The Myth of the Productive Woman: Why We Can't Have Nice Things

What would you do if you had one hour of genuinely free, discretionary time?  Not a lunch break spent half-checking email. Not a bath interrupted by small humans asking for snacks. One hour that was actually, completely yours. If your thoughts immediately go to your to-do list... that's what this episode is about. 

In the latest episode of Get a Life, host Jackie Oña Cascarano explores the science behind women's disproportionate experience of "time scarcity," how busyness became a cultural status symbol, and the hidden "productivity imperative" that keeps high-achieving women from truly thriving. This isn't about doing more with less (no thank you). It's about understanding our relationship with time and how it impacts our choices and our well-being.

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References:

Belleza, S., Paharia, N., & Keinan, A. (2017). Conspicuous consumption of time: When busyness and lack of leisure time become a status symbol. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(1), 118–138. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucw076

Gender Equity Policy Institute. (2023). Time poverty and the gender gap in free time: An analysis of the 2022 American Time Use Survey. https://genderequitypolicyinstitute.org

Hochschild, A. R., & Machung, A. (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the revolution at home. Viking.

Holmes, C. (2022). Happier Hour: How to beat distraction, expand your time, and focus on what matters most. Simon and Schuster.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Get a Life. This is a podcast for women who feel the pull towards something more. Women ready to become the main characters of their own stories and build lives filled with interesting experiences, passionate pursuits, and adventures big and small. I'm Jackie Cascarano, former lawyer turned women's wellness coach. And I'm a practitioner of positive psychology, the science of well-being. I help high-achieving women reconnect with themselves and create lives rich with authenticity, alignment, and agency. Hey everyone. Welcome back to Get a Life. I am so happy you're here and I hope you're having a great start to the summer. In Nashville, we are about three weeks into the summer, if you can believe it. I grew up in New York, so we always had summer vacations starting like mid-June. But in Nashville and in the South, basically Memorial Day weekend is summertime. So we are in the depths of summer, and my children are at summer camp for three weeks, which is bananas. So my husband and I have an empty house, and we have so much energy in the evenings. It's like the funniest thing. Normally, I am the get in bed at 845 kind of person, and I am exhausted from all of the mothering and wifing I'm doing. And now all I have to do is wife and tend to myself, of course. I'm actually in the throes of writing my thesis for my graduate program. And the thesis is all about what we're talking about here on the Get a Life podcast adventures and hobbies and how they are absolutely essential for women's well-being. So having said that, I want to start today with a question. When was the last time you had an hour, just an hour, that was completely genuinely yours? So, not a lunch break where you were like checking your email, not a bath that was interrupted by children, for example, but something that was like really actually free, like no pull, no guilt, no list of things to do. If you had to think about it for longer than a second, that is what today's episode is about. I want to talk to you guys about something called time scarcity. And I'm gonna talk to you about the way I think our culture, and really the way that we have been conditioned, I would say, like as a Western individualistic culture generally, but definitely as women in that kind of culture, has really turned busyness into something we kind of prize. We kind of wear it like a badge of honor. It's kind of a signal of social status sometimes. And then I also want to talk about why that is really costing us more than we realize. Also, let me just back up and say one thing. This is not going to be a productivity hack episode, okay, my friends. And this is not going to be me telling you how to do more and less time. I actually would rather you do less and more time. This is gonna be me asking you and myself to look honestly at the relationship that we have with time because it might be really complicated and it's probably more damaging than we ever kind of let ourselves consider. So let's start with the term time scarcity. Some people call it time poverty. This is a phrase that psychology researchers use. It's also used quite a lot in consumer research. Of course, there's a lot of research into how consumers approach time, right? Hence, we have all these time-saving services and products that are sold to us, right? Researchers define time scarcity as the subjective feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it. I mentioned in a former episode the book Happier Hour by Cassie Holmes, who's a professor at UCLA, and she wrote a book all about this concept. And I want you to think about the definition I just told you. It's the subjective feeling. What that means is that it's unique to the person. It's kind of their perspective. It's not necessarily how much actual time they have, it's how much time they feel that they have. So this is not just about how packed your calendar is. It's about the internal experience of time scarcity, the gnawing sense that you are perpetually behind, which I feel constantly, honestly, as a mother of three and a wife and a caretaker for all the things and all the people. I definitely feel perpetually like insufficient, like I'm just, I cannot get it all done. And that I'm perpetually running out of the one resource that I cannot replenish, time. So scholars have called time a currency of life. And I I love that. I love that framing. And we also talked about this with Jody Wellman a couple of episodes ago, where, you know, the concept that we have a finite amount of time really actually helps us to live in an astonishingly alive way. So thinking about time as a finite