TL;DR — Devastation expressed by women across the country after the election wasn’t only political. It was also the realization that the entire game we were taught to play to get ahead in the world is inadequate. We believed that despite having the cards stacked against us, we could achieve any goal by keeping our head down, working harder, never appearing weak, and by just being better. But Hillary’s loss showed us that our playbook has a limit. So, instead of wasting energy navigating this flawed and limited game, how about we create a new one for ourselves? Here’s my story and plan.
I’m usually a very logical, steady, and positive person. Since late last Tuesday night, however, I have been more emotional than I have ever been — fluctuating from being infuriated to resigned, aggravated to numb…but mostly, I’ve been just sad and deflated.
And I have been a lifelong Republican.
Similar to values emphasized in the “white working class,” I grew up in and around middle class Asian immigrant families who stressed conservative values, including hard work, self-reliance, and “traditional” family values. So when I began to learn about politics and the political parties, the main pillars of the Republican party — capitalism, fiscal conservatism, and small government — resonated with me.
It’s not to say I agreed with everything the party stood for; for instance, I strongly support gay marriage and women’s rights. In fact, I have never understood how one could be both for small government and for government intrusion into the most personal choices. However, in every election, my “fiscally conservative” side (translated: lower taxes) would win out over the “socially liberal” one, and I would vote red. And truthfully, that was in part because I didn’t really ever believe that social progress was really ever that in danger. That was until this year.
Like many Americans, I started this election season disliking Hillary. I had a perception of her that had been ingrained in me over the years. She was too awkward, too rehearsed, too calculating, too unlikeable…just not genuine enough for me. But with no Republican candidate that inspired me, I decided to learn more about her — her childhood, education, career, life, motivations, etc. — and it hit me. She was just like me and my peers.
Hillary Clinton was (and is) an ambitious, educated, smart woman who had to over-analyze, double check, and over-calibrate herself in order to rise up and play in a man’s game. She struggled to connect with big crowds at rallies, and instead learned to compensate with her strengths in private. And just like every ambitious woman I have ever met, she had to toe that line between being strong and coming across shrill and being vulnerable but not appearing weak. I didn’t agree with every one of her positions, but by every metric, she was the far superior candidate. The longer the election season wore on, the more I identified with her and appreciated her, not only for her as a person, but also for what her campaign represented. I started to feel for her…then rooted for her…then ended up voting for her.
Then Tuesday night happened.
It was unsurprising that my friends all were devastated. Some of my strong, badass, baller female friends were pushed to tears. My friends who are mothers to daughters were the most crushed by the results. But the most surprising part was how sad and upset I personally was with the results.
Over the next few days, even as I was rationalizing the results to myself (and others), I just couldn’t shake that FEELING of helplessness and emptiness… like someone punched me in the gut and took the air out of my lungs.
So I spent the last week reading articles, following posts, and conversing with my friends, trying to understand and dissect my emotions. Like others, I was worried about the uncertain future. I was sad about trends towards white nationalism, racism, sexism, unnecessary violence, and hate. But all those issues did not fully explain what I was feeling.
Whether we agreed with or even liked Hillary, my female friends and I all empathized with what she was going through. We felt her frustration when she had to smile and calibrate every word she said so she didn’t come off too aggressive or too meek or too anything. We felt her pain when she had to her hold her tongue with a smile as she was talked over and insulted (again and again) on national television. We knew how much more she was working to be extra prepared, and we knew the truth when she acted like the extra work and scrutiny didn’t bother her at all. She couldn’t hide it from us. We knew it sucked.
Throughout the campaign, even as we cringed for her, we knew that she was telling herself it would all be worth it in the end to get to her end goal. She was running the same playbook all successful professional women have had to learn and to perfect in order to do their jobs.
Ask any of your professional female friends, and they will tell you about their own “playbook” — the schtick they created or coping skills they developed in order to survive and get ahead. I’m not even talking about enduring something serious like sexual harassment. I’m just talking about the small things…all the things that take a little extra restraint, a little more analysis, a little additional energy to hide our true selves and bite our tongues for the payoffs down the road.
Ask Tamra, my FlexTeam co-founder. She’ll tell you about her time in the male-dominated aerospace industry and all the times her team just assumed she would be the note-taker in meetings. And even though it took more time and work, she’ll also tell you that she did it every time without complaint because it would give her advantages that would pay off later.
