Tamsen Fadal: He says, just tell me what needs to be done and I'll do it. Fair or not fair?
Eve Rodsky: 1 trillion percent not fair.
Tamsen Fadal: Your partner gets home from work and needs an hour to decompress before helping with the kids. I can see your face. I don't even need you to answer.
Eve Rodsky: What we found in our study, the more women held, the more they were likely to have insomnia, hair loss, autoimmune, specifically Hashimoto's and SSRIs.
Tamsen Fadal: Fair Play author Eve Rodsky is on the Tamsen Show today to expose the invisible work behind your exhaustion, the resentment it creates, and how to finally get your partner to take ownership without you managing everything. Eve, it is so great to see you.
Eve Rodsky: Oh, Tamsen, I'm so glad to be here. In person finally. I feel like we've communicated online for a very long time following each other every step of the way as we've continued to grow up through the years.
Tamsen Fadal: You wrote Fair Play in 2019. A lot has changed Yes, in the last 7 years. But for people who maybe did not read it when it first came out or just learning about it at the time, there was no language for what we call mental load or what you have coined mental load. Can you talk a little bit about Fair Play and what mental load is for women?
Eve Rodsky: Thank you Tamsen for having me. Thank you for being also a cultural warrior, gender justice advocate. It's hard work. It's work that can burn us out. So I love that we can be sort of sisters in like the fight. And you're right. So 20 11 is actually when I had my blueberries breakdown I call it now because there are moments in life where there really are before and after. And I talk about this in the book but literally in 2011 when women had problems because we didn't have social media, we didn't have you, we didn't have podcasts, we just blamed ourselves, right?
It was an isolated incident. Patriarchy makes us blame ourselves. And that was what was happening to me. I had a blueberries breakdown in my car. My husband Seth sent me text that said, I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries. And I think I'd love to help all our audience sort of picture the scene. I had a breast pump and a diaper bag in the passenger seat of my car. Again, this is 2011. I just had a newborn baby. His name is Ben. I had a 3-year-old in a toddler transition program. I was racing to get that that toddler from his transition program.
We don't have universal childcare in America. So those programs are like a million dollars and they last like 10 minutes. I have gifts for a newborn baby in the backseat of my car that I'm about I want to return. I have a client contract in my lap because not only was it hard enough to have two little kids, but my workplace was telling me that if I wanted to come back, that two things had to happen. I had to lose my direct reports because they were already given to someone else. And that if I wanted to breastfeed, it would have to be in a broom closet because there was an open office plan and there was no outlet.
So I need to bring a battery pack. So I was already feeling abandoned from my workplace. And I had quit. Now I say I was forced out to start my own law firm. So being so abandoned and starting something new was already stressful. Having a newborn baby was already stressful. Having a 3-year-old in a toddler transition program with limited childcare was stressful. And then on top of that, Seth decides to send me that text. I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries. And so, Tamsen, I'll tell you what happened that day. I pulled over on the side of the road and I just started sobbing.
And what I remember about that day, I think the most was that I was thinking blaming myself as I said earlier, right? We didn't have the beautiful resources we have now. So I was just blaming myself thinking, how did I become the fulfiller of my husband's smoothie needs? Like that's really what I was thinking. And if I just known I think in that moment in 2011 that women shoulder two thirds or more of what it takes to run a home and family, regardless of whether they have children. They shoulder the care of their partners in all scenarios. Yeah.
And also the non-promotable tasks of the workplace. So, I think if I just had known that, or if I had known that there was a word called mental load, or if I had known there was a word called invisible labor that was actually coined in the 1980s but we're Gen X, so we thought that the generation before us had had solved everything for us. Of course. And that having it all, you know, This was having it all. Yeah, was going to be possible. I think if I knew that that was all a lie, then I wouldn't have been crying on the side of the road, right? So that that was the day that I ultimately write about because after that everything changed because my awareness changed.
Obviously nothing changed that day. I still was crying in my car. I don't even think I communicated my sadness to Seth, my husband that day. And yes, we're still married. But it started an awareness similar, I'm sure how you felt when you start to study menopause where you start to see it everywhere and then it just became an obsession.
Tamsen Fadal: What is that the day that you realized that you were the "she-fault" person? Was that that day?
Eve Rodsky: Well, it evolved. I'll tell you one more story because I think it's important. So when you become aware of something as you know, right? I'm sure you see menopause everywhere now, right? It's everywhere. It's every conversation, every dinner party, every everywhere. Yeah. And it's hard to not talk about it because hey, you're the expert, but also be you want to raise awareness if someone is not fully aware of what's happening. So right after that blueberries moment, Blueberry Gate I was able to support a friend who had been diagnosed with breast cancer and this was early.
I mean I must have been 35 at the time. Say you were probably very young, right? And some turning 50 this year. So she was diagnosed. It was a Saturday morning. This must have been just a couple of months after the blueberries situation and we were there were 10 women with us and they were all accomplished. They're like you. I mean, they were they're just the best, most badass, gritty, wonderful women. One was a one is a stroke and trauma doctor at a major hospital. One is a award-winning producer. Anyway, they're just amazing women. And so this Saturday, we're all in pink.
We're carrying signs, you know, not just a women's problem about, you know, breast cancer. It just it was like a girlfriend's getaway almost. It was just this really nice Saturday morning. And we were what started to happen was women who were very loud and awesome and fun and we had this great morning. Around noon started to get really quiet. And so again, I never would have noticed this but for my blueberry situation. But I started to just see like what is happening? Like what why are these women It's a Saturday. They're not working. What are they doing on their phones?
So I'm looking over their shoulders and I'm noticing that they're responding to texts from their husbands. Not everybody was married to a man, but most of us were. And they're responding to texts. You know, texts that that I still have from today from the screenshots like when are you coming home from the parade? When is the babysitter coming? Yeah, where is Charlie's pants? I can't go to the park cuz you didn't leave me clothes. And and the one that still sits on my laptop because it is another life-changing experience was my friend Kate's husband.