concept, which it is an occurrence of life, is certainly helpful. We borrow financial language because it is kind of a currency. The stakes are that high when you think about it. Time allocation, what we spend our hours on, really shapes our life as much as, if not more, than what we're spending our money on. And here's what research tells us. And I find this genuinely alarming. While financial and material wealth has increased globally over the last two decades, time affluence, and what I mean by that is the feeling that you have enough time or that you have abundant time, that you're not scrambling, that has declined significantly. So we are richer literally than ever, right? Well, we're more wealthy than ever as a global community, and we're more time-starved than ever before. It cuts across socioeconomic brackets and groups. It shows up in countries all across the globe, and it really has measurable consequences for our well-being. People who experience time scarcity report higher levels of stress, depression, and emotional exhaustion. So this is this is a big deal. They have worse physical health outcomes, and time scarcity negatively impacts subjective well-being. And by subjective well-being, I mean how you're reporting your life satisfaction, right? How happy and satisfied are you feeling with your life on the most basic level. So this is not a small thing we're talking about. Now, I want to speak specifically about women because again, that's who I really care about. While time scarcity affects everybody, to be, to be sure, women experience it more profoundly. And you guys, I do not think you're surprised by this. Okay. Any any female human being listening to this podcast is shaking her head, right? I don't mean that in a vague, anecdotal, like women are so busy kind of way. I mean this empirically. Uh, it's it's demonstrated in in research, study after study. And I give you some concrete data, but I won't go into it too much. But there's an organization called the Gender Equity Policy Institute. And they analyzed data from the American Time Use Survey, just from a couple of years ago. And the American Time Use Survey is literally just what it sounds like. They are surveying Americans to see how they use their time. So it's a massive, nationally representative study of how people in the US are spending their days. And what they found was this women spend twice as much time taking care of children and doing household work. Like, obviously, right? Again, yet again, we're all shaking our heads. Like this is not a surprise. We're cooking more, we're doing laundry more, we're doing all the household work, the cleaning, twice as much. So this is the part that really gets me, though. They identified something called a free time gender gap. And basically what that means is that women across almost every group studied reported 13% less free time than men. And I actually feel like that's lower than what I would have guessed, honestly. But free time includes time to socialize, to relax, to pursue interests and hobbies. That's that is a significant statistic. If you are a mother, or if you work outside the home, or if you do both, right? And I promise I'm gonna get to some fun stuff. So stick with me, guys. We do we do need to, we need to establish what we're dealing with here, which is this is not a feeling that women do more work and have less free time. There is science, there's research behind this. So those two groups of women, the ones who are moms and the ones who work outside the home, they have even less discretionary time. Not surprising to us. And this is not just an American thing. Studies outside the US mirror this. So this is a real thing. And this is begging a question for me, you know, why? It's basically that women, when they come home from work, have another job. It's their second shift, right? Women who work full-time outside the home come home to what is essentially a second full-time job, the invisible labor, unpaid labor of running a household, managing a family's logistical needs. For me, it's a lot of like the emotional needs that are exhausting. Hence, my like incredible energetic self, one of my beautiful children, who I love so much, are at camp. Like, I have so much energy, you guys. I don't even know what to do with myself. And what else are we doing? We are enabling the leisure activities of everybody around us. Okay. And I want to think about that last part. Women in families with children are routinely, we are the ones who are enabling everyone else's leisure. So we're hanging out with the kids when our husbands or partners go play golf or like they have poker night or something, right? And again, I love my husband and I love that my husband has hobbies and does stuff. I love that. But the truth of the matter is, yes, I am hanging out with the kids while he does that. I'm driving children to their hobbies, to their leisure activities. I'm driving them to the sports practices and the art classes and theater. They get to do really cool stuff. And I'm organizing the birthday parties and whatnot and all the logistics, coordinating the play dates, all their, you know, all their community experiences. So women are spending their discretionary time, our free time, quote unquote, on the leisure of our families. And when we have our own free time, it's rarely a deliberate individual pursuit of our own interests. So just let like let that sink in for a moment and shake your head if you're if you agree. Okay, thank you. So, one more time for the people in the back, even when a woman has free time, genuinely free time, and that's like a concept that I actually think is super nuanced. Like, what is free time? Because we don't have that. She often doesn't spend it on her chosen leisure. Her time off looks like family leisure, which is boring sometimes. Sorry. Walking the dog with the kids, like that's not a hobby, you guys. That's just not. Watching a movie with my husband. I wanted to watch the other movie, but I have to like watch something that he likes too. I'm sorry, I'm being petty, but you know what I'm saying? When you have leisure time, sometimes you can't do what you want to do because there's another person involved. Okay. And that