The No Club

March 7, 2022
Whether they’re being asked to chair a committee or bring coffee to a meeting, women need to learn to say no, argue economics professor Babcock, former communications professor Brenda Peyser, economics professor Lise Vesterlund, and organizational professor Laurie R. Weingart in this forceful if cursory guide. For many women, the authors write, the real time-sucks are the “non-promotable tasks” that don’t help with career advancement. This dead-end work is sometimes allocated unconsciously—women, for example, are asked disproportionately to take meeting notes—and sometimes due to misguided equity efforts, as when a university proudly announced that its committees were made up of 50% women, but its faculty skewed male so women had to serve on more than double the committees as men did. From a law firm associate who missed billable hours to help with recruitment to a bartender who lost tips while training staff, the authors provide dozens of examples of the non–career-advancing work that eats up women’s time, though to diminishing effect. They offer advice, too, such as how to figure out which tasks are promotable and which aren’t, how to avoid the negative repercussions of saying no, and how managers can redistribute work. The advice is solid stuff, but the authors’ tendency to restate their case and flood the book with predictable examples make end up making the going rather slow. This is likely to leave readers wanting.

March 15, 2022
A guide for achieving balance and equity in the workplace. Overwhelmed at work, Babcock, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon, invited a group of her colleagues to get together to discuss why it is often difficult for women to turn down requests for their time--particularly regarding "non-promotable tasks." Each of these assignments "was critical to the organization, but wasn't going to earn her praise, a raise, or a promotion. It was invisible unless she messed it up." Along with Babcock, Peyser, Vesterlund, and Weingart--all of whom also have years of experience in the business, communications, and academic arenas--hope to share what they learned with other women facing similar struggles in the workplace. Based on their research, including "experiments, surveys, interviews, and organizational data on how employees spent their time," the authors clearly show that women are much more likely to be asked to perform such tasks, versus their male counterparts, as well as to accept such requests. This situation is often driven by unfounded expectations. "We think it is our own voice compelling us to feel guilty for not saying yes, and our own voice telling us to be offended when a woman says no," they write. "But it's not us! It is the collective expectation that women will take on the non-promotable work." Placing such an unfair burden on women can lead to countless problems, from career stagnation to excessive stress to serious health issues. The authors also argue that organizations as a whole would benefit if employees were to share nonpromotable tasks, which leads to an engaged workforce that can attract and maintain the best talent. Although the facts that the authors marshal won't surprise many readers, women struggling to turn down requests will find comfort knowing they are not alone. They will also learn valuable tips for changing the status quo, including how to craft an effective no and avoid the traps that lead to yes. Sound guidance for sparking change in organizations.

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April 1, 2022
How do women employees so often get roped into nonproductive, nonpromotable tasks at work? It could be chairing an affinity group, organizing an after-work celebration, or leading a group charged with conference planning. This book's four professor-authors, friends who work in the fields of economics and communications, started the original "No Club" out of their own frustration with this issue; here they help to define what Rosabeth Moss Kanter dubbed "office housework" and showcase the detriment it causes to both individuals and organizations. Almost every chapter includes some sort of personal exercise aimed at understanding the true cost of commitments and the toll they take on everything from family to mental health. The authors' research and subsequent how-tos are outstanding. Women uniformly do more nonpromotable tasks than men do, the authors prove, before underscoring how to say no and pragmatically outlining how to move an organization's culture away from such tasks. Heads nodding? The advice proffered here will last a work-time. Appended with "How to Start a 'No Club, '" a glossary of terms, references, and notes.

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