Meagan A Sylvester

Dear AFETT,

I am tired! Being a wife, mom and business owner is beginning to take a toll on me physically and mentally.

My husband is very supportive, I love my kids and I enjoy working, but sometimes it's overwhelming.

What advice do you have for women like me, who wear many hats?

Dear Reader,

In today’s post-pandemic world, the modern working woman has continuous competing interests to juggle on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

The pandemic brought with it a new way of doing business and life, with widespread access to virtual learning, meetings and living.

However, demanding deadlines and multi-tasking still loom. The silent demand to go above and beyond has created many burnt-out women, wives, mothers, executives, sisters and friends.

Wearing many hats is a privilege to some and a menace to others.

How do we as women strike the balance and achieve success in the workplace and at home? Is it possible to be mother of the year and employee of the month?

[caption id="attachment_1104035" align="alignnone" width="684"] Maegan A Sylvester, RPA member, author and researcher. - Photo courtesy AFETT [/caption]

Often, solutions of this nature call for a closer inspection of what is considered women’s work and the changing reality of the varying roles of women and the work they do in the workplace and at home.

Women have over the centuries been responsible for the various tasks in the home, community, workplace and boardroom.

As history has shown us, from rearing children to being prime ministers and presidents, demands have been placed on women to demonstrate their value to society.

Pick up any book on sociology and turn to the chapter on Sociology of the Family, and you will be given a bird’s-eye view of the scholarship of famed sociologist Talcott Parsons, who was concerned over how elements of society could be functional. As a functionalist, he was also concerned with social order, but argued that order and stability in a society are the result of the influence of certain values in society, rather than in structure, such as the economic system.

Stability in the family

Parsons, believing that the sexual division of labour should be the mainstay of how a productive family should function, saw men and women playing different roles in society that should begin in the family. He saw the family as operating most efficiently with clear-cut sexual divisions of labour and, in turn, creating a complementary set of roles that link men and women together.

From this perspective, women should carry out expressive roles, providing care and security to children, while offering them emotional support. Men, on the other hand, would perform an instrumental role, more importantly, being the breadwinner for the family.

In other words, women would take on the role of managing the household and raising children, while men provide financial support by working outside the home. According to Parsons, this complementary division of labour would ensure the stability of the family.

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