F---ing lamingtons

When Tuesday morning comes around, no one sees Linda getting her kids ready for school earlier and the extra yelling that day so that she can drive to the bakery before work. Once she is there, she buys the lamingtons, delivers them to work, carries them in, cuts them up on a plate, transfers the leftovers to a plate with glad wrap and puts it in the fridge, wipes the dropped coconut pieces off the meeting room table, puts the receipt for the lamingtons into petty cash for reimbursement, only to clean the fridge at the end of the week and throw away the same leftover lamingtons before washing up the plate.

We talk a lot about Linda and lamingtons below, but the reality is that whatever your name is, you can substitute your own lamington. It might be the P&C committee at the school that you were asked to join, even though you are exhausted and work full-time. It could be leading a workplace committee for an event for International Women’s Day.

Linda from our story might, in fact, enjoy lamington duty. In which case, they’re just lamingtons. But if Linda is doing it because someone “asked” her to, because she thinks that she has to, because she “doesn’t really mind”, and outside of work hours without being paid, then they stop being lamingtons, and they become “f---ing lamingtons”.

This International Women’s Day, there are incredible conversations happening about our spirited and digital futures, but for the three of us – women who have climbed career ladders in public, private, government, corporate and not-for-profit sectors – we have a very simple message for the Lindas: No more f---ing lamingtons!

Invisible labour and office housework

Of course, there is no shade being thrown at the delicious day-old cake covered in chocolate sauce and rolled in coconut – that is simply a lamington. A “f---ing lamington”, which is the subject of our discussion, needn’t be the literal morning tea treat; we are referring to the invisible work that contributes to the office community and which doesn’t just go unrecognised, unrewarded and unremunerated – it actually hinders the career advancement of (mainly) women, because when you are saddled with the burden of work that has little visibility or impact – or which is in the service of your workplace generally – it won’t show up in your individual performance review and there will be no mercy if you try blaming lamingtons for reduced productivity on Tuesdays.

Almost 40 years ago, an American sociologist named Arlene Daniels coined the term “invisible labour” to describe work like Linda’s lamington routine – work that is essential to the functioning of society, but that is culturally and economically undervalued. Marianne Cooper uses the cousin term “office housework”; although it isn’t necessarily related to domestic chores in an office, it can relate to much of the social and cultural aspects of the organisation, including providing emotional support and care to colleagues, mentoring and training new team members, and “doing” the work of things like diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as sustainability initiatives. When women participate in this invisible work, they might be rewarded for their “passion” or “care”; however, they are rarely rewarded for their time or recognised for the leadership acumen expressed in these tasks.

Cooper suggests that there is a conflated sense of this type of work being confused with the idea that women enjoy or are intrinsically interested in these types of tasks, and that because they are traditionally performed by women, they fall into the historical reluctance to value work that is traditionally done by women. For this reason, argues Cooper, women who perform large amounts of invisible labour and “service work” outside their formal job responsibilities are often looked over for promotion and pay increases in favour of employees with more effort, more strongly linked to their individual performance.

According to Cooper, who co-authored the 2021 McKinsey Women in the Workplace Report, women consistently show up as better leaders compared to men in similar roles because of their empathy for employees navigating work/life balance, efforts to ensure workloads are manageable and ability to provide emotional support. And yet, she argues that the extra work done (but not seen) by women leaders is causing them to burn out, with almost 40 per cent of the women managers included in the report considering downgrading their employment or leaving the workforce.

“But Linda likes getting the lamingtons.” Does she? Does she, really?

A pre-pandemic take on f---ing lamingtons by Linda Babcock, Maira Recalde and Lise Vesterlund sought to find out why women “volunteer” for these non-promotable or community tasks. They found that when asking for volunteers, women were more likely to volunteer when they weren’t asked. However, women were also 44 per cent more likely to be “asked” to volunteer, and when asked to volunteer, they were more likely to accept the request than their male counterparts.

When they took the participants to task, they discovered that there was equal disinterest in doing the non-promotable task – meaning there was no difference in preferences – but there was an understanding shared by both men and women that women will volunteer more than men.

How can we help Linda?

In this instance, “Linda” is everyone doing their version of lamington.

We know what you are thinking. Linda can simply say no; she can not accept the request to get lamingtons and just stop getting them. However, we don’t want to make the same mistake for Linda that we do with many other matters of fairness and equity, which is to put the burden of the change on the person who has been most negatively affected by the change.

Because this is where things get incredibly complicated. If Linda was to unilaterally stop getting lamingtons, there would be repercussions for the organisation, and consequently, repercussions for Linda.