is just an experience that we have as female humans here in this lovely country of ours and across the globe. Another thing I'll include there is baking treats for a class party. Like, not my chosen leisure activity. Am I right or am I right? These aren't bad things. I mean, maybe, maybe you love baking treats for class parties, okay? In which case, that is phenomenal for you. And I'm so happy for you. Excellent. For me, it's not. So these are not bad things, but they are not the same as a woman choosing freely and intentionally to pursue something that genuinely excites her. So that's what I that is what I'm really pushing here. That is what I want everyone to be thinking about. Like, how can I, in this free time I have, actually pursue something that genuinely excites me? Now, let's add another layer onto this because I think what I've described so far might feel like maybe it applies to you. Maybe I don't know. I think yes. Here's where it gets really interesting and more personal. There is a construct or a phenomenon researchers have documented, and I think it will resonate especially with high achieving women, and maybe even more so, high achieving women in midlife, like myself, like a lot of my friends. And it's busyness as a status symbol. Researchers have demonstrated that in Western educated individualistic cultures like the US, being busy signals a status. Think about that for a minute. Long hours, packed schedules, such a frenetic pace of life. It's so full of demands and obligations, like you barely have time to breathe. I see myself in that. I mean, I have interacted with friends who, you know, I'm too busy, I'm too busy to have a cup of coffee. And it almost seems like they're bragging. Do you can you guys um identify with this? We have collectively decided that this signals that you're important, you're in demand, that you matter more than the average bear. So think about how conversations go in professional settings. And I'm coming from the legal industry, so this is like so, so relevant, you guys. When someone asks you, How are you? What do people say? Super busy. I say this all the time. And, you know, a lot of people will say it in a way that's almost proud. Being slammed is a flex in many professions. Having a packed calendar to a lot of people feels like a marker of worth. You know, we broadcast our busyness through what we say and what we buy, right? Like the grocery delivery service, the efficiency apps, all of those things. And what it's signaling is my time is so valuable, I can't afford to waste it. And I understand that. I get that. I am coming from the legal industry. As I said, I was an attorney in a former life just for a couple of years in my in my 20s. And I want to tell you that the legal profession is the extreme version of this. So I was an attorney for a couple of years, but then I worked in the legal industry. And, you know, lawyers, they bill in in six minute increments. Your worth is like literally measured in billable hours, how much money you're making, whether or not you can make a partner. You know, creating a work environment of time scarcity, it's the path to professional success. And that's really troubling. But I'm gonna say it's not unique to lawyers. That is like the most drastic example, I think. But for most high-achieving women, the culture of busyness has really seeped into our identities. You know, being busy isn't just like a circumstance, it's it's who you are. So when you're drowning in to-dos, as a lot of us are, I mean, I'm in a really frenetic chapter of life at the moment. I just finished a grad program. I'm working on this thesis. Um, I was getting three children out the door to camp. You know, you're running from obligation to obligation. And sometimes it can feel like that's like the right way to live because our culture has told us that. I'm really feeling this right now, you guys. So, what I really want to talk about today, and why I love this podcast and this conversation, is that this is this matters beyond just that like women are busy. Okay, because we we know that. And I think even if we didn't have the stats and research, you and I, we know that. But there's something else happening, and I think it's something that's less talked about. When a woman does somehow carve out a rare hour for herself, what is she doing with it? And I want you to think about that really honestly for a second. So if you had a free hour, just like I asked you in the beginning, genuinely free, what would you do? Most of the women that I work with or that I interact with would, without consciously deciding, they would spend it doing something productive, like preparing for tomorrow's meeting, maybe prepping lunches for the kids, maybe packing for summer camp, doing the tasks that keep the machine of our lives and our households running smoothly. And here's why. I believe there's a powerful, largely under-examined constraint at work for high-achieving women. A leisure constraint is basically something that prevents us from pursuing leisure. And it's the productivity imperative, okay? It's all about productivity. I'm defining it in this podcast when we're talking about it as the in an internalized norm that your free time, your discretionary time, has to yield output of some sort, right? So your free time has to be useful and rest or leisure or play, unless it's producing something, is a waste of time. Okay. I really believe this, you guys, that this is inside all of us. And it's really impacting our decisions that we make for all of our quote unquote discretionary time. So think about the language that we use around time. We talk about spending time, wasting time, getting the most out of time. It's precious and wasting a precious resource is, you know, is bad, right? It's a moral failing. So what we do as women is we're pressing all of our time like an olive. That's what I like to think about it. I love a metaphor. Like we're pressing olive oil out of an olive, right? We're trying to squeeze every last drop of usefulness out of it. Productivity as an imperative is really internal. You know, it's about guilt, like it's about the feeling, you know, often below conscious awareness of it, that if you're sitting