8 Ways to Stop Giving Housework to Women in the Workplace Right Now

In 2024, women are still all too frequently assigned non-promotable tasks. While these tasks might be essential for the organisation, they do not contribute to women's career advancement or an organisation closing its gender gap.

Women repeatedly highlight the practice of assigning office housework or non-promotable tasks to women in my Advancing Women @ Work Diagnostic. In one organisation, 53 per cent of women said that administrative tasks are not allocated fairly in their workplace.

The book The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women's Dead-End Work demonstrates that managers are 50% more likely to assign certain tasks to women and 50% more likely to accept them.

This is a multifaceted issue, and in this article, I will discuss how to develop a multifaceted solution.

The Issue with Non-Promotable Tasks

Non-promotable tasks, often called "office housework," include organising events, taking meeting notes, or onboarding new employees. While these essential tasks don't typically contribute to career advancement, women, especially women of colour, are disproportionately assigned these tasks, limiting their opportunities for growth and recognition.

In the book The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women's Dead-End Work, authors  Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, and Laurie Weingart say that "women say yes to requests from others far too often" and that "Managers are 50 per cent more likely to ask women to do nonpromotional work, and when women are asked, they are 50 per cent more likely to say yes to these requests."

This means there is an opportunity for women to learn to push back and for managers to learn to assign office housework more equitably.

"Managers are 50 per cent more likely to ask women to do non-promotable work, and when women are asked, they are 50 per cent more likely to say yes to these requests."

Why This Matters

• Career Progression: The continuous assignment of non-promotable tasks is not just an inconvenience; it's a significant barrier that prevents women from engaging in high-visibility projects crucial for their career advancement and the organisation closing its leadership gender gap.
• Workplace Equity: The unequal distribution of non-promotable tasks reinforces rigid gender stereotypes and hinders the creation of an inclusive and progressive workplace. It's time to change this narrative and create a more equitable work environment.
• Organisational Health: Diverse leadership teams are proven to drive better business outcomes. Biased task allocation undermines this diversity.

What Managers Must Do

Women have a different work experience than men, especially when they have a male manager, and managers significantly impact women's decisions about career mobility. Put more bluntly, if a woman is not treated fairly by her manager, she is more likely to resign, relocate to another area, or become less productive. So managers must take these 4 actions to be respectful and inclusive of women in their teams:

1. Audit: Audit and analyse your team's distribution of non-promotable tasks to ensure fair allocation.
2. Equitable Distribution: Implement practices like random assignment for non-promotable tasks to ensure fairness. If your team has been overly reliant on women to perform office housework, address the imbalance by allocating tasks to men until it has evened out.
3. Foster an Inclusive Culture: As a manager, you can foster a culture where employees feel included and respected. This means they will be more comfortable negotiating their workload and saying no without fear of backlash.  
4. Professional Development: Actively encourage and provide opportunities for women to engage in promotable tasks and high-impact projects.

4 Actions for Organisations

The organisation is the system of work, the policies, practices, and the management of expectations of workplace behaviours. Progressive organisations committed to advancing women and closing the gender gap(s) can take these actions:

1. Train Managers: Educate managers on inclusive leadership and gender dynamics, how they manifest in the workplace (including office housework), and the impact of unfair task allocation on women's career advancement.
2. Implement Fair Assignment Practices: Develop a "how-to" guide for managers to distribute non-promotable tasks equitably. We must show managers what to do, not just tell them.
3. Listen to Women: Create an operating cadence where women are actively sought out and listened to so issues about their workload can be identified without fear of backlash.
4. Support Women's Career Development:  Provide opportunities for women to engage in high-impact, promotable tasks, monitor how many women are on high-profile teams and provide targeted development experiences.

7 Strategies for Women

"Women have internalised this expectation that they should say yes—and that everybody else expects them to say yes."

All the extra requests and affirmative responses from women lead to them shouldering a more significant burden of non-promotable tasks, leaving them less time to focus on promotable work. As a result, they may struggle to compete for promotions, contributing to the ongoing trend of women lagging behind men in career advancement.

However, this requires a strategic approach, particularly if the woman has gained a reputation for saying yes to everything. A rapid change from a yes-woman to a no-woman can be career-limiting (as frustrating as that is!).

Here's what women can do:

1. Set Clear Boundaries: Start declining non-promotable tasks by explaining your current workload and priorities aligned to the business outcomes.
2. Negotiate Responsibilities: Suggest other more suitable colleagues to undertake the task or a rotating roster for office housework.
3. Align with Career Goals: Be strategic by accepting tasks that support your professional growth and delegating or declining others.
4. Document and Discuss: Record non-promotable tasks and discuss workload balance during performance reviews.
5. Seek Support: Engage your allies and strategic mentors to provide advice or advocate for fair task distribution on your behalf.
6. Address Managerial Bias: If you face bias, document instances, seek feedback, leverage allies, communicate openly with your manager, and seek support from your network (The Lead to Soar Network, for example!).
8. Listen to this episode of the Lead to Soar podcast about how to avoid office housework.

Like many issues related to workplace gender equity, the unfair allocation of non-promotable tasks requires our collective contribution.

If you want to tackle issues like this and others that create an uneven playing field for women in the workplace, I can help. I have worked with some progressive organisations in the business and sporting sectors to move workplace gender equity, diversity, and inclusion from conversation to action. Let's talk.

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