Remember, this is noon on a Saturday. And he texted her, do the kids need to eat lunch? And so there was something very profound about the fact that those strong women did not actually shut their phones off. They left me. They did not honor our dim sum reservation in downtown LA. They left and said, I left my partner with too much to do. It's my fault. That's basically what I was hearing in 2011. And so this is my first piece of research because I am trained I'm a trained attorney, but I'm also trained in the disciplines of economics, organizational management, sociology, and anthropology.
So what I did was I asked them just to help me count up how many phone calls and texts we had received. And so we had 30 phone calls and 46 texts for 10 women over 30 minutes. Wow. I'd say that was the day where I realized that I was onto something, that it wasn't just me. And I think when you the first, right? You have to bring sunlight, right? Sunlight is the best disinfectant. I'm sure you feel that about your the menopause journey and the advocacy you're doing. I felt that way too. Like there has to be a sunlight to the fact that there's something wrong here.
Tamsen Fadal: And there's no question about that. And I wonder now seven years later when you have you know, Fair Play, if somebody knows what it is, they know what it is. If they don't know, they figure it out very quickly in terms of understanding it. You have made it very clear what to do if you don't see it and how to see it. I'm curious, seven years later, what does mental load and Fair Play look like? Because we've been through a lot in the world. You're older, I'm older, kids are older. You start moving into this next part of your life very quickly.
Eve Rodsky: Yes. I will say that the best thing that ever happened to gender justice in the home I believe is COVID. So obviously there's a lot of pain. But when I tell you, I launched Fair Play in 2019, October 1st, 2019. So that was what? Six months before the pandemic. Yeah. And I brought it to Davos in January of 2020. And in front of all these men, I came with Procter & Gamble who felt this was an important message and they had never seen a sort of a solution to the mental load. They had heard of it, and they in fact had a share the load campaign in India, which sounded too much like porn to me.
I'm like not sharing anybody's load. So I changed it to, you know, close the chore gap. But Thank you for that. Yes, yes. So we launched in these all men's male spaces and I was asking for very small things like flexibility in the workplace and understanding that the motherhood penalty is 80% of the pay gap and trying to educate men. And the most important thing that I think I said that day, which is the one sentence that Fair Play is predicated on, which is why we now have a billion impressions on TikTok and we're translated in over 30 countries and, it's become a movement with the Policy Institute, is that the home is an organization.
And I would say that in January of 2020 I don't think many men understood that premise, which is a pretty basic premise cuz the way I define organizations is it's a group of people trying to you know, step forward towards a common goal. And by the time that COVID hit and we had and so many of us had to come back into our homes, men all of a sudden were like, wait, my home's an organization. You know, how is it that my aunt Marian's Mahjong group, who you don't bring snack twice to the group you're out, how does that have more clearly defined expectations than my home?
My wife and I, and this happened in same sex couples too, but this is a hetero cisgender problem because it's about men and time and how they protect their leisure time. But that was it, you know? Either it was women who were telling me they wanted out of their marriages cuz their partner locked themselves in a room and assumed that they were going to take a hit in their career, or men who now, all of a sudden, were trying to teach math to their sons and daughters and try to work and say, "I don't understand how my wife ever did this." It was a full fundamental shake up where finally people understood the home as an organization.
Tamsen Fadal: Yeah, it was it was a full awakening. There's no question that there was a real awakening there because you couldn't escape it. There was nowhere really there was nowhere to go. I mean, maybe outside, but barely there. So when you look at where it is now for you, what has changed? Because I know that and I want to go into the "should I do" list to talk about this operating system and organization. But what has changed for you as you look back at that? Because you have generations now learning about it. I'm I'm sure especially when you're talking about TikTok, people looking at it from all different ways and from all different ages.
What changed for you?
Eve Rodsky: Think I'm less patient, if that makes sense. So I can home in on a relationship really quickly. They call it a saturation point from sociology where you just know what's happening. And so I'm less patient, meaning that there is a secret formula for the home. And we can talk a little bit about how I ultimately developed this. But yeah, so over 15 years, what I found in my data and we and this is not just me speaking we have a USC study. We have multiple studies that show that Fair Play works. But basically, what is Fair Play? Fair Play became an idea where I'll give you a background of what advice we got in 2011.
Again, I wonder how you feel about the early menopause advice compared to what you give women today. The advice in 2011 was if you're so overwhelmed, make a list. So I did that, Tamsen. I did it. I You make a list. I made the list. It's called the Should I Do spreadsheet. I started to make it after the breast cancer march. I started to call up women and say what is it that is invisible to your partner that takes more than two minutes. What are some of the things? Every making lunches for your kids for school, making dental appointments, researching the dentist, people started to weigh in about things I never would have thought of, Girl Scout cookies, ordering and sales.
I put down two minutes for the application of sunscreen for kids. Then one woman said to me, well, you have to add the 30 minutes for the chase. Cuz they toddlers run away. So, obviously, you know, there were 60 tabs in this Excel spreadsheet that were applicable to people without children and then 40 additional ones for people with kids. So, it just kept growing. It ended up being over 2,000 items of invisible work. But I think this is an important thing. I'm a lawyer that literally focuses on how to make organizations better. That that's my day job.
I work for families that look like the HBO show Succession. You should feel bad for me. But for years, I went into those types of families and I helped them with their succession. And on the premise that the home is an organization, your family's an organization, and you have to use systems to make that organization better. That worked and I absolutely loved my job. But what I wasn't doing was using that same expertise in my home. So, when I handed Seth this 2,000 item spreadsheet I did over email Right. With no context, just can't wait to discuss.
And you can imagine how he responded. It was like an early pixelated emoji of the like see no evil monkey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't even get like the three monkey trio, just like a see no evil. And then I remember thinking, okay, lists alone don't work.
Tamsen Fadal: No. And so is that? Why is that? Is it because it's so overwhelming? Is it
Eve Rodsky: List list don't work because the only thing that works is systems. We know that from 50 years of organizational management research. A system again, people are afraid of the word organization. I defined it for you. People are afraid of the word system. They're like, well, why is my home a system? It should be about love and care. Right? No, a system is just making decisions in advance so you don't have to make the decision when emotion is high and cognition is low.
