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You are a business owner who wants to prioritize people and planet over profits (without sacrificing success). That can feel lonely—but you are not alone! Join host Becky Mollenkamp for in-depth conversations with experts and other founders about how to build a more equitable world through entrepreneurship. It’s time to change the business landscape for good!
Faith & Jay (00:01.167)
Jay, it is so lovely to be in this conversation with you. Thank you so much for joining me in this Feminist Founders Chat on Invisible Labor. How are you doing? I'm doing well, Faith. Thank you so much for inviting me to this conversation. You're welcome. Well, you know, I really, remember how much your own reflections on care labor, you and I have talked about this quite a bit in our own lives and, and
how some of the emotional labor and relationships and so on, how debilitating that can be and yet how unseen it is. So I've been really impacted by your work on this. But for everybody else who may not know you, can you real quick just tell us who you are and what's your work in the world, if that can be, you know, encapsulated. I'll keep it concise. Thank you. Hi, folks. I'm Jay and I am a burnout recovery
specialist and a relationship coach and I work from a grief aware, trauma sensitive, oppression conscious lens. And I it's very important for me to bring to light all the ways in which labor is invisible lines by systemic forces so that we are able to better support each other in creating
a more equitable world. And so I hear you using the word invisibilized. So we were just chatting about that a little bit. Because when I say invisible labor, I'm talking about the stuff that's there gluing everything together, but then one is seeing, but you're pushing back on the word invisible. me about that. Yes. And so I, since I've had the privilege of being invited to this,
Faith & Jay (02:24.462)
podcast episode, I had just been thinking like, my goodness, like we, the term is invisible labor. I understand it's, you know, it's the meaning and it's underpinnings. But I've been pushing back a little bit and wondering if it's more accurate to call it invisibilized labor. Because I find that through my experience of caregiving, I have become so much more attuned to women's work on the home front, and women, non-mens,
care labor, queer folks's care labor in our families and communities. And all the ways that labor fits under the category of invisible labor. But the more I pay attention, the more I see it, the more I see it all around me. And so I have been considering very strongly that the labor is invisibilized, of course, which is also part of the original definition. But I think what I'm trying to say
when I'm using the word invisibilized is pushing back against the idea that the labor is just hard to see or hard to notice or that it's hidden.
I feel like it's hidden in plain sight that once we start noticing, it becomes so much more obvious, the threads of invisible labor in our own lives and the lives of other marginalized people. Yeah, in essence, it's our attunement, it's our attention, it needs retraining so that we can see how the systems have handed us this labor and that not recognized.
taught us how to not recognize it as labor, while giving us the labor. So what's your experience of this been like, of this invisibilized labor, when you think about both work in terms of paid work and non-paid work, as well as relationships and then particularly care labor? Thank you. And I just wanted to go back to
Faith & Jay (04:27.436)
what you were saying earlier about how that labor is allocated. And sometimes I even call it how, one way I sometimes talk about it, how that labor is literally like imposed and inflicted on marginalized communities. And at the same time, not treated as you were saying as labor and also not treated as something deserving of either reciprocation or compensation. And it is so much as you were saying by design and
how it keeps us in cycles of, speaking from a burnout lens, like exhaustion and depletion and compliance and how difficult it makes for us to find the resources within ourselves and around us to resist these systems of oppression playing out in our daily lives and our political lives. And to more specifically answer your query about my story with invisible labor and care labor,
I'm a family caregiver to a parent with actually multiple terminal illnesses. And the amount of labor I do that is not just uncompensated, but completely invisible to, you know, folks who are not attuning to my needs as a caregiver is immense. I have sometimes thought about
and consulted with friends who are in healthcare and work from this oppression aware lens. And we've talked about how like I'm doing the work of a nurse, I'm doing the work of a housekeeper, I'm doing the work of a nutritionist and cook. And I am just around the clock, there's calculations in my mind about my mother's nutritional needs, making sure that she is
only consuming as much liquid that is safe for her body. There's all of this calculation going on around making sure her medication refills are filled, doctor's appointments. It's just this massive amount of ongoing cognitive labor and logistical labor in addition to the co-regulation based labor that I perform in order to support her, you know,
Faith & Jay (06:52.31)
her emotional and mental well-being. And there are many parallels here with mothering. And as my coaches, particularly in the relational spaces, including business coaches who are women, non-men, and particularly BIPOC women, non-men would recognize us as many, many parallels with our unpaid, uncompensated, deliberately unseen.
labor in the workplace. And one big example that has repeatedly come up for me as someone who is a prolific writer and who does a lot of educational content creation is how much work goes into creating that content that is completely, that may be completely invisible to the reader who is not very deliberately and consciously thinking about women's labor. And like, like, of course it's mostly it's uncompensated work.
