Most women are amazing at multi-tasking, both on the personal level and the professional level. Don’t envy us, God has created us this way to prepare us for the many tasks we will be doing in such a fast-paced busy world in which we live today! I bet many men would disagree, and I will beg to differ!
The roles of men and women in the professional world and how they relate to what they are accomplishing on the personal level are so different and women deserve more credit that they allow themselves to get. The next few lines will explain why!
Fact:
Women multi-task even when they don’t know that they are! Take a look at this scene which is very common for an average Egyptian family. The husband comes back home from work at 6:30, the wife has finished work, picked up the baby from the nursery, went home, is cooking lunch while carrying the baby, chatting with her friend on the phone and peeking one eye into her fave TV series in the process.
Her husband walks in, his phone rings, she asks him if she should serve dinner now, he does a gesture that says: “don’t you see I am talking on the phone, I can’t focus on what I am saying and also respond to you!” Have you ever lived this scenario? Women have demanding careers as well; they are no longer working in less stressful jobs like they did when they first entered the professional world.
Nevertheless, they come back home with a much higher level of energy than their spouses or brothers, why is that? Because women will not settle for just one target per day, work and then nothing! They are social beings, they want to have social relationships, explore shopping options, try a new restaurant and play with the neighbor’s baby! It may be a bi-product of the society’s pressure that women must be a fully-fledged being at a very early age while more slack is cut for men of the same age. A guy can play football and shoot play guns in the street with his friends in his twenties, but I don’t know of a girl who can comb her doll’s hair and get in touch with her inner child at a similar age.
Fact:
Women work double shifts, while men just work one! Disagree all you want, but this woman gets out of bed by sunrise and then goes home after a long hectic work day to start her second shift with the kitchen and the kids! This shift does not end till the kids are put to bed at 8-9 in the pm. How these great women find the energy in themselves to do this every day is something I cannot wrap my head around. I look at working mothers who are joggling work and life in a very well-played symphony in awe.
These women are not only creating value for themselves at work and for their family at home, but they are also giving the world a phenomenon to look at, an effort to admire and a role model to look up to. I look at my friends who are balancing life and work and I go to them for advice on all aspects of life, not just career and family. This is because I see them as a full-blown version of the amazing women they strive to become and this is how they become a reference to me on so many areas in which I need help.
Fiction:
These great soldier-women do not need a break and can go on without a “thank you” or an acknowledgment of their effort. Remember to make your partners/spouses/children to say “thank you”.
Thanking you does not mean that you are expecting payback, but this is merely an act of profound gratitude and understanding that you are not someone whose efforts can be taken for granted under any circumstances.
We all get tired, we all need a break sometimes and we all need others to do nice things for us from time to time. So, remember to point this out in a way or another, make sure that the good you are doing will come back to you in any form that works for your emotional wellbeing.
It is just impossible to keep on giving without taking anything back, maybe your mother in law will assume otherwise, but you are not an invented prototype of a perfect trophy wife! You are a great woman who deserves to be appreciated, thanked, pampered and given the attention she deserves inside and outside the house.
So don’t let anyone fool you into believing that “my house is my kingdom”, no darling, the world is your kingdom so don’t settle for being appreciated inside those walls and make sure your acknowledgment goes past them into people’s ears and into the 5 star treatment you deserve.
It is worth noting that I am by no means a feminist, I do not believe that women and men should have exactly equal lives, simply because there is so much that each gender is capable of that the other gender cannot do. This is a shout-out to all the women out there who are under-estimating what they are doing and the effort they are exerting.
The fact that peer pressure from family or friends or even your spouse may be scrutinizing the fact that you are doing so much so maybe you are not doing everything so perfectly should not make you feel any less of an achiever.