Gender equality in parenting
Interview with Ella Bourke
I chat with Ella Bourke, a gender equality advocate and prevention of violence against women practitioner. Together we discuss the cultural stereotypes of motherhood and how gender inequality plays out in parenting, partnership and domestic life. At the core of this conversation, we explore tools to begin talking about gender equality and how to take small steps to live it into being.
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About Ella
Ella Bourke is a gender equality advocate and prevention of violence against women practitioner. Her work focuses on guiding people to reflect on, identify and release themselves from harmful patterns driven by beliefs about gender roles. She is mother to one daughter and lives in regional Victoria. Her forthcoming book, The Progressive Parents' (and Parents' to Be) Short Guide to Gender Equality will be released in 2019.
We explore the following questions:
What are the exciting projects and book you have on the go?
What has your research shown on the cultural understanding of motherhood?
Did the women you interviewed also experience gender equality in their own lives?
What is it that the stereotypes that we have of women? Why is mother guilt so all pervasive? How does that impact gender equality and where does it come from?
What are some of the tools that support gender equality?
Additional resources we spoke about:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ella-bourke-6a6a472a/?originalSubdomain=au
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Transcript
Julia Jones:
Hello and welcome to Newborn Mothers Podcast. Today I have a super exciting guest on a topic that I am extremely passionate about. Ella Bourke is here to talk to you about gender equality in parenting. Anyone who's worked at all with me knows this is something I do go on about a lot.I guess from my perspective, I'm really interested in how we can make this happen and work in the 21st century.
What are the exciting projects and book you have on the go?
Ella, you introduce yourself, but I know that you've got some really exciting projects and a book on the go, so let us know where you are coming from.
Ella Bourke:
Yeah, thanks Julia, and thanks for having me here. I'm really excited to talk to you today about gender equality. I'm a writer, and an activist, and a feminist, and I also work in the women's services sector as well. So my writing can be found on ellabourke.com. And at the moment I'm writing a book called The Progressive Parents' (and Parents' To Be) Short Guide to Gender Equality. Yeah. So I'm really excited to be here today to tell you more about that and talk to you about these issues.
Julia Jones:
That's great. So something that really fascinates me is we live in such a unique little moment in human history, where actually things are very different now. This idea of living in nuclear families is so actually bizarre when you look at it across cultures and across time. I do think it's drastically impacted women's roles, and opportunities, and that kind of thing. It's also changed the way that we can self-actualize, and go after our dreams and things as well.
What has your research shown on the cultural understanding of motherhood?
So I guess I'm wondering, you have been doing a little bit of research on people's opinions, and stereotypes, and the cultural understanding of motherhood. Do you want to tell me a little bit about that?
Ella Bourke:
I recently did a research project in my local community, Julia, where I looked at the question of how might we help parents of zero to three year olds to disrupt gender stereotypes. One of the reasons that I wanted to look at gender stereotypes is because they're a contributing factor. Sorry, one of the driving factors of violence against women, which obviously has big implications for the trajectory of women's lives.
As part of that project, I made a call out in my local community to talk to parents who identified themselves as people who agree that gender should be equal and had kids in that age group. I then interviewed three mothers who'd volunteered to be interviewed and did an exercise called empathy mapping.
They were just such interesting rich conversations, Julia. One of the first things to emerge from those interviews was that for women who are interested in and care about this issue of gender equality, they really felt very confident already in terms of their parenting and what they were implementing with their kids.
So they were already doing things like using gender-neutral language, creating varied experiences, and play opportunities for their kids, and bringing a range of toys, and clothes, and that sort of thing. They felt very confident that if their child said to them, "Mummy, you can't mow the lawn, that's a daddy job," of redirecting that and inviting their children to examine those kinds of beliefs that had been formed outside the family.
But the other thing that came out of it was just that they had sort of become these unofficial, unacknowledged gender equality leaders in their own families. A lot of the places that they were interacting, including their intimate partner relationships, the extended family around them, childcare institutions, right through to shops and other interactions with other members of the community, really didn't support them in this mission of trying to debunk these gendered stereotypes.