But it's also like the labor of conducting research, the labor of attuning to what my audience needs, the labor of like, you know, connecting with folks and networking and like getting to understand their needs, which is a beautiful part of my work that I absolutely love. And at the same time, I think it's important to recognize that all of that is labor. All of that is deeply time consuming. It's deeply energy consuming. It's deeply attention and focus consuming.
Yeah. And I think there's something about, because this is not that the labor isn't just a part of the task, right? So caring for my mom when I was caring for her or her or my son, as people know, folks here know that I have an adult son with a disability. It is part of the work. It's just that because it's not recognized as Monica, and it is expected that we also do
the other things to be able to earn money and to have food and which, you know, as I'm saying it, I'm like, of course I'm expected to do it, but it's, I remember the first time I did that analysis and it like, I have eight or 10 jobs. I am cycling through in a 24 hour period that if I was a person that was more resource and we know that people with marginalized identities are under resource, then I would be paying out.
Faith & Jay (09:14.764)
hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Exactly. the daytime portion of I do. And so, you know, when we start to have these conversations with ourselves about not being able to do X, create content, which is itself, you know, labor intensive. Very labor intensive. Then we're like, we're, we've added in another four jobs, you know? Yeah, exactly.
So what's the value you think though of being able to call this out? Because sometimes when I think about all of it, I was like, wow, this is all too much. How do we even, what do we do? So what's the value of just this awareness you think? Yeah, thank you. That is, oh my gosh, that is a brilliant question because a couple of days back I was thinking and I was like, there's all of this care labor that I'm performing.
there was a very strong voice inside me that said, before we get to brainstorming solutions, let's just sit with this awareness, this awareness of injustice. You know, this awareness, the inherent injustice in having to hold and carry so much at the expense of our very survival, whether it's professionally, particularly for, you know, women, non men of color, with
all the labor that we're performing and at the same time, all the ways in which white supremacy, gender oppression, queer phobia, fat phobia, how all of that is intersecting and putting us at additional layers of risk every day, professionally alone. And then at home, on the home front, for those of us who are mothers and caregivers and so on. And...
What really stood out for me in my reflections that day was let me voice this protest.
Faith & Jay (11:15.038)
even if it is to myself, like, let me say something so my body knows that I deserve better. Yeah. And I think the co-creation of a better life of better, more attuned communities begins in my, in my personal experience in that act of protest and truth telling with ourselves and naming the oppression. is immense power in naming something that has been
hidden and kept in the dark and just bringing it to light and seeing it for what it is. I think whether it's recovery from any form of abuse, trauma, know, the strain trauma of oppression, this naming and awakening and bringing to light of what is obscured is one of the first steps towards healing and restoration. Yeah. And I think just thinking about the response in my body as I listened to you.
there is the kind of eyes closed because you feel like you have to is such self abandonment. The weight of the system. yet in my own, I am complicit by not naming it or by making it being, it's just that I'm not organized enough. It's just that I haven't gotten enough.
Yeah, I didn't write for that entrepreneur grant. It's my fault. know? yes. I participate then. One of my other guests said that she was participating in her own sacrifice. Yes, the collusion into our own oppression. Yeah, yeah. How we're trained to do it. So true. So yeah, so that's pretty powerful that we can name it and there is liberation and just energy towards
What do we do next that starts with that place? And for many of us also the grieving of it. Yes, the grieving of That's a pretty real thing as well. Yes. When we had spoken before, you had broken down in relationships. I particularly enjoyed when you were doing this around financial, like financial couples. was kind of cool. But you broke down some of the invisible labor in relationships. And I wonder if you...
