From the Women at Work podcast:

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Women are expected and asked to do thankless tasks — order lunch, handle less-valued clients — more than men, and research shows that doing those tasks slows down our career advancement and makes us unhappy at work. We talk about why we wind up with so much office drudgery and how to get some of it off our plates. Guests: Lise Vesterlund and Ruchika Tulshyan.

Could you take notes? Would you mind ordering lunch? We need someone to organize the off-site event — can you do that? Whether you’ve just started your career or are the CEO of the company, if you’re a woman, people expect you to do routine, time-consuming tasks that no one else wants to do.

We talk with University of Pittsburgh economics professor Lise Vesterlund about why women get stuck with — even volunteer for! — tasks that won’t show off our skills or get us promoted, and how that slows down our career advancement and makes us unhappy at work. Women of color are asked to do more low-promotability projects, and we talk with inclusion strategist Ruchika Tulshyan about how they can say no. Lise and Ruchika tell us how they’ve handled these kinds of requests and what managers can do to assign work fairly.

Guests:

Lise Vesterlund is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh. She is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ruchika Tulshyan is the author of The Diversity Advantage: Fixing Gender Inequality in the Workplace and the founder of Candour, an inclusion strategy firm. She is also adjunct faculty at Seattle University.

Resources:

• • “Why Women Volunteer for Tasks That Don’t Lead to Promotions,” by Linda Babcock, Maria P. Recalde, and Lise Vesterlund
  • “Women of Color Get Asked to Do More “Office Housework.” Here’s How They Can Say No.” by Ruchika Tulshyan
  • “For Women and Minorities to Get Ahead, Managers Must Assign Work Fairly,” by Joan C. Williams and Marina Multhaup
  • “‘Office Housework’ Gets in Women’s Way,” by Deborah M. Kolb and Jessica L. Porter 

Email us here: womenatwork@hbr.org

Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

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