And that is quite an isolating experience. So you can be a mother who's really committed to this idea, and wanting to implement these practices and things in your family. But we all are situated in these much broader cultural contexts that have their own norms, practices, and histories. And of course, women's empowerment and women's rights is actually historically a fairly recent movement. So a lot of mothers who experienced this kind of dissonance in terms of what they held dear in their own beliefs and values, and what the world around them was telling them.
Did the women you interviewed also experience gender equality in their own lives?
Julia Jones:
And was that preventing them? Because I'm hearing you talk about parenting children to grow up to be in this more gender-equal environment. But was that working for them in their own lives as women as well? Did they feel like they had good opportunities to have the same opportunities that they would want to have for their daughters, for example? Did they have that now?
Ella Bourke:
So sort of two parts to it. There's the influences that are coming to bear on your child. So in your relationship with your child, you can be trying to instill them with these values of equality. But then as soon as they're not in your care... For example, one of the mothers was telling me a story of dropping a child off at childcare, and that the way the educator was interacting seemed to be in a very gendered way. So this particular mother had a daughter and the educator would say, "Well, let's go and play in the kitchen," or, "Let's dress up the dolls," or really engaging in that quiet gendered way.
Then reflecting on their own lives, the mothers were really feeling those pressures and stresses around division of labor in the home. Also, emotional labor in terms of who is expected to hold the emotions of the family and facilitate harmonious family living, as well as sites of resistance around their employment and work as well. So feeling unsupported in terms of flexible work in some instances, and also in terms of the social interactions just around women and work.
So one mother who is a professional was telling me about conversations that she'd had with her extended family where comments would be made like, "Well now that you've got two kids, you can just stay home and your partner will go out and bring home the bacon," kind of thing. The pain that women feel and carry around being erased or made invisible in their individuality behind these stereotypes of mother.
Julia Jones:
It's a huge sense of loss, isn't it? That feeling that you're no longer a woman, or human even anymore. That's like it swallows up everything about you. At least that's the kind of cultural message that we receive.
Ella Bourke:
Yeah. The other thing that I really noticed in this project was that there was a huge appetite to talk about these issues. Which for me, the insight there was that actually most of the time in our lives, we don't feel welcome or safe to raise these issues around gender and gender inequities.
It can be a really fraught issue. A lot of people come into this issue in quite a defended way. I think for men, there can be some wariness around, "Well, hang on, I'm not one of those bad guys. What are you saying? What's going on here?" So the fact that I was coming to them and saying, "Hey, tell me about this. Tell me, what's your experience?" There just seemed to be a real hunger and yearning for that.
So initially, I thought that what was required in terms of a useful intervention, or solution, or contribution to this issue was some kind of peer support space or group that I could run in a facilitated way. So I sort of prototyped that and ran it past some of the participants. The idea was that it would be a space for mothers around these issues of gender equality, and that a place that they could support each other, and hear each other's stories, and not feel isolated in those struggles in that way. But actually, the feedback that I got about that issue was that they hated it, because it was reinforcing the idea that this is women's work.
Julia Jones:
It's such a difficult situation, because so many women tell me these things. And I say, "Are you talking to your husband about this?" And often they say, "I'm scared I'll end up with a divorce. I don't know if we'll be able to survive these conversations. And this change, the drastic change that I'm looking for, I don't know if we'll be able to get through it." So it is a really scary thing. But I agree, we need to have those conversations in the broader context. Because if women just keep talking behind closed doors, I agree, there's no responsibility, there's no accountability. And really ultimately, we can't make this change without men as well. We have to do this together.
Ella Bourke:
I just want to acknowledge to you, Julia, that the way that I'm talking today is very heteronormative. So I am talking about mothers and fathers, and I just want to acknowledge that families come in all different formulations and there's certainly work to be done around the oppressions that come to bear in those different formulations of the family, but the primary focus of my work and my experience is in the heterosexual parenting relationship. So that's the focus of my work, but I just want to acknowledge that I'm not at all suggesting that that's how parenting should be or the only way that families look.