Faith & Jay (13:37.558)
summarize that I know that you might have resources and we can make it available in the show notes but for people who who are who just know that they're doing care and they're and they're and they're their business what else could be unearthed as labor thank you my gosh thank you so much firstly for that for that phrasing of unearthing it speaks to the idea of how it's buried so deliberately
in our psyches and our societies and in our, you know, in the ways in which we interact and relate to ourselves and each other. So that metaphor of unearthing is really powerful for me. So I want to thank you for it. And I'll be sharing with our audiences today. I'll try and summarize it, but just there was these labor categories that I discerned that women, non men are performing in.
in our relationships and I'm absolutely certain there are many parallels with their workplaces as well. So the first thing that I had made a note of was repair initiation labor. So this is when I find that women, non-men do more of the work of initiating repair disproportionately after minor or major conflict or disagreements. The other aspect of this that I had made a note of is what I call like resistance.
Moderation labor, which I think is so pertinent when it comes to racial and gender power dynamics, where we often find ourselves initiating high stress discussions around household labor inequities or financial inequities with partners who may be resisting or verbally or agreeing partially and not following up, but then we're not actually socialized to or safe to
protest that and we end up having to moderate or modulate that resistance and work around it and compromise with it. And that is so exhausting and so draining and a huge cause of burnout for women on men, I find. Very quickly, the other form of labor of notice is the stress regulation where we have to deprioritize self-regulation.
Faith & Jay (16:01.248)
when we are overwhelmed to soothe and help down regulate partners who may be doing a lot of dumping or emotional processing that's not consensual, or we may be doing this form of labor if we are caregivers, mothers, and if we are therapists, if we are in highly relational fields such as coaching that is feminist, trauma sensitive and so forth. And there's a lot of like social engagement labor
women, non men perform hosting events and social engagements where there's a lot of work being done to care for multiple folks as emotional and social needs. Even performing hospitality oftentimes as men, non men and sorry, oftentimes as men and sometimes white folks depending on the situation engage in leader. And finally, I think I made a note of educational labor which I think is so huge for women.
non men of color, it's stewarding emotional, sorry, educational conversations around patriarchy, around racism, and trying to hold the weight and massive risk of holding these conversations at all, but then also the risks to our own health and our own body and survivals.
Faith & Jay (17:23.976)
I mean, this list is so fantastic. As you were talking about the resistance moderation, I had a little rant on one of my previous episodes about the fact that as you encounter whatever the invisible labor is and the entity, the power that may be responsible for us, the advice that you're given is to do more work because when well-meaning people are trying to help you moderate this. So this is all this elaborate work around
Exactly. from the point of view of the person so that you can circumvent their power. Exactly. And you added 15 items to my list. Exactly. And we're still centering that person or that power. That power. It's not centering me. It's masquerading as support. It's, it's, and I was just like, no, I'm not adding 15 more things to my list. just, you know, and, and I think that's
the place where we do have to come to, whether that's the protest at the beginning, it's like, no, I can't add 15 more things to my list to work on this. then when you said power at leisure, I have to smile as I think about, as I do some of this labor, as I've mentioned with my son up at nights and when I was living with other folks and they're sleeping. And I'm just like, you're sleeping. You share responsibility. You're sleeping. I'm not
And so I just, yeah, this is a lovely list. And I know that these things exist in the workplace because these elements of labor, although as we're talking about them through gender and race lens, I heard you mention it to those lenses. tend to think that through the lens of any power identity we hold, people then will experience us as being at leisure, for example, in social engagement.
with the multiply marginalized identity. Yes. Whatever. So in case of, you know, disability ableism and for sure, if we are not attuned, then we are blind to their work. in those situations, we may be holding the power identity. And so as we think about this and our own awareness, our own beginning protest, how would we as a group of people
Faith & Jay (19:49.536)
If we wanted to form community around this so that we could bring healing for ourselves and shift how the society is functioning, imagine, I'm imagining pulling together, feminist founders imagine pulling together, know, 20 people. How would that help? How would it help? How does community and maybe organizing around this in terms of how help us, how do we help each other? Thank you. That's such a beautiful question.
And if I may, I'd like to respond to this also from a caregiving lens.