Tamsen Fadal: So, give me an example of that in inside the home with somebody that's kids or not kids, it doesn't matter. What what is that mean?
Eve Rodsky: Okay, so an example would be so let's talk about the meals tab. So that was the Excel. The Should I Do spreadsheet evolved into 100 cards. And the beauty is that in again like I said over 30 countries in 15 years there's nothing missing from the metaphor of the Fair Play cards. There's obviously they're actual cards too, but we're a nonprofit institute. If anybody needs resources, they can't afford anything, we're happy to give you these resources. But when you look at the 100 cards, nothing is missing. And the premise is very basic organizational management premise.
Most powerful organizations I'll give you an example. If I walked into your office and you hired me as your producer or even as your intern Tamsen and I said to you, hey, what should I be doing today? I'm going to wait here till you tell me what to do. And I did that to you for a week straight. I just I can't imagine that I would be working for you, right? So I want to I want I want like when people take initiative, right? Right? I mean so like obviously that's how we do in the workplace, but we allow that behavior in the home. I mean these men should be fired in seven days.
And you keep them for years? I mean it makes no sense to me, right? The most powerful women I saw, the happiest women I saw had three words that I kept writing down in my notes, which was court ordered custody. But but I did grow up in a divorced family. There was a lot of trauma there. I still liked my husband, but I knew that I was not going to live in that dynamic. And so the first thing I did was replace list with the three things I know that I teach my clients that organizations need, whether it's your home organization or your work organization.
All successful organizations need and this is my formula. People do it differently, but this is how I look at it. We need boundaries, systems, and communication. And so once I put that on my board and I realized okay, well it's going to be easiest to start with systems, because I know that the most successful organizations do something like a DRI model, DRI meaning directly responsible individual. Typical project management is broken down into conception. You think of an idea, you plan the idea, and then you execute on it. So that's where I started.
I started with the idea of conception, planning, execution. I took the spreadsheet, I made it 100 cards, and the premise was if Seth started to own cards, it didn't have to be 50/50, would it change my life?
Tamsen Fadal: What's a card? Your meal prep.
Eve Rodsky: Okay, so you asked for one example. So let's talk about extracurricular sports. Okay. So and then we can talk about meals. But the first one I started with, because I was holding literally all the cards Of course you were. And I was trying to maintain a job, and that's why I had the blueberry breakdown. And I actually couldn't believe it. My husband was executing on some of the cards. Like he would transport our kids to school if I asked. Sure. He would bring the balloons to a birthday party. But these were all like what I call now the random assignment of tasks, a rat.
Some people call it nagging. So we started with extracurricular sports, because I actually was so shocked that when I said to Seth, you know, I think we should move to an ownership mindset, he's like, well, obviously I own extracurricular sports. And he thought he was owning it by showing up to the field every Saturday for my three-year-old. And I was so confused because these little leagues, even at like three, I mean, youth sports is that's a whole other podcast. Thing. That's a donor organization that I'm paid labor for that. But he genuinely thought he was and I was like, well, what about how did you know what league to be in?
How did you know what sports to play? You want to see the text chain with the other like toddler moms that that I'm on? How did you know which league to be in? How did you know which AYSO to join? How did you know which friend group our child was in? How did you know or did you know that Zach wears sunscreen and brings a water bottle? Did you know that we rotate on snack? Oh my God. Did you know that we do a coach's gift at the end of the year? And he and I was like, did you know that there's a practice schedule? It just like magically appears on your calendar.
What do you think that's like a calendar fairy?
Tamsen Fadal: Was he stunned?
Eve Rodsky: Yeah, he was stunned by the amount of conception and planning behind his execution. And frankly, he was embarrassed. I think that's the good news. You know if you're married, if people out there are like, well I could never bring this to my partner, if someone's embarrassed by that you can you can enter the Fair Play world. If someone is defensive and angry and says, well I make the money and this is [expletive] who cares if you sign up, leave. Literally that's how I feel now 15 years later. Like leave that marriage. I used to say I can help you and we can work on Fair Play together.
No, if you don't have a willing partner who sees your struggle after 15 years, I'd say that's my biggest difference. I have a lot less empathy. I want women out.
Tamsen Fadal: Because it takes so much out of the other areas of their life. What what does it take out of a woman's life with her not realizing it, invisibly take out of her life over the years? Cut away out throughout the years.
Eve Rodsky: I introduced a concept that I kept seeing over and over again as I would interview women about how much domestic labor they did. And as we said, whether it's extracurricular sports or meal planning or the medical and healthy living for your child or in-laws management or middle of the night comfort. I mean you can go on and on with what these that's what the Fair Play cards are. They're divided into four suits. There's home, caregiving, magic, and out. Caregiving and magic suits. The reason why I have them as suits like a literal card deck is because so many well-meaning men would say to me, well if she's so overwhelmed she can get help.
And so I wanted to prove that in the home organization there are 50 cards that are not outsourceable. In 20 over 20 countries people checked the box. I would not outsource my middle of the night comfort. No one's home. Someone has to hug our child in the middle of the night. I can outsource in-laws management. As as much as I love my nanny, Alexia, she's not deciding whether my child's adenoids are being taken out. That labor takes so much time. But in the process of hearing about that labor, what I heard was the labor becomes so overwhelming that you start to lose First you lose your career because you get pushed out of the workplace Yep.
By your partner and by your workplace. And often women make that calculation because they're paid less. So so vicious cycle. Because if I'm paid less, so I lean more into my husband's career as I was doing in 2011, then of course I'm going to do more unpaid labor. And then you start getting well, she's just eating Bon Bons all day, right? So you get you get disparaged for doing work that is not valuable in society. So you're sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't. So then after that, what women would say to me was that they stopped going to their husbands or their partners' cocktail parties.
