By Steve Ireri.
The ‘Work wife’ concept emerged a long time ago, when workplaces were beginning see the importance of having secretaries, who helped managers be more effective in their chores. Since then, the concept has greatly mutated to infer to unique, platonic friendships, between female work colleagues characterized by close emotional bonds, high levels of disclosure and support, and mutual trust and honesty.
- Women should lay aside the unnecessarily tumultuous pursuit for equality and positively engage their fellow female colleagues to build better versions of themselves.
The phrase ‘work wife’ emerged a long time ago hence the struggle with most people to accurately understand it. There before, it was used to refer to secretaries upon whom male bosses mainly depended on. However, even with much fluctuations that have significantly seen the workplace become modernized, the idea did not disappear, but evolved in some incredible ways, to now relegate to, alliances between female colleagues who due to their close ties, commit to help each other out, so they can become better workers. For this, while secretaries have become widely popular ‘work wives’ can only correlate to relationships between work colleagues, more specifically, females ones, as they are more inclined to building lasting relationships that are more likely to spur progress unlike with their male counterparts.
The ‘work wives’ idea can be of a considerably big implication in this century given the much battles that women have found themselves into in the midst of their pursuits to uncover equality. While even the highly heated campaigns by women to fight for equality, alongside the influence of already successful women to prove that women truly have what it takes have become popular in the recent days, the progress towards equality remains quite uneventful.
Hence the answer to this imbalance lies not in seeking an outright equality against men but rather on women seeking to achieve the most in their areas of work, by endorsing each other, through the understanding that each of them can act like a secretary to the other and easily tap into bigger heights of productivity, akin to their male counterparts. The work wife’ concept was for the very first time, highlighted in publications in a book called, Work Wife: The Power of Female Friendship to Drive Successful Businesses. Although the book to a big extent delved much on explaining the history of the concept, it partly elucidated that because the idea has gone out of existence, it can presently be remembered with the reintroduction of ‘work wife’ and “work husband” to refer to anyone who serves as your go-to, can’t-live-without partner, in the workplace. This work spouse relationship is not a real marriage, but a platonic partnership with powerful prospect for innovation.
So far the many challenges women are facing continue to necessitate the urge of reinventing the work wife concept. For instance one of the commonly known challenges is that of funding for their startups, where they get a lot less investor funding unlike with their male counterparts. Ever since the late year’s, problem has on several occasions given women a headache. Early-stage investors who have female executives has increased from 5% to 15% since 1999. Their constant woe however has been that these women aside doing other errands so well, struggle when it comes to securing funding. According to reports, even though women-led enterprises bring in approximately 12% more revenue than companies run by male CEOs, less than 3% of venture-backed companies are run by women.
To overcome the funding gap, some women, have committed to become spouses of their fellow women through the ‘work wife’ idea and launched their own VC firms so as to not be left out. This, unlike when they are manning these startups solo or when they are working freely without accepting the fact that they need to lo join hands instead of struggling with equality campaigns, easily empowers them to garner the much needed skills on how to win funding opportunities with big companies or by allowing them to learn how to effectively apply for business grants and loans from organizations committed specifically committed to furthering the advancement of female entrepreneurs.
However, the biggest disadvantage is that the existing traditional corporate culture promotes a dog-eat-dog atmosphere in which female coworkers see each other as rivals. In the past few decades, however, huge shifts in teamwork and leadership belief are signaling a new—and by some measure more feminine—approach. The work wife books writers say that slow but steady progress toward dismantling male dominance at the office has carved out space for women to collaborate instead of compete professionally which sets the stage for change. Among other things, work wife favors women and especially entrepreneurs to succeed with forming healthy partnerships, because it highlights how balancing responsibilities supports individual “superpowers.”
Because women have a bigger tendency of being cooperative unlike with men, the new business reality built through work wife collaboration has taught them the need of supporting individual strengths toward a common goal—on a professional and emotional level.
Role models challenge.
One other major challenge barring the success if the work wife idea, is the fact that women face the scarcity of female role models especially entrepreneurs who can easily bestow the advice ‘don’t be afraid to make mistakes’. Truly women don’t get to higher heights over fears that embarrassments might come their way, if they made mistakes. However, although mentors would easily instill this lesson to them, women need to follow their passions so possibly they can become their own mentors.
Entrepreneurship or running a business is risky and entails unforeseen circumstances. But because women have the advantage of building very deep connections with fellow women in the workplace, they are more edged to reap the most from the ‘work wife’ model. Possibly the messages they should pass around everyday should pertain how they should never fear failure; and that one will never try if they keep on fearing failing. The fact that each of them dreads failing eventually introduces toxicity creating workplaces of hatred and envy. As a result, they will fail in business even when they were meant to succeed.
Work Wife was jotted down with the idea of such feminine dilemmas in mind. Avoiding burnout or even fearing that your startup won’t make it out alive and you will have to suffer the embarrassment of closing it down, will call for incompetency of women even in some skills they were built to handle way better than their male counterparts. Work wives are demonstrating that this is possible in myriad ways. Work Wife “is advocating for a reimagining of work.” If women in business can find their perfect business partner, it will not only help them realize their own career goals, but perhaps disrupt the greater business world for the better. Says the concept.
ManagersMag 