I read an article in The Atlantic that my friend, Carmen Spagnola (do you know her work? she’s an exquisite person) posted – Home Economics: The Link Between Work-Life Balance and Income Equality by Stephen Marche. It was published in July 2013 and remains relevant. The extract describes his article this way:
“The central conflict of domestic life right now isn’t men versus women or mothers versus fathers; it’s the family against money.” And although he’s writing from his own experience – a working, cisgender father in a heterosexual marriage – and the topic he’s chosen is work-life balance for working parents, I think there’s an analogy here for everyone who seeks to work and live with purpose. Which is all of us, right?

Purpose, obviously, isn’t just for parents.

Marche wants policy reforms that support children and he wants more feminist men to raise their voices for this because supporting children means supporting families which means supporting everyone. And, specifically, he wants more affordable childcare. In his experience, affordable childcare is what allows parents to feel supported in creating the kinds of lives they want for themselves.

I am with him in being in favour of affordable childcare, but/and, again, I see it as an analogy. We all need specific (and varying) supports to do the work we feel called to contribute (coaching, writing a screenplay, raising a child, all three?).

A few months ago, I was talking with my friend Sarah Selecky, who is an author and writing coach. After confessing I wanted to write a book but couldn’t now because so much of my time is devoted to other responsibilities, and, anyway, I have no idea where to start … , she said something I needed to hear: “Carrie, what you need is scaffolding.”

On one level, she meant for the book. There are existing structures that any writer could borrow and then fill in with her own “stuff.” It’s the same reason I think my own website writing workbooks are so effective. (Novels have a million different stories but a limited number of plot structures. Websites have a million different businesses but a set number of marketing communication principles to follow.) But she also meant for my life.

She knew all I needed was scaffolding, structure, supports… so that I could do the things I wanted to do.

What I realized on the drive home was that I already had the scaffolding; I just needed to reconfigure it a little bit, something I’d done before several times.

Sometimes we forget that we already have everything we need. Or that we know where to find it, if we don’t.

Pink Elephant, this business, is my scaffolding. I reorganized my offerings a little bit and I gave myself the support I needed to fulfill my personal responsibilities and take on a new personal project (and by November of this year, I expect I will have completed the first draft of my book).

Self-employment does for me what affordable childcare does for Mr. Marche – it grants me the freedom to make the contributions I wish to make at the levels I wish to make them. I have solved his problem for myself in my way, and it was only this morning, in reading his article, that I realized again what a powerful force small business and self-employment can be. It’s my own private policy reform (with reverberations beyond me).

Feminism is nothing more than all genders should have equal rights and opportunities. My husband and I both get to work. My husband and I both get comparable opportunities to parent together and separately. My husband and I both get to pursue personal projects. Because of my little business, we are supported in fulfilling our personal and familial responsibilities but also our individual interests and purposes. Pink Elephant allows my husband and I both to have unconventional work schedules and when we’re not together as a family or as a couple or working, we have our own creative endeavors. Because of my little business, neither of us is restricted by old ideas of gender roles and we both have the scaffolding to create the kinds of lives we each want to live. (And this also would be true for me, alone, if I were on my own.)

We aren’t rich but we are wealthy.

In his piece, Marche takes exception to Sheryl Sandberg’s call for women to “lean in” and do what’s necessary to lead. (He argues that without affordable childcare – his preferred scaffolding for people who are parents – it’s unrealistic.) I agree with Sandberg that we need more women in corporate and government leadership roles – we need more diverse perspectives across the board. And, in truth, as a woman and feminist, I’ve sometimes wondered if I have taken myself too far out of that conversation. I threw my arms up in surrender and left the corporate world. My ambitions do not include a CEO title. Am I shirking responsibility?

I don’t think so anymore.

Some feminists should be in political office so that we can vote for them. Some feminists should run multi-national corporations so they can institute more humane policies. And some of us should continue creating an entirely different paradigm of work, one that isn’t hierarchical, one that is balanced between personal and professional fulfillment, one that recognizes all people as whole people and allows for human contributions including _and beyond_ those that generate financial revenue.

My business didn’t do any of this in the beginning because it didn’t support me. At that time, it was an escape. (And escapes are important. They are often the first essential steps. I am resolutely in favour of escapes.) But now, now my business holds me up. And I determine the worth of my time. I determine the division of my time.

There is no glass ceiling here because I’m not even in the building. I’m busy building something else. A lot of us are. You are.

And, as I think about it, my business is helping other feminists to do the same (whether they call themselves feminists or not). The aim of The Pink Elephant School of Kind Business was to help self-employed people (primarily in helping professions) to structure their businesses so that they can support themselves in living whole lives.

All of us here, we are doing work differently, and every time we make a success of this self-employment thing (and support others who are too), we don’t dismantle the patriarchal hierarchy of modern corporate work so much as we move to make it less relevant, which is such a beautiful way of kinda doing the same thing.