This was the saddest thing to hear. They would say to me that they had nothing to talk about. That what would happen is someone would say to them, what do you do? And they would say, I used to be in journalism or I used to be a lawyer. I was you know, men would start saying, well she used to be top of her class in Harvard you know, the MBA program or even like she used to be a dental hygienist. I mean she stays home with the kids. But now she stays home with the kids. And again, this we interviewed all classes, people who identified as working poor all the way to the elite, the 1%.
And it was the same for these women who said that the second they said they stay home with their kids, people would leave to refresh their drink. And then they would lose confidence because they felt they had nothing to talk about. And then they lost pride in themselves. And it was just a very painful interviews to have. And so I wrote a whole book about reclaiming. I call it unicorn space, not cuz I love unicorns, but because this idea of having magical space for women ourselves outside of being a parent, partner, and a professional is literally fantastical.
Like it is a unicorn. It does not exist until you reclaim it. And that's what I was very interested in getting women to that place.
Tamsen Fadal: And necessary to even see that it that it's a possibility.
Eve Rodsky: Yes.
Tamsen Fadal: So I'm thinking as you're talking, I was thinking about this. There's so many women. I had dinner recently with a woman and I sat down and she's like, I'm so I love I love all your content. I love following you. And I said, well, I said, tell me a little about you. And she said, oh, I've raised kids for 20 years. I don't have anything right now. I'm trying to figure out who I am. And I said, well, what did you do before you were raising kids? What what just tell me about you? And so we wound up because the husbands were talking and they're talking about like business or money or whatever it was.
And and listening to I could feel her just like lost. And so I do think about it. I'm 55 now. You're about to turn 50. And I think like we're going into this next area where this really all follows us there too of who are women that are coming back, you know, coming out of raising children, right? And trying to figure out what do I what do I want to do for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years? Where does Fair Play fit into that and the "she-fault" and all of and all of those things at this point? Do you see it? It's maybe even just as important, I guess, but in a different way.
Eve Rodsky: Oh, it has to be a totally new language and I'll explain to you why because it is so unfair. It would be so unfair for me to write a book about creativity without ever written Fair Play first. You know why? Because so many men do that. I sit on these creativity panels because fair like I said, Find Your Unicorn Space is a book for women about refining their creativity. And I'll give you some of the science in a few minutes about how women can start doing that. But when I sit with men on these Fair Plays always have been a you know, for all these years it's been a bestseller and we sit in the time management category.
So I'm always sitting with these other men on these panels that literally say things to the audience like you just need to find two non-interrupted uninterruptible days a week. Women during the pandemic, I'll just let you know in one time you survey were being interrupted every 3 minutes and 42 seconds. Wow. And that wasn't just women with kids. These are, you know, women with all types of caregiving responsibilities, women with men in the home. And it's it's so ridiculous. And I think women are starting to realize this now because I see a lot of new my social person sends me memes where they're like, don't ever tell me everyone has the same 24 hours in a day because we don't.
And I think I need to say one thing about why the conversation is different. Because we it's very important to recognize that we will always be in a place of a deficit of understanding our identity, understanding what we want to do next because of one thing. In a patriarchy, and this is the core premise that binds what I think the new language should be of women refinding their unicorn space, their identity, whatever you want to call it, their creativity. And creativity can be anything. It could be like my new friend who's American Ninja Warrior and rang the buzzer for the first time at 50 after being a PE teacher.
But the premise is that when you live in a patriarchy, men's time is guarded as if it's diamonds. And women's time is given away as if it's sand. And so when a man's time is finite and a women's time is infinite. And I always say to people, if you don't believe me, just look at health systems in 2026. They still say things like breastfeeding is free. When it's an 1,800 hour a year job for women. We know. So what happened to pediatricians is a great case study of how women's time is infinite. Men were pediatricians in the '70s in the '80s. Women are now predominantly pediatricians.
The salaries have remarkably gone down for pediatricians. And for the residencies, like dropped. Because women's time is less valuable. So when a woman is told her time is less valuable, her entire life, then she starts to say things to herself like, well, I do X, Y, and Z because I'm a better multitasker. I do X, Y, and Z because in the time it would take me to tell my brother how to care for our parent, I should just do it myself. They say things like, yes, me and my partner are both colorectal surgeons, but he's better at focusing on one task at a time and I can find the time.
Look, we're not Albert Einstein, right? There's no way to sort of [expletive] with the space-time continuum. We just instead what finding time means is that your time is hijacked for you. So no matter what age you're in, even the next age where you think you're going to have more time because you may have kids in college, you may now have an aging parent. Yep. You may now have a partner who now has a high Lp(a) and all of a sudden you're going to his cardiologist appointments with him. Why we have to talk about Fair Play first is because there will never be time to be anything other than a parent, partner, professional, or daughter, partner, professional, unless we actually create that boundary.
Tamsen Fadal: How do we have that conversation with ourselves? Because you did mention there's, you know, this Fair Play happens if you're not married, if you don't have children. It's not It's not only women that have a husband or a partner and children.
Eve Rodsky: Like I said, Fair Play is happening in the workplace, not promotable tasks.
Tamsen Fadal: Exactly. How do we How do we do that though so we have that language for ourselves too? Because I think, you know, when you say that you talk about an aging parent, right? I have an 86-year-old dad who's in great shape, but I do monitor the doctor's appointments. My brother is there in person, so he goes to them. So we have a It's really not It's We haven't even talked about it, but we make sure because he My mom died young, and so he's the only parent, so he gets all of it. He's like the only child. Yes, and so we do share that, but I've never had language to talk about in other areas when it comes to my husband.
I'm the one in the cardiologist appointment. He's never come to my gyno appointment with me. He doesn't know when it is. He wouldn't He wouldn't know, and I wouldn't He wouldn't have a cardiologist if I wasn't, you know, throwing down the hammer. How do we tell ourselves we can still care, right? I still love him, care, want his health, want the best, and he also has to or the other person has to take that responsibility.
Eve Rodsky: Right. Well, first of all, right, no one should be renting our brains, and I will say with your brother, right now since your dad's in a good place and your emotion is pretty low, your cognition is high, please sit down with him and play Fair Play.
Tamsen Fadal: Yeah. Yeah, we will have to.