Julia Jones:
Exactly. I think you bring up a really good point. On top of that, it is a bigger problem for heteronormative families, these gender roles and the research I've read shows that, for example, women couples, so lesbian couples when they have children, the biological mother and the non-biological mother will actually share the domestic work a lot more evenly than in general, heteronormative couples do. So that speaks a lot to the fact that it isn't actually a biological thing, there's so much cultural layers on top of gender roles that make this whole thing very complicated.
Ella Bourke:
Yeah, that's right. So I really wanted to respond to what I was hearing in a way that would be really useful and practical to that pain and struggle that I was hearing. Certainly, pain and struggle that had resonated with my own experience as well, just around what a whirlwind transitioning into motherhood can be. I'd certainly felt that dissonance and tension between mothering and then my professional identity as well.
So I really wanted to create something practical and usable, that would help support these mothers and sort of relieve them of the burden a little bit of having to be that gender equality educator in their families, because it is such a complex issue, and it is so cultural, and social, and historical. So that's what led me to writing this book.
The whole way that I'm writing this book is around uniting mums and dads around the shared mission that they have for creating a brilliant future for their children, and really hoping to engage the dads and fathers through that framing that this is their business, it is their work, and it's all about the benefit for the children.
I've looked at some of the other work that's happening in this space, and a lot of the work does focus primarily on that direct parenting relationship, like giving your kids a wide variety of experiences, and so on and so forth.
But I just think there is no getting around that what you model in your own relationship is so influential. You can't expect to imbue or convey to your child something that's not embodied and you-
Julia Jones:
You are not doing-
Ella Bourke:
For them, that you're not doing yourself. And I think there is a lot of fear about that. As you said, people saying, "I don't know if my relationship will survive it, or I don't know what those conversations look like or sound like." So through this book, I'm hoping to give people some tools to start some reflective practices, start some dialogues around, how can we be creative in our own lives? How can we implement these principles of equality that we care about and agree on? But how can we bring them to life in our own family, in our own situation?
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love that. I think a lot of men really are willing to have this conversation, and sometimes it's better to not have it on an individual level. Sometimes actually to have it within a marriage is more stressful than to have it as more of a systems discussion, and understanding the broader social picture.
I think it's a really great approach to look at it as a bigger thing. It's not like each individual man is being a bad husband. It's more like we live in this system that creates this environment, that's really tricky to get ourselves out of. I do want to get onto some of the tools specifically a little bit later.
What is it that the stereotypes that we have of women? Why is mother guilt so all pervasive? How does that impact gender equality and where does it come from?
But before then, can you talk a little bit more about that, the mindset? What is it that the stereotypes that we have of women, and the way women think about ourselves, and some of that mother guilt that just seems so all pervasive? How does that impact all of this and where does it come from?
Ella Bourke:
So one of the biggest stereotypes I think that is so damaging for women and mothers is that child-rearing and cleaning go together, that the role of mothering is also around having a sparkling house. Actually, they're two different parts. They're two different types of labor, and they don't necessarily have to go together. But you only have to look back at some of the past idealization of the family. So if you look at that sort of 1950s, 1960s model family of the freestanding house on the nice lawn, and mum's at home the whole time, and dad goes off to work, and that type of thing, we are still very much in the shadow of the industrial revolution that sees people as individual units of labor to be put to use in the capitalist economy. The capitalist market really has a terrible time trying to account for the interdependencies of human relationships.
Nowhere is that more visible than in the parent-child relationship. Because humans have such long childhoods. We are dependent on the care of others for such a long time in comparison to other mammals, and primates in particular. We have this long period of dependency on others. The way that we think about work, the way that we make money is really only just starting to grapple with the true needs of children and families in that way.
So there's just such broad structures, and norms, and practices that come to bear on a family. One of the things that I really want women to know, particularly women who are feeling that they're failing in this sort of task of modern motherhood where you're expected to be the perfect parent, the perfect housekeeper, and the perfect employee, is that it's not your fault. You just happen to be mothering at a particular historical moment, where the mothering part of it is severely, profoundly undervalued. There's really very few supportive structures, and practices, and cultural beliefs around you.
