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Quiet quitting is the (poorly named) rejection of hustle culture, a trend that encourages a more balanced attitude towards work. While ‘acting your wage’ makes sense, sounds positive and seems easily achievable, browsing through quiet quitting posts and opinion pieces revealed there aren’t many people of colour speaking on the topic. Most of the current quiet quitting advocates are white.
It’s an angle that has been missed: who gets to achieve work-life balance? The statistics show that’s always been more difficult for women of colour.
Who gets to be a quiet quitter?
In Australia, women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds spend up to eight years longer in middle management roles compared to women from Anglo or European backgrounds. As the last ones hired and most often passed over for promotion, we can’t afford to be caught cruising on the job, even if what the boss considers ‘cruising’ is above-average performance.
Quiet quitting and achieving work-life balance requires financial stability. White women are slowly but surely approaching pay parity with white men, so as advocate Kimberly Seals Allers puts it: “White women are calling for time to mother”. But because Black women and women of colour are paid even less, forget about asking for time – we’re still for the money to not just mother, but live.
When it comes to how much more money is needed, the UK and US do a better job of conducting intersectional workplace research. In the UK, the average gender pay gap is about 10%, but for women of colour is as high as 28%. In the US, Black women are paid 36% less than white men and 20% less than white women, on average. Australia’s current pay gap is 14.1% and is estimated to be twice as high for non-white women – but as our data does not account for racial background, it’s impossible to know for sure.
There are other indicators. The Australian Bureau of Statistics found white women are 12% more likely to be employed than women from migrant backgrounds. Non-Indigenous women have a median income of $800 per week, compared to $650 for Indigenous women. Who can afford to be a quiet quitter under these circumstances?
“Quiet Quitting” can literally mean career suicide for Black women in Corporate America…
— Cinneah of Flynanced® (@flynanced) August 17, 2022
We don’t get the luxury of being mediocre or “doing bare minimum” at work. We are CONSTANTLY under surveillance and first to be labeled something for how we do our jobs.
But go off.
There are also traditional cultural expectations that impact the reality of work-life balance for women of colour. The responsibility to be the main parent and domestic manager often extends beyond the immediate family to wider community care roles. While community-centric cultures can be helpful when it comes to childcare for work, the weight of cultural and professional expectations still falls on just one person.
And just as women who enter male-dominated industries feel the responsibility to serve as positive female representation, women of colour feel the added pressure to be the ‘model minority’. We don’t want to squander future opportunities for other women of CALD backgrounds by being perceived as difficult, lazy or not a ‘team player’.
With the financial and cultural risk being so much greater, quiet quitting is not really an option for women of colour.
Corporate work-life balance relies on domestic workers
Then there is the question of how higher income white women are able to achieve work-life balance. Having “more time” is made possible by outsourcing specific types of labor to others: people who deliver your groceries, clean your houses and look after your children. Women of colour and immigrants dominate the domestic worker ranks.
In the US they are 54% of the domestic workforce. In Australia only 1 in 5 skilled migrants have their overseas qualifications recognised for employment, forcing them into low paying domestic and service work, like hospitality, cleaning, child care and aged care.
With a lot of the household and caring duties covered by these women of colour, higher income white women have the privilege to freely pursue hobbies, seek out educational and or professional opportunities. This helps them rise through the ranks faster, earning the pay and flexible work options that add up to better work-life balance. Again, it’s parallel to the way white men built their wealth, financial security and success by offloading caring and domestic work to their wives.
Even the way we conceptualise ‘work-life balance’ and ‘quiet quitting’ puts the focus on corporate, salaried professionals who are more likely to be white, while ignoring low-wage workers, particularly Black and brown women. Flexible work options and prioritising productivity instead of hours-worked doesn’t apply to cleaners, labourers, supermarket, factory and warehouse workers, fruit pickers, carers… the list is long. Before they even dream of work-life balance, low income earners are still asking for the basics: a decent wage; affordable housing and child care; family, health and mental health leave; and adequate staffing.
There are now 67 million domestic workers globally, 12 million of whom are migrants, and almost all of whom are women of colour. In every world region, outsourced domestic work is… https://t.co/0735ziQITy
— Media Diversified (@WritersofColour) October 2, 2018
Reframing mindsets
As a non-white woman in a predominantly white country, we are too often taught that the only way to success is through struggle. We may be hesitant to take advantage of work perks, worried that we’ll will look weak, less committed or like they need the help. The notion of taking time off or even setting boundaries to mother, let alone for yourself, honestly seems weird. The concept of putting ourselves first is so foreign. Women of colour are expected to rise above their own trauma to save every other living person. But we are worth saving too.
To achieve better balance and peace, we do have to shift our mindsets (and those of our families) to embrace our right to rest, direct our own lives, and experience joy. Young women of colour are slowly but surely driving that change.
But bigger changes must come from employers and policy-makers who set the standards of work for all. Women of colour must be consulted in the decision-making on work-life balance initiatives. How can you establish supportive policies, without consulting those in need of the most support? While things like employer-supported exercise, meditation and four-day work weeks are attractive to higher-income (and mostly white) workers, lower earning workers of colour have more fundamental asks. They deserve balance, comfort and time too.
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