Why would we make Linda responsible for changing the situation when the empowered change agent in this scenario is the office manager or business owner, who is able to make a decision to either recognise or reward this work? If it isn’t important enough to recognise and reward, then that actor can think about whether it needs to be done at all and let Linda and her kids sleep in on Tuesdays from now on. Remember, according to the UN, Linda is doing three out of every four hours of invisible labour at home as well!

The toxic and compliant “yes”

Do not – and I repeat – do not directly ask Linda if she minds getting the lamingtons. She likes her job, and she probably needs it. Women, like Linda and her leader Brenda, who volunteered to organise the Melbourne Cup and Christmas functions last year, are not necessarily raised with the language to say “no”.

It has only been through brave conversations with ourselves and the men in our lives that we have realised that men don’t know this about women, and so when a woman says, “Okay, I’ll do it”, it doesn’t always mean that she wants to.

Without getting too dark, the world can turn dangerous for women when they are not supported to say “no” – and the instinct that so many of us are raised doing more chores than our brothers for praise as “good girls”, who take on the burden to care for elderly parents out of family duty, and who survive violence and unsafe situations do so because of a social and survival conditioning to say “yes” in order to be liked, to stay safe, and to belong.

The toxic or compliant “yes” can end up being dangerous for the company culture that the non-promotable task is trying to create. Due to the psychological concept of cognitive dissonance, Linda can’t sustain a narrative in which she is both happy to fetch and serve the lamingtons, and not happy to fetch and serve the lamingtons.

One option is that, over time, Linda finds herself waking up on a Tuesday morning saying to herself, “Oh, it’s Tuesday. I’ve got to get up and get these f---ing lamingtons.” Slowly, she begins to resent Mike and Kenny for enjoying those lamingtons (watching every stray bit of coconut fall on the table) because they both got to sleep in AND she has to listen to what superstars they are because of the GCI they’ve made this month. This resentment manifests itself in Linda becoming rude to Mike and Kenny, and they have no idea what is going on; they didn’t even know Linda got lamingtons, and they are always just there at the start of the meeting.

The other option is that over time, Linda will give way to the narrative that getting the lamingtons is critical work and simply cannot be done by anyone else. This narrative allows her to do this not-promotable task each week, which she is not remunerated or recognised for, by overidentifying with the role of carer. One day, someone suggests that they have a fruit platter for heart health week, and Mike volunteers to organise this. Instead of being glad for the sleep-in, Linda feels rejected. Lamingtons make her important in the office, even if that status is unrecognised, and to threaten that might cause her to feel insecure and anxious.

How about we do this instead?

In designing a future that both men and women want to work in together, we can all learn and build language and practise our diversity, equity and inclusion muscles.

If you are a manager of any gender, have a look around for the lamingtons in your office. If you have a Linda, ask her how she feels about getting the lamingtons and whether she would like other people to take turns. If Linda feels safe, you’ll get a real answer, not a compliant yes.

When the next non-promotable task comes up, whether that is organising the Easter egg hunt, planning the EOFY drinks, or doing a Melbourne Cup sweep, ask someone else. When they do it, say thank you. If they do it out of work time, pay them.

Advice for Linda

If you are the Linda of this story, practise saying “no”. Not a blanket “no”, because we recognise that the sales meetings and the baked goods are something most people enjoy about the company culture, but a reflexive “no”. Here is some language that Linda might use to say no to lamingtons in the future:

“Thank you for thinking of me. However, because I have a school drop-off commitment before work time on Tuesdays, I don’t think there is enough time. Could I set up a regular delivery of catering to arrive during business hours on a Monday?”

“Mornings are difficult for me as I have school drop-off; however, I know Kenny lives on the same street as the bakery. Perhaps he could purchase them and bring them in, and then it is my job to help coordinate sales meetings so I can take it from there.”

“Everyone enjoys the sales meetings, but I was wondering if, rather than having the same thing each time, the different departments could each take turns hosting and organise something novel. That way, it’s a once-a-month job for four heads of department to think about.”

We’ve always said that the problem with feminism is that there aren’t enough blokes and that isn’t a punchline. If the lamington work is important, then pay that lady to do it and say thank you. If it is truly cultural, then pay attention. Ensure that the lamington work is equitably distributed, so that it isn’t always up to Linda – she has a job to do, too.

The opinions expressed by the authors of this piece are their own and do not reflect the views or positions of any other persons, including their employment organisations or associated entities.

*Please note that all characters in the above story are fictional. No animals or actual lamingtons were injured in the writing of this blog.

By Sarah Bell, Kylie Davis and Sadhana Smiles