5 Insights about Self-Care for Professional Women in Fiji
I was curious to ask my female colleagues about their self-care attitudes and practices, so I polled them. The respondents all identified as female. My aim was to examine any differences between the presence of collective care policies, attitudes, and behaviors around self-care. I was not disappointed, nor surprised.
Of the respondents, 55% work in the feminist space, so one might expect them to be more in tune with self-care practices. Indeed 100% of respondents stated that self-care was important to them. A sizable 82% said they had functioning collective care initiatives in their workplaces e.g. one or more of these: policy, wellness program, coaching, or counseling.
So far, so good.
When asked if they mostly feel cared about at work, 82% said yes, and 91% said they can be themselves at work, with another 73% saying they felt optimistic about their work, but 37% saying they felt guilty about taking breaks. Yet almost half (47%) said they found it hard to say no to tasks to avoid becoming overloaded with work, 55% said they are not compassionate with themselves most of the time, and 55% stated they often work over and beyond regular work hours.
Notice the changes? There’s more.
While 64% of respondents said they feel they are mostly effective in helping others practice care in a feminist way, a substantial 73% said they do not engage in self-care daily, with 73% also saying they do not feel balanced from day to day. What does this mean and how might we explain these results? Let’s break it down, with the caveat that these might be correlations or speculations based on my experience working with teams in Fiji, and we would need proper research to understand the real causes:
- Inadequate Collective Care Programs: Just because a workplace has a functioning collective care policy or initiative does not guarantee that women will be practicing self-care and feeling balanced from day to day. This may happen because collective care programs and policies might emphasize a once a week exercise event or team bonding lunches, without looking deeper at the need for setting boundaries and prioritizing self-care to prevent burnout.
- Ingrained Norms: Organizational culture may encourage inclusivity, positivity and flexibility, allowing team members to feel like they can show up as their whole selves, and maintain positive attitudes about work, but overwork, “busy” culture, and burnout might be ingrained into this type of work culture too, which might help explain why team members feel cared about and positive, but are still having trouble saying no to overloading themselves. Another reason could be Pacific culture, in which we don’t say no directly, but say yes and then get into trouble because we can’t do the additional tasks. Yet another reason could be people-pleasing – a trauma response in which we seek subconsciously or consciously to not upset our team mates and supervisors, and avoid conflict or even disagreement.
- Internalized Patriarchy: It’s also a patriarchal stance to work yourself to the bone, be stoic, and avoid self-care to appear strong and avoid seeming weak. While feminists tend to tout care as a radical and political act of defiance against the patriarchy, many feminists work excessively and are experiencing burnout.
- Feminist Guilt: Another tendency is to feel guilty because there’s so much to do to advance the cause of feminism that it never feels like one is doing enough, and feminists feel guilty for resting or taking breaks.
- Cognitive Dissonance: There is often a disconnect between attitudes and behaviors, which could explain why feminists succeed in helping others engage in care practices but fall short when it comes to their own self-care. These feminists are saying that self-care is important to them, but do not engage in self-care daily themselves, do not feel a sense of balance from day to day, and are not compassionate with themselves. We can imagine how much better they would be able to work if they did their own self-care and worked from the resulting balance.
Share with me your own self-care practices – are you meeting your goals?
