The majority of female leaders pay to outsource some level of home help, but many are still shy to admit it, Fortune reported Dec. 7.
Fortune, career platform the Muse and women's career community Fairygodboss polled 400 female directors, managers, vice presidents, C-suite executives and founders regarding their use of hired help. They found that two-thirds of working women with at least one direct report pay for some form of hired help — a number that leaps to 75 percent among vice presidents, C-suite executives and founders.
On average, women spend $500 per month on such services, from grocery delivery and cleaning services to child care and personal trainers, according to Fortune.
But women are 29 percent more likely than men to believe they have to "do it all themselves without paid help," according to a report referenced by Fortune. Some do not want to admit to asking for help at home, afraid it could make them seem ineffective at work.
"Women have been given this idea in how we were raised — or what we saw in the media — that our job is to make other people's lives easier and to take care of other people," Sarah Bond, Microsoft's corporate vice president for game creator experience and ecosystem at Xbox, told Fortune. "And so when you do something to take care of yourself, or give yourself balance, you feel bad about it."
However, outsourcing tasks like laundry and grocery shopping allows many executives to be present for what is most important — both at home and in the workplace, they told Fortune. Ms. Bond said it allows her to give her teams the "best of [her] thinking."
"I'm so aware that for a woman executive to stand up and say, 'Yeah, I have a housekeeper and I have a nanny and I have a whatever' — it's not very inspiring to somebody who may be at a different level in their career," Sarah Mensah, vice president and general manager of Nike North America, told Fortune — but being realistic about how it all gets done, "even if it's not glamorous," is a necessary step in stopping the stigma.