Work & motherhood: The truth about the second shift 

Introduction: Welcome to the new season of WHEN On Topic. I’m Stella Kasdagli, and I’m back with you to discuss women’s professional and economic empowerment and equality at work. Sometimes even outside of it. This season of our podcast is dedicated to caregiving responsibilities and their equal distribution, and it comes to you thanks to CAREdiZo. What is “CAREdiZo?” It’s a new project we’re involved in as part of the European Commission’s “CERV” programme, which aims to bridge the gender gap in caring responsibilities by promoting equality practices at home, in micro businesses, and small civil society organizations with up to ten employees. The project promotes family-friendly policies, encourages men to participate in caregiving, and highlights the value of caregiving across society, which is what we have been aspiring to for so long. Its activities include research, co-creation workshops, training programmes, and the development of digital tools, such as an educational game, for example, but also podcasts like the one you are listening to here today, to fight stereotypes and promote equality. Our partners are based in Cyprus, Lithuania, and Bulgaria and are currently creating their own podcasts, which you might have the chance to get to explore soon. So in this episode of When On Topic, we’re going to try to call a spade a spade. We’ll talk about  guilt, opportunities, big moments, tears,  imperfections, and the triumphs of working moms. Joining me is Vasso Pouli,  founder of NVLOG, Director of Sales & Marketing for Sandberg Translation Partners, and mother to an almost eleven-year-old daughter. Together, we will discuss the combination of motherhood and work, whether we can ultimately have it all, and if so, why, and if not, why?

Stella: Vasso, welcome.

Vasso: Thank you (for having me), Stella, and thank you very much for the invitation.

Stella: I’ll remind those of you who have been listening to our podcast for a few years now that the first episode we did with Vasso was in the midst of the pandemic, from our home, in which Vasso, as the CEO of a mid-sized – I’ll say – company at the time, spoke to us about how the company transitioned to the hybrid work model- first remotely, and later to a hybrid model. And I think that even that conversation was also connected to caregiving because during the pandemic,  we all – and especially all of us (women)- were called to take on a bigger share of caregiving than we were used to, alongside our work/jobs.

Vasso: Yes, that’s right, and I remember that episode very well. We had started working on implementing the remote working program long before COVID, so that helped us a lot in switching to a completely remote work model in a very short time due to COVID for a team that was scattered across different countries and cities – inside and outside Greece – and with different roles and responsibilities.

Stella: Let me ask you something about that period: what percentage of the team was male and what was female? Also did you, as CEO, observe any differences in how men and women responded to the remote model?

Vasso: Yes. When we implemented it pre-COVID, when we actually started implementing it and for the first year or two, the male-to-female ratio in the company, without being absolutely sure at this point, was approximately 70% women to 30% men. What really struck me was that, at first, everyone found it difficult to adopt; they struggled with leaving the office, with accepting that “yes, we can do this from home,” but gradually, adoption came first from the women. They were the ones who took the initiative to ask for more time working from home or to ask whether they could work from another location,not necessarily their home. So that’s how we transitioned from working from home to working from anywhere. On the other hand, it was a distinct group of men – younger in age, I would say, who did not have caregiving responsibilities at that time –  who, even though they could also use this to reduce their commuting time, some had pets that they could possibly spend more time walking before or after work, who didn’t take advantage of it and continued to come into the office regularly.

Stella: Maybe it’s a different sense of duty, or a feeling of “this is what I need to do in order to move forward in my career.” 

Vasso: Yes, possibly, yes. 

Stella: Perhaps work, I would say, is one of the main ways men socialize – and it may be that they find it more difficult to open up to new people and socialize outside of work, and maybe, for them, the office serves as a key space for social interaction.

Vasso: It could be; I hear that as a valid idea. In our case, though, I don’t think that was the main driver, because, as I mentioned, our teams were spread out across different countries and cities, so that kind of social interaction was quite limited anyway. 

Stella: Right. I’ll come back to that. Let me ask you this: based on your own experience, your own caregiving responsibilities, your life outside of work, how have you experienced this combination of work and family, let’s say, or work and motherhood, or work and caring for other family members? And then I’ll move on to the next question, but let’s stay with this for now, with your personal experience. 

Vasso: Great. My personal experience –  I’ll take you back a few years. As you said, I have a daughter who is almost 11 years old, so we’re going quite a bit back in time. When I became pregnant, the expectation from my immediate and extended family and social circle was that I would take on the majority, if not the entirety, of the caregiving responsibilities. On the other hand, I derive a lot of satisfaction from my work, so I returned to my job after my maternity leave. I was very fortunate back then to be in a company where there was a great willingness to support and be flexible, so that someone could adjust to this new reality. That, combined with the fact that I returned to a role with a high level of responsibility, gave me even greater flexibility to shape my professional obligations in a way that also allowed me to care for my young daughter. What this experience left me with is the realization that, even though I consider myself very lucky, there was still a significant challenge or a real burden in constantly switching between two equally demanding roles. So that’s how the first couple of years went. Later on, I took on more responsibility within the company, which gave me the opportunity to go even further – to expand on that and implement programs and initiatives that could support roles that were not necessarily equally senior.

