows, AI might even snatch jobs traditionally held by women.
All that being said, AI can also be a whole lot of fun! So why not give it a shot? Sign up for ChatGPT, Bard, Copilot, or Bing and let your imagination run wild. Write a letter, plan an office party, or even whip up a killer job description with the help of AI. The possibilities are endless!

Romance, Love and Your Work Spouse

In this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, our hosts dish on workplace spouses - but hold tight because, as usual, they have some opinions on workplace romance they need to get out there first!
 
The origin of the term “work wife” is from 19th century UK and was first used to describe a very close and aligned working relationship between a government minister and his male secretary.  The term then went on to describe female assistants as work wives - taking care of the male bosses personal needs at work.  We have moved away from this - thankfully!
 
Today the term workplace spouse describes someone at work who is a gender to which we are attracted and with whom we share something of an exclusive, intimate, nonsexual bond with at work.  We need to take care with labels as what we call something can be self-fulfilling.  Simply Hired  reports that half of women and 45% of men report having a work spouse at work and a significant percentage of these folks feel sexual attraction to each other.  In a time where we recognize the benefits of keeping sex out of the workplace, why do we continue to sexualize people who are really friends - let’s just have more friends.
 
Listen as Crina and Kirsten take issue with sexualization of the workplace - and advocate for workplace friends.

BONUS EPISODE: Every Vote Counts

Why vote - in part to elect more women.  The research shows that the kind of legislation and policies women sponsor, advocate for and support make a meaningful difference to the experience of women at work and in the community in general.
 
The state of the world and participation in the executive and legislative parts of government remains unequal.  There are 195 countries in the world and only 26 countries have women heads of state - and the US is not one of those countries.  Only 6 countries in the world have reached gender parity in their legislative branches of government - and the US is not one of those countries.  Facts and figures: Women’s leadership and political participation | UN Women – Headquarters.
 
When women are able to gain access to these roles activities the government engages in change.  For example, In India, local jurisdictions with women-led councils are more likely to have a clean drinking water project as compared to male-led councils.  Women are also more likely to champion issues of gender equality, such as the elimination of gender-based violence, parental leave and childcare, pensions, gender-equality laws, and electoral reform.
 
As the National League of Women Voters tells us - EVERY VOTE COUNTS.  So get informed and vote - you can change the trajectory of women’s experience at work and in our communities.

Bitch or Best Friend? Female Rivalry at Work.

Get ready for us to take off the gloves and go at it with female rivalry in the workplace. 
SHOW NOTES
Female rivalry is something that has been identified as keeping and holding women back from success in the workplace - and from equity, which is another one of those messages to us that our lack of equality in the workplace is our own fault - because we are catty and mean. 
A large meta-study in the Journal of Organizational Behavior found the research on this topic is conflicted and concluded that the studies thus far on this issue have been inadequate to reach a real conclusion.
There appear to be two competing perspectives on this issue – one is that women compare, compete and undermine each other; while the other is that women support and cooperate with each other.  What our hosts believe is that female rivalry as something in itself does not exist and rather when it exists it is the product of a biased and dysfunctional system.
Let’s start with bias. Women are expected to be communal and collaborative and supportive in the workplace.  However, the workplace also expects us to compete for influence, promotions, and power.  When woman act in opposite of the expectations around the “nice” behavior and engage in the competitive behavior, they are more harshly judged than their male counterparts.  This is yet another situation where the same behavior is differently judged based on gender.  As Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant write “[w]omen aren't any meaner to women than men are to one another. Women are just expected to be nicer. We stereotype men as aggressive and women as kind. When women violate these stereotypes, we judge them harshly."
What the research does say is the fewer opportunities there are for women, the more likely women are to report female rivalry.  When there are fewer opportunities for women, there is often something wrong or dysfunctional about the system, which results in dysfunctional behavior from women.  This is not to say queen bees do not exist – just like men – but it is to say women are more harshly judged for it and tit is more likely to occur in an environment when there are fewer opportunities for women.
More good reads:
Catty, bitchy, queen bee or sister? A review of competition among women in organizations from a paradoxical‐coopetition perspective - Kark - Journal of Organizational Behavior - Wiley Online Library
Gossip, Exclusion, Competition, and Spite: A Look Below the Glass Ceiling at Female-to-Female Communication Habits in the Workplace
Opinion | Sheryl Sandberg on the Myth of the Catty Woman - The New York Times
What everybody needs to know about female rivalry in the workplace - AB Media & Communication
 

Meaningful Work: It Can Turn The Mundane Into The Magical

In this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work our hosts reconsider a fundamental part of this podcast and our experiences at work – meaning.  Meaning is the why of what we do, the significance of our work, the point, what makes what we do worthwhile – big stuff.
Research shows that meaningfulness is more important to us than any other aspect of our jobs — including pay and rewards, opportunities for promotion, and working conditions. When we experience our work as meaningful, we’re more engaged, committed, and satisfied.   Meaningful Work | Michael F. Steger.
When we experience meaning at work, our performance it better, we are more loyal, our jobs become more dear to us to such an extent that we are willing to give up money, we are more engaged, our attendance is better, we are more likely to be promoted and we experience more well-being,  7 Surprising Benefits of Doing Meaningful Work.
Leaders have a significant role in creating meaning at work for those they lead.  Leaders who are able to communicate the work’s greater impact, recognize and nurture potential, articulate values and act on those values with their own personal integrity and give employee’s some freedom and autonomy in their work are more like to have employees articulate their work is meaningful. 7 Surprising Benefits of Doing Meaningful Work.
As individual women at work, we can experience more meaning in our work by being more mindful and aware- of both ourselves and others.  As we are more aware of our environment, we are better in our daily interactions and able to see and articulate what we need and be more aware of what our co-workers need. As we are more mindful and aware, we are more creative in our solutions to problems, and as we solve problems, we experience more meaning. What Makes Work Meaningful?
Meaning may be the most important element of workplace satisfaction.  It can turn the mundane into the magical.