Eve Rodsky: Literally even do all the cards for your father's home organization because I don't want the mental load to lay on you and then your brother saying, well, if you just told me what to do, I'll do it. Right, right, right. Right. So, so even in like a sandwich generation brother sister relationship, you can play Fair Play.
Tamsen Fadal: I love that cuz I think it's so important for people to realize that it comes from everywhere. It's not just It's not
Eve Rodsky: No. It's literally everywhere. It's in the workplace. It's all premise like I said because women's time is considered infinite and so we have more of it to give away for free. So, I think, you know, and like what you said about your partner, so is what I said earlier is really the key. So, there's a secret formula to thriving and it's that organizational formula. It's boundary systems communication. So, the system's easy part like I said I had to write a whole second book about boundaries. And then there's the communication. So, even before we get let's get before we get to communication so many women said I wouldn't even know what to say.
Like what am I asking for, right? So, what I needed women to do is and we can even play a little game right now. You're the most interesting you're like that Dos Equis man. So, this is not necessarily applicable to you. But let's play. What I found is a couple things. Women have to do work on themselves. When you grow up but again in a patriarchy, we become complicit in our own oppression. We're and so one of the most depressing questions I ask women because men could answer this cuz God bless golf, you know. But I ask women what is the most when can you tell me the last time you said I can't believe I just did that outside of your roles as a parent partner professional.
So, I would ask them that all the time. And so many women could not answer that question. So then I went looking for women who did answer that question. I met a woman who was a Pilates instructor and decided to row across the Pacific Ocean with three other women and she got some crazy record where they were the fastest rowing team across the Pacific Ocean. Dangerous too. And you know, young daughter waiting for her in Hawaii. And I was like, what is this? What did you do? Or like I said, that American Ninja Warrior. Like what are you doing ringing that bell if it's not in your profession?
You're not it's not being a parent, it's not being a professional. It's not being a partner. So I was looking and then I would meet women in trapeze classes. I would go to the there's one in Santa Monica where I don't know if you see that trapeze and I'd see like a middle-aged woman there and I'd be like, how did you get to this trapeze class? Or in dance class or people who are in Vaudeville theater. So I started to amass what I saw was a cadre of women. One woman this woman Renee is amazing. She's the oldest race car driver in like history. She's those stories.
Doing the Carrera Panamericana or something and she's been in every continent. And so what these women basically are saying to me is that and I write a lot a lot about this is that you really have to do the personal work on getting over guilt and shame. And that's what they did and then they said this is what I want to do whatever that this is. So the problem with guilt and shame and we did a survey on this at the Fair Play Policy Institute is that we couldn't find men telling us or at least a lot of men say maybe they felt that way but they weren't even aware enough to be able to say it because if that's toxic masculinity that's a different conversation.
But women were the only ones in our surveys telling us that they immediately changed their behaviors because of guilt and shame. So I'll give you an example. Like one woman said to me she was very proud. She's a single mom with a young daughter and she was very excited to get back to piano. There is a apparently like it's a Juilliard building for students so there's like a piano room in the building on the upper west side here in New York City. And she booked an hour in the room or 30 minutes in the room. She brought her sheet music and she noticed that it to get dark.
And then she started to panic because her child doesn't like to be left in aftercare at school when it's dark out. And they don't have a conception of time, she was saying. And so she said that she left the room, she did not practice, and then she forgot her sheet music and it wasn't there, they had thrown it out. Aw. So like this metaphor of like some janitor coming in to throw out her sheet music was like the metaphor for all women's dreams, like literally thrown in the garbage. And so what she was doing was she had a thought of guilt. She didn't dismiss it the way I would now after all these years.
Tamsen Fadal: How would you do that?
Eve Rodsky: So now the way I look at it and my friend Dr. Becky, she talks about this too, we have a very similar definition of guilt. We look at guilt and this is a I think from also other psychologists, we look at guilt as something out of alignment with your values. So if I yell at my Uber driver because he's like this morning he's running late and I'm like come on let's go you know, then you can feel guilty. But if something's in alignment with your values, it's not guilt. It's so I'll give you an example. So it's an alignment with her values to pick up her kid from daycare.
It's alignment with her values though to practice piano. She already made the decision to practice piano and that's still in alignment with her values. So what you do in that case is you understand that if you leave that decision that you made that was in alignment with your values, it's probably because you're worried about someone else's discomfort. Because those are two equal things essentially and the reason that you've dismissed one over the other is because of that guilt. And women are unfortunately conditioned to respond to other people's discomfort.
Tamsen Fadal: How do you give yourself that permission as you call it to be unavailable? Because that's really what she needed to be, correct?
Eve Rodsky: Yeah. So what you have to first do is you have to empathize with the part of you that is thinking that you that someone else is uncomfortable. Someone's going to be uncomfortable when you say that you want to take trapeze classes. Yeah. Mom, well then who's taking me to gymnastics? Or a partner? Well, then how we're not going to go on our nightly walk if I don't see you on who am I going to spend time with? If I if Wednesdays is when we, you know, at 5:00 when I get back from work, that's when we take our walk. I mean, there's always going to be somebody who's expressing discomfort from your boundaries-based decision.
Tamsen Fadal: So how do you answer that?
Eve Rodsky: So you know that you made that decision because it's an alignment with your values. And what I'm here to say is if you don't believe that that that creativity is not optional, what I'm here to tell you is that there's only one definition of mental health. Everyone's talking about health these days. Mental health is having appropriate emotions at appropriate times. And in perimenopause and menopause, we know a lot of that's [expletive] rage and resentment and anger, whatever. Those are appropriate emotions. And we're having them at appropriate times, which is all the time.
But true mental health is having those appropriate emotions at those appropriate times, but having the ability and strength to weather them.
Tamsen Fadal: So there's women listening that are like, yes, Eve, I see myself in this pattern. What's the first thing that they should do to start breaking that? Whether it's with children, whether it's without, you know, most of the women that are listening are probably somewhere in that sandwich generation of dealing with a little bit of all of it right now. What is the first thing they should do to start saying, okay, I want the boundaries, I want I want to understand what to do first so I can get into Fair Play.