So if you are struggling with reckoning with all of that, with making that work, don't turn that back in on yourself as a personal failing. I see that so much, and certainly something I grappled with myself as well.
Also just to say that we all have power to do what we can, with what we've got, where we are. I think I've mangled that quote, but there are structures that come to bear on our lives like national childcare policy, or paid parental leave policy, where you might feel really powerless. Most of us don't have the power to click our fingers and change those structures that are influencing our lives, but each of us does have the power to reflect on, examine the decisions that we're making within our own context, within our own families and communities, and actually live the new world into being.
So really, this book and my work is around inviting people to really trust in the knowing of the importance of the work that they're doing in child-rearing and responding to their babies, and really start a bit of a gentle rebellion against the cultures, and practices, and norms that don't support that.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love that so much. Living it into being, it's such a beautiful way of phrasing it. And I think like you mentioned, absolutely the critical step is believing that it's really not your fault. This isn't an individual problem. This is a huge social mess that we've gotten ourselves into.
The reason that humans are the way we are is because of these powerful social connections and relationships. We have much more complex relationships than a lot of other species. That only can happen because we invest that time, and that love, and all of that kind of stuff. So to undervalue that is actually to undervalue what it means to be human.
If we can realize that this isn't our fault individually, this is something we need to take social responsibility for, we can actually turn that back on creating that change instead of blaming ourselves for everything.
Ella Bourke:
You only have to think about how we talk about it. I think language really reveals a lot about a culture. The fact that we call it maternity leave, I just think that sounds like some sort of resort where there's banana lounges, it comes with margaritas, there's small children just tottering around happily. But on the lawn or something.
Julia Jones:
It's only for the biological mothers.
Ella Bourke:
That's right. Imagine if we called it ‘future citizen task force secondment’ or something? It's probably too far the other way, but I guess I'm just saying that it's so ingrained, so much part of the culture to think that responding to and caring for the needs of children is unimportant, that it pops up in all sorts of ways.
I recall that on my very first Mother's Day, my daughter was about eight weeks old, and that just happened to be the Mother's Day where treasurer or treasurer at the time, Joe Hockey, decided to come out and call mothers double dippers if they were accessing government and employer paid leave, which in fact was how the policy was intended to-
Julia Jones:
It was created for that purpose.
Ella Bourke:
Minor detail. Minor detail.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, exactly. No, I think it's really important. That's the message that we receive all the time, isn't that we're lazy, or that we're useless, or we're wasting time. Both ways, it is such a trap. Because if mothers do want to return to work, then they're selfish and greedy, and they're neglecting their children, as though a father can't do a perfectly good job of looking after children as well if that work was valued. So either way that you look at it, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. So rather than taking that on as our own fault or something we need to feel guilty about, we really need to turn it back on the system.
What are some of the tools that support gender equality?
Have you got anything else you want to share, or can we move on to some of the tools that you were talking about?
Ella Bourke:
Yeah, let's move on to the tools. Because I think it's really one of those issues, Julia, where the devil is in the detail. Some of the recent research that Our Watch came out with showed that a lot of parents think this is an important issue, but don't really know what that means in terms of how to do it day-to-day. Like, what does that mean for my life?
So one of the tools that I really suggest for couples or people expecting a baby is to sit down with a spreadsheet, and you want to do this over the course of maybe a month, to write down everything that happens in your family. It could be task-by-task or you could do it role by role. So it could be mowing the lawn, or you could say gardener. But you basically, each row would be an area of responsibility.
Then have a column for each of you. So one column for mum, one column for dad. But then the most important column is the column that's titled no one. Put an X in each column next to the task that each person is going to be responsible for, or the task that no one is going to do.