Play! Yes, You Can (and Should) Be Amused at Work!

You need play, you are never too old for play, play is fun - and play at work makes work so much better.  Bring on the joy!
 
What is play? It is an in the moment activity with the goal of amusement or fun.  Our mammalian brains love play.  The bigger the brain in an animal, the more play the animal seems to engage in.  This is because play is how we learn and explore the world - and mammalian brains have made this activity feel good so that we are motivated to do it.  In one study of play in bears, bears who played more were more likely to survive.
 
But what about play at work?  Research has found evidence that play at work is linked with less fatigue, boredom, stress, and burnout in individual workers.   Play is also positively associated with job satisfaction, sense of competence, and creativity.  
Studies show that when a participant receives a task that is presented playfully, they are more involved and spend more time on the task. It also improves our emotional, attitudinal, cognitive being.  Teams of workers can benefit from play via increased trust, bonding and social interaction, sense of solidarity, and a decreased sense of hierarchy. 
Furthermore, findings suggest that play at work can benefit whole organizations by creating a friendlier work atmosphere, higher employee commitment to work, more flexible organization-wide decision making, and increased organizational creativity.  WOW!
As we mature, we develop a style or mode in which we are most comfortable being playful. Dr. Stuart Brown, author and founder of the National Institute of Play, calls these styles of playfulness, “play personalities.”  These are not based on scientific data, rather Dr. Brown discerned them from thousands of interviews and observations:
Connector, Joker, Kinesthete, Explorer, Competitor, Director, Collector, Artist/Creator, Storyteller, and Connector.  
 
Which play personalities speak to you?
 
Read more at: 
How to Have Fun at Work Science of People
Cultivating a sense of playfulness at work and in life
Forced Fun Sucks - So Why Do Organizations Keep Doing It?
How to Have Fun at Work
Everything You Wanted To Know About Play At Work (But Were Afraid To Ask)
Stuart Brown: Play is more than just fun | TED Talk

The Four Hurdles Women Face at Work

On this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, our hosts reset the state of women at work after a restful and relaxing hiatus.  
 
Joan Williams and her daughter Rachel Dempsey, wrote What Works for Women at Work.  Joan has decades of experience as a law professor and she runs a project focused primarily on women at work called Work Life Law at Hastings Law School.  Rachel is a journalist.
 
The authors have characterized womens’ experiences at work into four patterns:
 
Prove it Again stems from assumptions about how women will behave at work.  This pattern looks like being penalized for mistakes that men make with little or no consequence; having to defend your decision or back it up with data, even if you are a seasoned professional; and the “stolen idea.”
 
The Tightrope stems for the precarious balance women are expected to strike between masculinity and femininity.  This pattern looks like being “too much” or “not enough”, being either a bitch or a doormat; and being pressed into traditionally feminine roles, such as taking notes. 
 
The Maternal Wall stems from the strong negative competence and commitment associations triggered by motherhood and prescriptive bias (mothers should be at home). Joan and Rachel say “the ideal worker is expected to be unreservedly devoted to work, while the ideal mother is expected to invest similar levels of devotion to her children. As a result motherhood is perceived as incompatible with high levels of work effort.”  This pattern looks like not getting hired or promoted because of the assumptions others make about the obligations of motherhood.
 
The Tug of War stems from women working in what is a dysfunctional system.  Rather than supporting each other, we can pit ourselves against one another, we can also buy into male norms. Sometimes our different strategies to deal with a dysfunctional system pit us against each other.
 
Joan and Rachel remind us of a few important premises when we consider these four patterns:
There is a stubborn gap at the top between men and women and their success at work
A lot of what we are told at work is wrong
Denial does not help - we cannot assume our excellence will save us from these experiences
Everyone's a little bit sexist
Know the rules, then break them - “there is no right way to be a woman” 
 
The book is full of strategies to address the four patterns and a chapter on lessons learned from the research. 
 
Joan’s Work LIfe Law institute has developed what they refer to as bias interrupters, which are assessments and training to address the bias which is the root of the four patterns.  Check out Bias Interrupters on the Work Like Law website.
 
Joan and Rachel’s book is a comprehensive look at women’s experience at work.  They remind us what we experience is real, they help us to clearly define that experience and they provide excellent strategies, tools, lessons and stories for us to best manage that experience.  

Managing Work, Life and Saying ”No”

A key to time management is learning how to say, “no.” Join us in this final rerun of the summer and revisit time management, how your values dictate your priorities, and when to say, “no”.