Female software engineer stands up to male coworkers, refuses to play Office Mom: ‘Let the team fall apart’ – FAIL Blog

Though these all seem like niceties, it can quickly become a real burden when the same person is doing these things all the time. And every time that woman goes out to buy a card for someone’s birthday, and spends 40 minutes getting everyone else’s signature, she’s burning precious time that she could be spending doing her own work. Organizing lunches and parties are no small feats, either. There are often double standards at play here: men might never be expected to take on these duties, but women are side-eyed if they don’t proactively take action to make these things happen. 

For a long time, this emotional labor was just par for the course for women in the workplace. And that’s just not fair. Women come to the office to do their assigned job, not babysit all the other workers. 

However, some companies are pretty stuck in their ways, and without even realizing it, they enforce these old-fashioned mindsets. Just read about the way that this woman took a straightforward approach to the slow, ongoing creep of adding more and more of these duties to her workday.