Dana Burland

Update, update! We've got walls! We're more than halfway through the construction . 2.5 months down, about 1 and some change to go. This. Is. Cool.  Everything is coming together. The blueprint is standing up in real life. This project has not been terribly disruptive to our day-to-day, but it's a disruption none the less.  I'd love to have our bedroom back. It would be great not to be sharing a bathroom with the boys. Ideally my clothes wouldn't be in A's closet and the spices and seasonings wouldn't be living in a pot in the front living room.  We're making it work, I just feel scattered. We're only a few weeks away from looking back at this time and saying "hey, that wasn't so bad", and "wow, was the disruption worth it". 

You know what young me really took a backseat on? Advocating for my career growth. Forget backseat, I rearview mirrored career growth aspirations during the years I was having kids, thinking these personal choices made me a worse, less focused employee. I became a manager about 5 years after my similarly-experienced husband. And you know what? Being a mom unequivocally makes me a BETTER manager and employee. Women make up 47% of the workforce, and commonly face this “broken rung” experience: a barrier to leadership advancement due to late initial promotion to management compared to men. Another contributing factor beyond childrearing is the unconscious bias of agentic/male vs communal/female traits. At work men are expected to be confident, assertive, ambitious, dominant, and individualistic. Women are expected to be nurturing, warm, supportive, friendly, and gentle. Research indicates both men and women prefer managers with agentic traits.  The “Catch 22” ...