Stella: That’s a really important point. I would like you to tell me how your experience as a new mother influenced the decisions you made later as a leader. That is, whether the policies you introduced, for example, were partly based on your own needs at the time, whether you felt greater empathy toward people who were in a similar or even the same situation. How did the difficulties you went through make you believe that others shouldn’t have to go through similar difficulties? Because that also happens.

Vasso: Yes. Many times in my experience and life so far, I’ve found myself in situations where I judged others based on my own experiences, and that has also been criticized. Quite rightly so. There are too many examples. I know how to manage a project in a certain way because no one else could. Or I misjudged someone’s resilience and reaction to a situation, because no one else could be equally resilient or react in the same way. So, when I took over as CEO of the company and was able to implement practices and policies, the truth is, yes, my instinct was to go back to “I experienced it this way, so let’s see how we can build on that to implement something that will serve a similar need.” On the other hand, I wanted to balance that with the understanding that there are other experiences, other capacities, and different circumstances. So, I am not sure if I did it very successfully, but what I found that worked -both for me and for others-  was to implement broader policies, and in each individual case, to be an opportunity to improve or adapt those policies accordingly, so that in their updated version, they could support either more diverse cases or different needs, and that’s more or less how we moved forward in the company.

Stella: I think this is also something characteristic of newer companies – in the sense that even if you don’t have a parental leave policy, if you or an employee, any employee, doesn’t need to use such leave, it doesn’t matter. Okay, there are policies set by the state, but how you implement, expand, or change them to meet a broader set of needs only becomes clear when a practical need arises from the people themselves. Isn’t that right?

Vasso: Yes, I would say so, actually. On the other hand, I think that we need to change this way of thinking and start formulating at least some basic policy,  which can then be improved upon, because there are cases and companies, and teams where there is a great willingness to offer many kinds of support, to allow flexibility in many areas beyond just working hours, location, or even the implementation of standard, legally defined benefits.

But as long as this remains at the level of individual arrangements, a one-to-one interaction, whether with the employer or the team manager, then it’s just a singular case. It’s not necessarily something that can be offered to another woman or another man. So when we move beyond these isolated arrangements and into a universal framework, which may not be fully complete or may not cover all possible alternatives, but at least exists, we open up the dialogue and we open up the conversation. We are able to communicate something, and once we communicate something, someone can ask further questions about it. So it becomes a consultation process. If none of this exists, and each person has to inform themselves and do their own research, a kind of secrecy often emerges.

Stella: And perhaps even a sense of fear.

Vasso: Fear as well, yes. That’s why I’m in favor of structured programs and policies. 

Stella: Very good. What challenges did you encounter in implementing these policies? I imagine it wasn’t all smooth from beginning to end. So, if you could talk to us about some of the difficulties that came up along the way, what were they?

Vasso: I mentioned one earlier. When we implemented Work from Home and later Work from Anywhere, pre-COVID, the level of adoption wasn’t what I had expected. So one challenge was resistance to change,even when the change might actually benefit you. That was the first challenge. What I found there was that a lot of communication is needed. But what truly made the difference was the first person who took the step to use the program. And of course, the fact that there was no criticism for doing so. Or that, if there was any criticism, it received the proper response, and it quickly became understood that this was something fully accepted. Later on, we were one of the first 18 companies to be awarded the Equality Label under the work-life balance program. There, what really surprised me was how the implementation of the program and of the label, in the context of declaring leaves, for example, in the system through which we interact with the state as a business, could not be supported. No provision has been made, no necessary modification has been made to ERGANI 1 at the time to support additional benefits, and that’s where I really struggled to reconcile my own will and the label we had been awarded with the advice of our accountant, who and rightly so, was very cautious about how such benefits, like extra leave days, could be implemented, how they would be declared, they couldn’t be declared, and so on. 

Stella: Yes, that’s very important, and it’s something that we’re still facing, I would say continuously, even though the systems seem to be improving, and the intention, from what I understand, is to align with what the State is also trying to promote as flexibility, inclusion, and equality. Nevertheless, there are still significant gaps that make it difficult to implement every good intention of the employer. Yes, many times. I’ll turn back to you now. Over these eleven years, including your pregnancy, what has been the thing that possibly challenged you the most? What is something you’ve learned, and what has enriched you the most? What has made you better, or brought you the greatest joy?