Eve Rodsky: First thing is assess what you need. So I would look at that boundary systems and communication formula and understand where you're lacking and start with that. So if you've never this one woman said to me she reached out to me I mean, I reached out to her because someone said, oh, there's a forum during the pandemic called the reasons I hate my husband and children during COVID. And I reached out to her because she posted in this group, if my husband dies during COVID, it'll be because of me and not the disease. So I reached out to her and said, hey, I'm a gender researcher, I'd love to know how you divide up labor in your home and discuss domestic labor.
And she wrote back, we don't discuss anything. This is my safe So if you're someone like that where publicly threatening to murder your partner in front of 27,000 strangers feel safer to you than talking about domestic life, then we have to start with communication. If you're somebody who is like my partner is always asking to be helpful, but I always feel like I'm just having to tell them execution tasks, you're probably ready for a system. But if you're like so many of us where we don't even know who we are anymore, we're just in that blueberries breakdown fog or in the sandwich generation fog, I would say the work we have to do on ourselves is return to our values.
Tamsen Fadal: What happens to a woman when she stops organizing her life around everybody else?
Eve Rodsky: Okay, let's talk about what happens when you actually This is what I want to play with you. So can you guess when I ask women without playing this game, I ask them what are their top three values. So you know like those word clouds. So I like to make a lot of those word clouds. So what do you think were the top three in the bubbles, like the big words?
Tamsen Fadal: Oh gosh, their values like the things they deemed important like family, trust. Okay, so family, my friends and my I would say happiness, but I don't know that people would say that. My health.
Eve Rodsky: Okay, my health. So those were the top three. But you guessed it. So it was family, friends, and health. I am so not [expletive] interested in that. There is nothing that I want I don't want to hear about your family. I'm not I am not interested in talking about your kids. I mean, again, I pray for us all that we have that. I pray and thank you so much for investing in women's health. Of course, I want women to have family, friends, and health. Yeah. But that actually is often a byproduct of what I call unicorn space. It is. It's a byproduct because we're going back.
So let's talk about real values, okay? So when I So those same women, when I did that exercise and I backed them into their values by asking about something that they love to do, I got totally different answers. Okay, so let's I'll tell you about one woman and then we'll do it together. So this one woman, I did this at a corporate event. She was the head of this like insurance company. So she's an actuary. And then I she said that. Of course she said that. Family, friends, and health when I asked her values.
Tamsen Fadal: When you say it, you just feel like a jerk.
Eve Rodsky: Right, a jerk. So so then I put the word cloud up and I was like, well, you're predictable at least. Again, they're all also those three things besides health is sort of defined by other people. So then so she says family, friends, and health and then I said to her, okay, let's back in. And so I used 50 different other unicorn spaces that women to give her inspiration. All the way from knitting and needle stitching in needles to public service and being a politician all the way to outdoors. She picked rock climbing. It was a list of 50 from again my surveys.
Turns out this whole group did not realize that she's like a free soloist. She rock climbs without equipment. Oh my gosh. And so then I said to her, okay, that's amazing. Why did you pick that? So when you say why did you pick that, I want you to give me five values it represents. So the number one value that she brought up was risk and free the number two were risk and freedom. Freedom and so number one was risk, which is so interesting because she's an actuary. So I'm like, well, you manage risk all day. So it's so how cool that your unicorn space activity is You keep going after it.
Going after risk and then this idea of freedom. And so what I said to her is that I just wish your colleagues instead of saying what did you do this weekend or how your family would say, did you get a chance to practice freedom this week? Did you get a chance to practice risk this week? And so that's what I'm interested in. I'm much more interested in talking to someone who says to me, my values are freedom and risk than I am in someone who says family, friends, and health.
Tamsen Fadal: How do we get people to those words instead?
Eve Rodsky: So let's go let's do yours. So so okay. Cuz I want to play a social game with you too. But so tell me like I don't have the 50 cards in front of us. But I don't I don't care about so let's talk about things out.
Tamsen Fadal: So I would say obviously performing and lifelong learning.
Eve Rodsky: Those are things also though in your workplace. Yeah. So that can get a little complicated when your unicorn space becomes your career, which probably happened to you.
Tamsen Fadal: Totally happened to me.
Eve Rodsky: That sort of what happened to me where like my obsession was gender justice and then it became my career so I needed more unicorn space. So now it's the outdoors. I do extreme marathons. It's like a whole new thing in my life.
Tamsen Fadal: That's great.
Eve Rodsky: But so for you, what give me an activity that sort of outside your profession that you feel like lights you up.
Tamsen Fadal: Well, it lights me up but I have not done it in a very long time which is flying helicopters.
Eve Rodsky: Oh my god. Okay. So what I would say to you is why? Well, first of all, first tell me how you wait, why did you pick that?
Tamsen Fadal: You know what's funny? I was trying to figure it out. I did it news for a long time. Like I flew in a helicopter over like during the newscast for hours and hours and we'd we'd circle Orlando and we'd circle the different areas and so every city I was in I was always like the chopper person that went up there and then reported from there. And I think I don't actually know I was I was actually listening to the sound on the west side highway because the chopper was landing and I'm like I can feel my heart get excited. I think it was just I don't want to use freedom because that sounds like it was just this like awareness.
Eve Rodsky: Is it because you felt free at the time in the news helicopters?
Tamsen Fadal: I yeah, I felt like very over everything. You know I was like I could I was like literally 30,000 ft. You know not really but
Eve Rodsky: So perspective.
Tamsen Fadal: Yeah, perspective and like awareness of everything around me. I felt like I could take everything in and know what was going on like cuz that was my job, right? Always know a little bit about what's going on. If you're over a city or over land or you always kind of know what's going on. You can take it all in and I think that was exciting to me.
Eve Rodsky: Okay. So say you're flying a helicopter now. Like literally you're an expert in a helicopter and you're over a city. But again, but I'm saying like let's picture like again five years in the future, you have your license, your pilot's license and you're flying. Let's talk about the values. What values would that bring up for you?