still, you're and if you're doing something just for you, just for the joy of it, you guys, with no result or output, that it's not worthy of doing. It's not a worthy endeavor. Researchers who study um something called a productivity orientation and consumer behavior have found that people are more focused than ever on this. And again, we're not we're not surprised by this being productive, making progress, and accomplishing more in less time. We have so fully internalized this productivity imperative that pursuing leisure really feels like foreign. It's I've encountered so many women who, when I say, what are your hobbies? They're like, I don't even know what you're talking about. I don't have a hobby. What is like they laugh? What is that you are speaking of? It feels, it feels foreign to pursue something that is, that is, that would qualify as leisure. So for many women, especially who are carrying the weight of the family responsibilities, and and that is called in in research the ethic of care. That's just a term of art. The ethic of care is the sense that a woman's time and energy should be directed towards others before themselves. This is internal. And where does this come from, you guys? The patriarchy, right? It's systemic patriarchal notions of, you know, women's roles. So we carry this weight of the ethic of care. The idea is not that we can spend an hour just doing something we love for no other reason than we love it. It feels indulgent because we feel it's it's uniquely female, unfortunately, that we feel like our time and our energy has to be directed towards others rather than ourselves. And here's the kicker: even when women do give themselves permission for leisure, they often gravitate towards productive leisure. And that's leisure that's basically productive in some way. And what a bummer, you guys! Like, what a bummer that is. So, a retreat, like an exotic retreat, somewhere fabulous, you know, don't you kind of feel a little bit better and a little more justified in going to that exotic retreat if there is like a yoga experience or a personal growth experience. Um, and don't even get me started on work trips that turn into vacations, right? Like it's a conference, I'll turn it into a vacation. No, this is what I'm talking about, my friends. This is leisure that can be justified and that has output. So it's easier for us to pursue. And there's a problem with that. Research on well-being is clear that the greatest benefits that come from leisure, and there are so many, and we're going to talk about these throughout the season on the podcast, but the benefits that come from leisure are benefits that come from intrinsically motivated leisure. So what that means is there it's pursued for its own sake, for the pure delight of it, for the pure curiosity you have in something, not because it leads somewhere else, or not because you're producing something, or because you're avoiding a punishment for something. For example, exercise. We will talk about exercise, you guys, I promise. But if you are squeezing in a Pilates class in that one hour you have, and that's what you think your hobby is, I want you to think about whether or not you would go to Pilates class if you could just snap your fingers, if there was a genie in a bottle, and you could get a Pilates bod without going to class. Okay, if if that's if if you would still go to Pilates class, I'm very impressed by you. That's amazing for you. I'm so happy for you. But that is when you can call it a hobby because you enjoy the experience of it. I certainly would not. If I could snap my fingers and have a bar body, I would do that. Genie in the bottle, please come to me. So what we do is we replace genuine leisure with productive leisure. And what happens is we're robbing ourselves of the benefits that come from the hobbies and adventures that actually like are intrinsically motivated. So I want to end this conversation with a thought. We are, I believe, in a moment of societal understanding. There's a growing conversation in wellness circles and the research on flourishing, that rest and recovery is a good thing. And that is so wonderful. I think that we as a society, as an American society, have really welcomed that. We see that there is a value in slowing down. Getting a good night's sleep is so important. There's all these longevity influencers and everyone talking about sleep and health, and all of these things are wonderful. And meditation. We've gotten really good at encouraging each other to be healthy in that way. Rest is mainstream. But rest and leisure are not the same thing. Rest is restoration. Leisure is something different. Leisure is a way of expressing oneself. Leisure is play. It's the pursuit of curiosity and passion and delight. It's not to recover from work, but it's because you're a full human being whose life has value and worth beyond your output. We're going to talk about leisure and hobbies and adventures specifically in the next couple of episodes. But for women in midlife, I would argue this distinction is really, really important and really urgent because research shows that time scarcity is a real thing and that women bear a disproportionate share of it. That in our culture that has told us busyness is a virtue and something that's, you know, status-y, even our leisure has been co-opted by productivity. Something has to give. And I think the first thing is a shift in how we think about this. So before you can even claim your time back, you have to believe you deserve it. You deserve it. Not just for rest, to fill up your tank so you can go do more. It's because you are someone who gets to have a life that lights you up. You're deserving of that. So that's what the next episodes are going to be about, what that actually looks like, what the research says, and how we start building it. Starting with something deceptively simple: hobbies. I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. If you enjoyed the episode, do me a favor and follow the show, drop a rating or a review, and take a moment, seriously, just one second right now to think of a friend who would appreciate it and share it with them. That's how we keep the conversation going. See you next time.