Vasso: Difficult questions. I’ve definitely learned a lot. What has challenged me the most is the expectation, which is not necessarily my own, but I feel I carry it too, the expectation to step into and fulfill roles either exclusively, meaning to be just one thing, e.g. “the mother” or roles that have been shaped without my input. So, how am I supposed to be a mother? Or if I am working, how am I both an employee and a mother? I think that’s been a process for me – to understand why I get into the mindset, why I act in a certain way, then to filter what is truly mine and what isn’t, to reach a point where I can justify my choices, because at first, I couldn’t always do that. Why do I make certain choices? All of that has been a long process of learning and growth. What has brought me a lot of joy is the fact that, in some ways, I see that this process, which was difficult for me to go through at the age of over 35,  comes a bit more naturally to my daughter. Of course not for the same dilemmas or the same choices, but in terms of how she can reconcile, how she can balance different roles, or different desires of hers, it comes a little more smoothly.

Stella: Do you think that, in a way, she’s processing what she saw in your own effort to do it, your own journey, and is perhaps observing that?

Vasso: I want to say yes. I would say that, beyond my own process, my choices in the environments I find myself in, where I want to be now, and the way I process certain actions, I discuss these decisions with her because they may also concern her, and she also comes into contact with these environments.I think that has played a very important role because it is not enough for children to only see their parents going through this process, but what’s also important, and this may give them even more affirmation, is when  others are going through similar processes and making similar choices.

Stella: This takes me a bit back to something you mentioned that you learned to ask yourself and try to understand why you do the things you do, and my question is, were you able to better understand why the other people in your environment, who shape these various roles with more rigid criteria, do so? Did you take a step closer to understanding why that happens from their side also? For example, why does my male colleague expect me to do things in a specific way? Why does my husband or my mother or my sister expect me to be a mother in a specific way? Were you able to reach a deeper understanding of that? And I don’t just mean an intellectual understanding; I mean an emotional understanding as well, of why this happens.

Vasso: Yes, probably in some cases, not always. I tried to rationalize certain things, and they do have a basis. On the other hand, for me, the fact that something might have a logical basis doesn’t necessarily mean that this is how we should continue moving forward. Emotionally, it was even harder for me because I think what I was experiencing, the choices I wanted to make, were in conflict with what the other side saw. So I don’t know if I’ve made great progress on that, but I do think that a very big part of other people’s choices, of other people’s actions, has to do with stereotypes. I go back to the idea that this is what they were taught; this is what is expected of them. And on the other hand, in my own case, I was always the odd one out, even from a young age.

Stella: A spirit of contradiction, as my grandmother used to say.

Vasso: Yes, I won’t say that, and I also tried to avoid the phrase “the black sheep,” but was the one who also wondered why. And the truth is, I am struggling now because I get the same question from my daughter about everything. And many times, we’ve entered a process and a dialogue in order for me to be able to justify why I’ve given her a certain answer and why we are making a choice together.

Stella: Have you felt, or do you feel, guilt from this reconciliation, the difficulty of reconciling, or the lack of reconciliation, anyway?

Vasso: Many times.

Stella: More as a mother or more as a worker?

Vasso: Both. But I would say more as a mother, because on the work side, I could control more. Because either by staying up late, or with extra hours, or on weekends, in some way, it was more under my control than, perhaps, the gap I felt I was leaving in my daughter’s life, because either I didn’t have enough time, or I didn’t have the mental clarity at that moment to respond to her needs. And since you’re also dealing with another person’s schedule, her activities, her sleep, and her friends, that was harder. So more often in my role as a mother.

Stella: If a young woman came to you who wants, one way or another, to follow in your footsteps- I don’t necessarily mean in the same professional field- but she was to have a career, she wants to reach a position of responsibility, she wants to invest in her professional life, and she asked you: “Can I do both? Can I combine them? Can I have it all?” -in quotation marks- what would you tell her?

Vasso: I would tell her that it takes a village to raise a child, so it is very important to have a support network. She may be able to do everything, but she will need help with her family or raising a child; she will need partners, companions, and support in emergencies. And for me, this work-life balance is never a balance. I don’t think that the day or the month or the year can be divided in half for a working parent – whether male or female – and that there can be this absolute balance. There will be times when caregiving will require a large part of your attention, of yourself, of your energy, and of your time. Similarly, there will be times when your professional life will need to tip the scales in that direction. That is when we need support, because beyond the unexpected, even the planned, you know that these stages will occur.

Stella: Thank you very much. I heard many things that mirror my own experience, and I also heard many things that I hadn’t thought of. I hope that as we talk about different topics over the years that touch on work and private life in one way or another, we will continue to have these discussions together with other women and men so that we can evolve even more.

Vasso: Yes, thank you too, Stella, and I really hope we can have more discussions with more women and men.

Conclusion: What did you think of what we shared today with Vasso, and what else do you think CAREdiZo could potentially create that would bring us one or more steps closer to equality, both inside and outside of work? We are always here to read and listen to your suggestions, comments, and ideas, so you can follow us on social media, send us an email, leave us a review on Spotify, and, of course, come and meet us at WHEN Hub, a space where we aspire to support both work and care for women and men. So let’s continue the discussion so that we can make WHEN and CAREdiZo even better for everyone.