Ask Sonali, COO of a large, international non-profit. She’ll laugh off the number of times people came into meetings and assumed the white guy in the room was the one in charge. She’ll tell you about how she would wait her turn as they would talk to him at the meetings before even acknowledging her, and once they realized that he worked for her, she used the awkwardness as the opportunity to push her agendas through.
We’ve all have had these experiences. And Hillary was having them, amplified by 1000x, in the public eye.
Then the crazy thing happened. Even after all that effort, she lost. Not only did she lose, but she ended up losing out to this guy who wasn’t prepared, didn’t put in the hard work, and got to say whatever the the heck he wanted. We found out our playbook had a limit.
We all know that there were other factors at play in this election. Regardless of parties, policies, or personal histories, however, no one can deny that if Trump were a woman, he could never get away with his ridiculous act. Or that if Hillary were a man, that she would have had societal permission to act differently.
The reality is that it takes more energy for women to navigate the current system. Sometimes it’s just a bit more (if you’re a single woman like me) or sometimes a lot more (if you’re a mother of 2–3 children like most of my friends), but nothing comes as easily or naturally as to our male (white) counterparts. Society tells us about leaning in, doing more, or just being happy with what you have, but most women I know are struggling. They do not want to admit it out loud for fear of sounding selfish, elitist, or whiny, but most of my friends, including the mothers, have personal ambitions, want identities besides being their child’s mom, and/or generally just want more energy for themselves otherwise spent on playing the society’s “games.” But with the way our business systems are set up, these women have to work unbelievably hard just to maintain what they have, let alone try to get ahead.
So, when the election results came in, a lot of the devastation I felt wasn’t about Trump or how he would actually be as the president. Or even about Hillary herself. It was what they represented. Everything we learned we had to do to survive and succeed in the world with the cards we were dealt was not enough. The election results let the air out of the belief that women can achieve anything (albeit more work). The equal respect we thought was around the corner was just a mirage after all. We still had a long way to go, and that realization was why I felt so sad.
So what now? We have had our mourning period. We have felt angry, insulted, and depressed. We are almost through the fives stages of grief. So now let’s take some action.
Let’s throw away our current playbook. It sucks, takes way too much energy, and doesn’t even pay off. Instead, let’s build something together where women can just be ourselves and still succeed. Let’s get rid of this pressure to lean in. Let’s create a place where we can be our best, truest, most creative, ambitious, vulnerable, intense, impactful selves. Let’s take care of ourselves first so we have the capacity to help others.
So, how? I don’t have the answer, but I do know this — I want to take some ACTIONABLE steps. No more talk. No more panels. No more conferences to discuss work/life balance. However small, I want to DO something and use those building blocks to snowball into a movement big enough that we don’t need to deal with the current system any more.
A step we can take that is right in front of us is FlexTeam. Tamra and I started this company earlier this year because we wanted to provide a third option (beyond leaning in or dropping out) for our intelligent, experienced, educated women friends who needed flexible schedules. We figured out that by putting ourselves in the middle of companies and our “teammates,” we can facilitate more smart work done outside of the traditional bounds of the corporate 9 to 5. We’re just getting started.
If you find yourself asking “what now?,” how about helping us build FlexTeam? We can use your support! Here are some ways you can add energy to our action:
- Follow us. Join our mailing list. Email us with ideas. Tell us what we need to know!
- Sign up to work on our team. We currently have a waitlist (evidence of an obvious need!), but go ahead and tell us about yourself, we will get to you. We’re working hard to get more customers who understand the values of working with us.
- Champion us. If you are inside a company, find ways to put us to use for your team and evangelize us within your organization.
- Work with us. If you are (or know) a visionary company or leader, who wants to get more done with a high caliber of talent, partner with us.
- Invest in us. Invest your capital, invest your expertise, invest your energy. We welcome it all.
FlexTeam can be the starting point for us in building a “new playing field” together. No, we’re not a non-profit, a staffing agency, or a job board. We’re a mission-based startup that is finding ways to lead company leaders to think about building their teams in a different way. We believe it takes a large, sustainable, socially conscious technology company to make a real change. So, we are planning to grow fast, put more women to work on their own terms, and make an impact.
After days (and years) of feeling disheartened, I am fired up. I am tired of seeing women tired. I want them to put themselves first. I am ready to do my part with what I know to help shape and build a new future of work, which includes balance for all of us. So let’s band together to take a big, collective, hardcore, nasty swing at a new playbook. It’ll actually be worth it at the end.