Tamsen Fadal: I think well brought about freedom. We brought up perspective. I don't think of it I mean I know it's risk and I don't think of the risk.
Eve Rodsky: You can look in there and look at there's a list of values.
Tamsen Fadal: Okay, let me do the Let me do the Let me do the list. Okay.
Eve Rodsky: Want five values from you.
Tamsen Fadal: Autonomy, for sure.
Eve Rodsky: Autonomy, I love that.
Tamsen Fadal: Solitude. There's some solitude in it. Wonder, for sure.
Eve Rodsky: Oh my gosh. Can someone write these down for us? Autonomy, solitude, wonder.
Tamsen Fadal: Pleasure.
Eve Rodsky: Pleasure, I love it.
Tamsen Fadal: And I think there's a little bit of like equality in it cuz there's not a lot of women that do that. I say there's something in that. I mean that's just kind of my Yeah. Those are mine.
Eve Rodsky: Okay. So you're so cool anyway, but look, I feel like I know you better by knowing that this is something you love to do and next layer,
Tamsen Fadal: I get it. It's the next layer.
Eve Rodsky: It's like what I would do is your So women do things, especially women, men too though. If you have an accountability partner, you're 66% more likely to do something. If you have a success partner who does it with you, you're 99% more likely to do something. It could be anybody. So it's not that I would come to you and say, did you practice for your helicopter tests? But what I'd say to you now, even if you weren't ready to resume that, that each week of your life you need to lean into those values. So what I would say to you is that did you get to practice autonomy this week?
Yep. For you, probably autonomy is everywhere you go. So I think I would pick for you right now of all those five values since you can't really do all five at once cuz that's too overwhelming for women because of again, Fair Play. List. But I would say wonder.
Tamsen Fadal: Wonder. I love wonder.
Eve Rodsky: Did you get a chance to practice wonder this week?
Tamsen Fadal: Yeah, that's a happy word.
Eve Rodsky: And then that's what I would ask and that and that's how you start. Because it can be many different things, but if you start with those interesting values, then and you really are accountable to yourself, you're going to be picking different choices. And then you're much less likely as we said in that room, if that woman had really known that her value system is based on her beauty, which is music, which was for her it was the flow state, Sure. Like being in a flow state made her a better parent, then she wouldn't have gone to pick up her kids.
She would have said, being in a my value my flow state. Being in a flow state makes me a better parent. I'm going to keep them. They're safe and aftercare.
Tamsen Fadal: And those are the things that a woman gains by stop, you know, by stop being the person that is the default for everybody.
Eve Rodsky: Well, it's mental health as we just said. It's appropriate emotions at appropriate times with the ability and strength to weather them. You can't So the way women weather their emotions if they don't have unicorn space, if they're not flying the helicopters, if they're not practicing wonder, if they're not playing the piano, is they go to hedonic pursuits, which are not bad, but we have a culture of mommy juice. We have a culture of women in all my surveys who take edibles just to numb themselves through their caregiving years. We have women who are doom scrolling all day long.
We have women who are binge watching Netflix for hours and hours and hours. And I don't ever blame them. But what I'm saying is like there is another way.
Tamsen Fadal: If you look at a woman or you hear from I'm sure you hear it all the time like I'm stuck and I don't know what to do next. Is it going and finding that unicorn space before you can do before you figure out a new career, reinvent yourself, you know, whatever move to another city, country, whatever it is.
Eve Rodsky: If you don't know your values, you don't know what to ask for. Honestly, I will say that for so many women who got stuck because they said I can't bring like that woman who said threatened her husband with murder in the in the Facebook group. If if you don't know how So remember we just said the secret formula is boundary systems and communication. You're such a good journalist. I feel like you led me to the communication to like wrap us up, but it is true that you can't ask for what you need unless you know what you need. So that's why the boundaries and systems work is so important because it's very hard to communicate your needs.
I have a lot of communication vulnerabilities, Tamsen. I am a I have a terrible tone. I communicate like a drill sergeant. I give a lot of feedback in the moment. And that type of communication does not lend itself to being able to ask for what I need. If I thought about it like I do now and practice Fair Play, there's many chapters on communication. People say that parts repetitive, but that's because nobody communicates. So I give it to you in many different ways. Once I realized that I had to check in with Seth, and I was able to say to him, you know, I got off the wait list for this really crazy event.
Jesse Itzler puts it on, Sara Blakely's husband from Spanx. It's called 29029 Everesting. I was on a wait list because I saw it from my brother-in-law one day and it's like a three-year wait list. I got off the day after my father died. So in our check in because we're already used to this and Seth can own many more cards, I said to him, I need you I need to re-deal cards to you for this summer so I have time to train. And because we had already language And he understands what that means. Right. I didn't just disappear one day the way men do and they say I'm going to go run a marathon.
Right, or go to the golf course. No, we have a system where I said, I respect you. I understand this will be less time for your leisure time, but I want to honor my father. I want to try something I've never done. As my doctor says like I come from like poor peasant Ukrainian and Syrian stock. I'm not meant to be an athlete. I'm like 31% body fat still even after all the things you told me to do, all my weight training and you know, fiber and all that. I that's just the way my body holds. But I did this thing. And and so what's so fun is that your partner then starts to talk about you.
No what I notice about partners is they don't necessarily say, oh my wife's a dental hygienist. They say she is unbelievable. She wrote a book and self-published it. It's a children's book and it's about kids who are separating from their parents at school. I mean these are the things, the stories I hear all the time. The pride in other people and it's not about that, but it's because you start having pride in yourself.
Tamsen Fadal: But do you feel like the intimacy also changes between especially if we're talking about couples in and I am sure it's rocky at first, but does that intimacy change because now there's a different level of respect because you know, those two things go hand in hand.
Eve Rodsky: 100 I mean, I think women start feeling better about themselves and their bodies, and even if it's not a physical pursuit even if it's the piano, there's what I like to say is, like, and this gets back to, like, the toxic, relationship message we got from, like, the rules and all that, like.