And what comes up for me around, like, how can we come together and how can we support each other? The first thing that comes up for me is curiosity and the query, the very honest query, like, what do you need? And to me as a caregiver, I feel like the foundation of trust building.
is somewhere very rooted in a compassionate, consensual curiosity about one another's needs and experiences. So we are not assuming on the basis of our own power identities in particular, what form of support may be needed, what form of visualization may be needed. And so we make it a point to
connect with ourselves and connect with each other and ask open-ended consensual queries that folks can opt out of, of course, any point around like what our needs actually are, because underneath our protest is a very long generational history of erased and violated needs, boundaries, and values. And so I think it's
Faith & Jay (21:53.662)
how we come together and how we can support each other. think one is just connecting with ourselves and asking ourselves about what it is that we need and the community providing the safety, safe enoughness for difficult, challenging truths to arise, particularly for folks who hold power identities and are socialized into not seeing
those threads of labor and power intertwining into violence. And so those are two things that come up for me. And the second is around care, which is seeing care is co-creation.
And like, attunement emotionally, as I was saying with understanding one another's needs, which allows us for, you know, delving into creativity around how those needs can be met together. So we're not falling into that right supremacy culture trap of individualism and I have to do it by myself and I have to do it perfect, perfectly. So those are my initial thoughts.
Yeah, there's really something so powerful about, used to say to people, people would say to me, I don't know what an autism mom needs. And I'm like, come over. Yes. Knock on the door. You out of me saying, I can't have you come in right now, but I might let you in. And when I let you in, you'll see me standing at the sink and I'm cutting carrots. And you know what you do? Go grab a carrot or maybe a peeler. there's participation. Yeah. There's just.
just step a little closer when we can't. We're too far. We're just standing too far. know? And it's a little closer. And it is risky. You won't get it right the first time. I may be annoyed and say, what are you doing or whatever. But that's a small thing to bear in the context of the labor of a person who is, we are not built for this. Everybody figure it out on our own. know? No, no. Right now.
Faith & Jay (24:10.766)
I was gonna say, right now, my adult kids are experimenting with the, can do it myself. And I'm like, it's not, you know, you will find out that you can't. It's just, it's not built that way. And so, yeah. Yes. And may I add just one more thing, which is trusting the assessments of impacted groups and impacted individuals. Yeah. And seeing them as
reliable and trustworthy, not just that in assessing and communicating their needs, but holding the actual authority in the situation around what their needs are and how those needs are to be met in a way that is safe, supportive and consensual for all involved person in the care that we are co-creating. So I feel like as a caregiver, like, and then for those of us who are chronically ill disabled folks, which I am as well,
is that experience of invalidation that is woven throughout our lives. That when we have a concern, when we are giving very clear warnings sometimes about our needs and how depleted we are or how exhausted we are. And there's this social tendency in my experience to downplay that, to minimize that.
condescend to that. And sometimes folks are doing it because they think they're trying to build up your morale or they're trying to get you to see the brighter side of things. And it's like, I think the most important thing we can do is not give false assurances for our own comfort and convenience and to actually learn to sit with and listen. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, it's a way to enter into the discomfort. You know, many of us don't want to be
don't want to feel that discomfort. Really seeing, you so we try to perk up the other person. Yes, exactly. But we can just enter into that person's like pain with them. I think that's where the trust building begins. So in wrapping up, I have a sentence here that I'm wondering, for a few of us, how we would complete it. So when I make my invisible labor visible, I can. I wonder how would you complete that? When I make...
Faith & Jay (26:36.782)
invisible labor visible. I love it. This is perfect. I obviously I want to thank you for this statement. It's so healing and I think I could write pages about this. I'm to be using it as a journal prompt later today. I would, may I ask you to repeat the sentence again, please? just want to make sure I say it correctly when I repeat it back to you. When I make my invisible labor visible, I can.
Okay, when I make my invisible labor visible, I can start living. wow. wow. That's such a contrast. Right. The weight of it is the not living, the surviving. Yes. I have been thinking about it so much that for those of us carrying these forms of labor, the very things we need to do in order to survive
keep us from living. Yeah.
boy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so this, this making it visible and the grieving that's needed is halfway to life. It is. is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And if in future we have another conversation, I would love to speak about the intersection of grief and pleasure and this form of healing. So that's cool. We should definitely, we should definitely make that happen.
So Jay, thank you. Thank you for the conversation. And we'll have all your information in the show notes. But I think just anybody who is in either it's about burnouts or pre-burnouts or about any stage of relationship. I really just so respect the quality and the depth of the work you do where this is concerned because you've evolved it from the point of view of power.
Faith & Jay (28:30.604)
Yes. The power analysis has to be built into how we think about relationships right now. Just honoring your work and thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kate. Thank you,