The reason I really love this tool is it's a way for couples to think about how they can simplify their lives. One of the biggest issues in gender equality is, who does the unpaid work in the household, in the family? At the moment, women do a much larger proportion than men of unpaid labor. So this is a way of building some transparency around who is doing what, and making some conscious decisions. A, about what you're going to simplify, what you're not going to do. And B, how you're going to divvy up the rest of the responsibilities.
By making it visible, it's a tool for empowering you to examine that and reflect on, am I happy with this? Does this serve us? Are there any pain points here? Are there any things that I really resent doing, and actually take more energy than I'm willing to give them?
It basically can set out for you those tasks that sometimes just are invisible that we do based on assumptions. So it's that way of making sure, or unraveling, untangling what I'm consciously choosing to do that's in line with my values and principles, versus what I'm doing because I think I should, or actually I've just been doing unthinkingly because some part of me had absorbed a cultural message that I should do it, because I'm the woman, or he should do it, because he's the man.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love that. I love it so much, because there's so much in that. Because on the one hand, one of my favorite tools in my own marriage, which is similar, is batching things. So I do all the laundry and my husband does all the dishes, and that's that no matter what. He does all the dishes and I do all the laundry.
It means that even if I cook all day and he doesn't get home till 9:00, I don't touch the dishes. It does actually take a little bit of discipline to go, "No, that's in his column." It is a bit annoying sometimes, because I can't cook dinner and I'm like, "There's no," whatever. But I'm like, "No, that's his job. That's not my job." So being able to really just batch things that clearly I think is really important.
On the other hand, being able to figure out what's not important. The only difficulty I can see coming up with that is a lot of the time women say, "Well, he wouldn't do it," as in the women seem to have higher standards for certain things.
I guess part of that is unpacking, is that just because you think you should do it or think you're going to be judged if your husband doesn't have an ironed shirt or whatever? Is it really important to you? And what if it is really important to the mum, but it's not important to the dad? Then she ends up doing everything. So yeah, I don't know. I guess it's good just to start all those conversations, isn't it?
Ella Bourke:
Yeah. You need to reckon with what you value. So it's a way of making that visible and facilitating that examination. This is really just a jumping off point for inviting some creativity into how you approach that. As you were saying, for your family, batching works.
One thing that we do in my family is do what we call an hour of power of housework. This is when my partner and I are both home, and we'll find something to occupy my toddler for a while, and we'll do what we call the hour of power of housework, where we both just go hammer and tongs for an hour, in the house cleaning up. And then when that buzzer goes-
Julia Jones:
That's amazing how much you can do.
Ella Bourke:
Especially when you're on a time limit. And it kind of is an antidote to a constant underlying feeling that you should always be doing something or always be cleaning.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. You can let it up build up knowing that I will do it. There's this designated time. Also, how much better is it doing jobs together? I think part of the load of cleaning is the amount of time in isolation. It's just so lonely and boring doing those tasks on your own all the time.
Ella Bourke:
Yeah. Look, women throughout their whole lives are really socialized to disproportionately invest in the dreams, and goals, and lives of other people. So we're really socialized and rewarded for facilitating other people's careers, and other people's hopes and dreams, other people's needs to rest, and all their types of needs. So I think one of the most useful questions as women that we can ask ourselves is, where am I over-functioning in relation to others? and where am I under investing in myself?
Julia Jones:
Yeah, great. I love that. I love what you said earlier about reckoning with that, because if they decide that all of these huge list of things are important to them, then I guess they are going to have to figure out how to get them done. But what they might instead do is go, "You know what? That is actually impossible. I don't have enough hours in the day to do that. We have to find another solution, and I have to decide that's not important to me anymore. I'm going to outsource it or I'm going to find some way to automate it." Yeah, you have to be realistic and deal with that, don't you?
Ella Bourke:
One of the huge limitations of the modern family structure is the isolation of the parenting unit. So historically, we've lived in multi-generation households. So there's been more people, more hands, more resources around to do all of those things that a family and household needs. Another way that this kind of spreadsheet can be useful is that it empowers you to ask for help too, to grow that pie of resources that you can draw on.