Tamsen Fadal: Oh, the rules, I remember.
Eve Rodsky: But I will say that like being unavailable is sexy. I never liked those Yeah, yeah, I never liked wanted my friends to text dudes back early. I never liked it when I got a text right. I think there's something very sexy about being unavailable, not toxically unavailable, but the idea that you know that that person isn't getting back to you because they have something else going on. There's just beauty in that.
Tamsen Fadal: I couldn't agree more. Yes. So I know people are going to be like, where do I find you? Where can people find you and what should they be doing first if they hear themselves in this wherever they are, whether they're mothers, whether the kids are grown and have left home, whether they're caregiving, you know, parents right now?
Eve Rodsky: There's so many data points to reach us. I mean, what I'd say is that we have a documentary. I think that's always a great place to start, especially if you're in if the thing that you say is bothering you the most is those boundaries and systems because you're caregiving overload. We have a documentary. It's on Hulu. It's called Fair Play. There's another weird movie called Fair Play too. So now this is the documentary. It's directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. I'd say the documentary is really funny and makes you realize you're not alone. This is not a you problem.
This is a societal problem. We also have a Policy Institute, so anybody can follow us at @fairplaylife. It's our Instagram. FairPlayPolicy.org has all of the work we're doing similar to you. We're asking women to take care of themselves. That's the Fair Play and Unicorn Space messages, but also we are fighting for the systems changes that would make women's time equal to men's time, and we call that Fair Play, of course, Fair Day, which is about women and flexibility in their in their jobs. And by flexibility, I mean all types of flexibility and just not where they work, but how they work, they're respecting how they work.
We talk about Fair Say because the fact that most S&P leaders as we know are men, Fair Say would be women in leadership, and Fair pay, which is, you know, really important, because women are still, because of this motherhood penalty. And the thing about the motherhood penalty, I just want to say, you don't even have to be a mother. We talked about this earlier. Yes. If you look like you may be a mother, then all of a sudden you're going to start being paid less than your the male journalists around you or whatever profession you're in, you know?
Tamsen Fadal: I was in that game for years. I'm very aware. Eve, thank you so much. I feel like I could sit and talk to you all day.
Eve Rodsky: I know, I know. Well, thank you for being You didn't know I was going to do the exercise with you. Thank you for being vulnerable. I loved autonomy. I loved wonder. Wait, what was the other one?
Tamsen Fadal: Pleasure. Pleasure. Something I don't know, I just put wonder I like.
Eve Rodsky: And we'll find out what I all five cuz I'm sure we'll hear it back on the audio. But for this week especially, I'm your accountability and I want to hear. And then please tell your audience maybe on your next episode how you practiced wonder this week.
Tamsen Fadal: Okay. I like that. I like that. All right, we need to do more together, I think. Okay, thank you. Thank you.
Eve Rodsky: You. Thank you.
Tamsen Fadal: Eve, I'm going to give you 10 real life scenarios and you tell me fair or not fair. All right, first one. He says, just tell me what needs to be done and I'll do it. Fair or not fair?
Eve Rodsky: 1 trillion percent not fair. Because someone's renting your brain and my brain is not free.
Tamsen Fadal: You both work full-time. One of you earns twice as much as the other, so the other does more at home. Fair or not fair?
Eve Rodsky: Could be fair if there's a boundary systems and communication practice in place, but unfair if it was just a gender assumption. And I always think like, what does more mean? What's the definition of more?
Tamsen Fadal: You're the only woman on the team, so you're expected to plan the office birthdays and goodbye parties. Fair or not fair?
Eve Rodsky: Oh my god, 1 trillion quadruple trillion percent unfair. It is what's holding women back in many professions and we need systems for rotating that so it doesn't land based on gender.
Tamsen Fadal: I can't believe I read it out loud actually. All right, he does the laundry differently, so you just redo it. Fair or not fair?
Eve Rodsky: Unfair to the person who is executing on your mental load and we need to move to an ownership mindset for that couple.
Tamsen Fadal: You're a stay-at-home mom, so he expects you to handle everything at home. Fair or not fair?
Eve Rodsky: You can't hold all the tasks. It it's a recipe for five things. I need to say it's a little longer answer, but it's a recipe for what we found in our study. The more women held, the more they were likely to have insomnia, hair loss, autoimmune, specifically Hashimoto's, and SSRI use.
Tamsen Fadal: It's his mom's birthday. He forgets. You don't remind him. Fair or not fair?
Eve Rodsky: Well, it's definitely fair for you not to remind him. It's unfair because you're going to be blamed. Why are you going to be blamed? Women are often blamed for kin-keeping mistakes.
Tamsen Fadal: One person does all the cooking because the other hates it. Fair or not fair?
Eve Rodsky: Completely fair as long as the other person is owning other tasks. So if you cook and he cleans or that's Okay.
Tamsen Fadal: You get up with the baby all week. He does every weekend. Fair or not fair?
Eve Rodsky: Again, all depends on what the scenario is the rest of your life. But in that situation, I would look at perceived fairness. I would ask them do they perceive that it's fair. I don't really care about actual fairness in that case. I care about what each of that in that couple would say. If they perceive it fair, it's fair. Perceived fairness.
Tamsen Fadal: Your partner gets home from work and needs an hour to decompress before helping with the kids. I can see your face. I don't even need you to answer. Fair or not fair?
Eve Rodsky: Well, they just had they basically just had complete leisure time, interactions with other adults, a break possibly for lunch, and pay. So what I would actually say is that the person who was doing the unpaid labor would need to decompress, not the person who did the paid labor.
Tamsen Fadal: You handle Christmas for your family. He handles Christmas for his. His family gets nothing. Fair or not fair?
Eve Rodsky: Again, completely fair as long as you're not blamed for it. So this is why my mother used to say TGIM and it would really bother me. Growing up she would say thank God it's Monday, but that's because of course work is easier than taking care of kids. We actually have a survey that says that having a root canal is more preferable than taking care of children. Believe me that's that's accurate. That's that's accurate.