Because everything that is in the no one column when someone says, "Oh, hey, just let me know if there's anything I can do to help," you can go, "Well, actually, here's a list of 30 things that no one's getting to at the moment. The most important ones to me are these three. So could you do one of those?" Empowering yourself to ask people for support in a very specific way.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love that. You do uncover those things, don't you? My husband and I, neither of us are very good at making the house beautiful. So often, we don't remember to put pictures up on the wall, and those little details or make the house smell nice. Sometimes, I say I long for a wife because that's what I should be doing if I were following all these gender rules that are handed down to me, but I'm just not very good at it. I know I'm not very good at it, and that's fine. I just don't do it.
But at the same time, we do have people in our team, my mum's good at it. We also have a gardener who's really good at it. It makes our garden look absolutely amazing with all that attention to detail and love that, I don't know why, it's just not in me. I don't see things like that. It's not my strength.
So knowing that it's okay to have strengths and weaknesses, and that you don't have to do everything. Because traditionally, I'm good at cooking. I love cooking, but I wouldn't have been doing the cleaning, not by a long shot. If we lived in these bigger villages rather than just two people, then those roles would all just naturally be covered by everyone's strengths. So you don't have to be good at everything. You're not meant to be good at everything. You're meant to work in a team.
Ella Bourke:
Yeah, absolutely. It really is just about having that ongoing practice of reflection, building awareness, and creativity. I think a really useful framing for a question is, how might we?
What I hear a lot of from women is how tired and busy that they are, particularly in those early years of parenting. Just as a family and with your partner, sitting down with that question of how might we, for example, create more rest for me? How might we… do this? So that you can, as a family, as a partnership, orient yourselves towards new ways, new things that you could be doing, tweaks that you could be making to how you live and work and relate to each other, that will better serve the needs of everyone in the family.
Julia Jones:
I love that. It feels sometimes overwhelming, doesn't it? But actually, if you just say, "Look, let's just do it in these small steps. What can we do today, right now, together?" Because sometimes, it just does feel too big if you go out there with an idea of changing policy and smashing the patriarchy, but you might be able to just think together as a couple about, what might we do today?
Ella Bourke:
Yeah, absolutely. Just start where you are. Look, lobbying parliament and activism isn't going to be for everybody, but I just really think that there's real power in listening to and sitting with any pain or heartache that you're feeling about things.
So let that be your guide. If you are feeling heartache because you don't get any rest, or you don't get time with friends, or you don't get professional challenge, or whatever it might be, really just sitting with and scanning your life and division of responsibilities around, "Hang on, where are my needs not being met? Is this something I've chosen that I want for my life, or is this something that I've just kind of inherited through the legacy of what was modeled for me in the past around what mothers and fathers should be, or something I've absorbed from cultural messaging around who a woman can be and who a mother can be, or who a father can be and what they're capable of?"
Sometimes we can just be so blinded by these messages that we've absorbed, that we can't see the possibilities in front of us. It really is around being conscious of where there's any pain in your life, like where you're just feeling that lack, and then engaging with your partner, with your family around how might things look differently.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love that so much. Not just internalizing it, which is what women are sort of taught to do, but really saying, "Hey, let's do this together."
Ella Bourke:
Yeah, absolutely.
Julia Jones:
I love it. Do you have any other things you wanted to share, and your book of course.
Ella Bourke:
Yeah, I just wanted to share that as I mentioned, I'm writing a book called The Progressive Parents' (and Parents' To Be) Short Guide to Gender Equality. In that, I'm going to run through some more tools and practices for embedding this in your family and really bringing it to life in your family and practices.
So if the listeners are interested in finding out when that's available, then just head to ellabourke.com and sign up for the mailing list there, and I'll let you know when it's ready.
Julia Jones:
That's awesome, Ella. And we'll make sure we include that link in the show notes as well. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you, and it's a conversation I definitely want to keep having. So maybe we can have you back on the podcast again sometime, and we can definitely keep working together as well. So thank you very much.
Ella Bourke:
My pleasure, Julia. Thanks for having me.
