BBC 6分钟英语学习 职场女性

6 min English from BBC learning english dot com.

Hello. This is six minute English from BBC Learning English.

I'm Neil, and I'm Sam. Sam.

Does this situation sound familiar? It's a colleague's birthday.

Next week, a male boss says to a female employee, your

greater organizing things. Would you buy a card and get everyone in the office to sign it?

Oh, and we'll need to order a cake to Thanks.

You're amazing. Yes, I have seen that a male boss asks a woman to do all the jobs that keep the office running, but do nothing to advance her career or improve her chances of promotion.

That's when someone moves up into a higher, better paid position in a company.

Sadly, this happens a lot in many workplaces around the world.

It's the men who are considered born leaders and promoted up the corporate career ladders, while the women are given less important roles.

Even today, many working women find themselves at a point in their career beyond which they cannot progress, an invisible barrier to succeed.

Refer to as the glass ceiling.

But in this program, will be missing the members of the No Club, a group of women saying no to the glass ceiling by publicly questioning the kinds of jobs men and women are asked to do in the workplace.

And of course, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

But 1st, I have a question for you, sam.

Despite the glass ceiling, women do make it to the top jobs in many areas of work and business, even in the male dominated world of politics.

So who was the 1st woman to become British Prime Minister?

Was it a Teresa may b Nicholas Sturgeon, or see, margaret Thatcher?

Hmm, I know the answer to this one, neil.

it's See Margaret that OK. Well, we'll find out later if you're right.

Professor lee's Vestland is one of the four academics who co wrote the No Club book, discussing how females disproportionately take on the unimportant, less visible tasks at work.

Professor Vesterland calls these non promotable tasks, jobs like taking notes, organizing social events or cheering meetings, jobs that take time and effort but do little to increase company profits or to boost your career.

Research shows that most of these tasks are done by women.

He is Lee Swestland, explaining more to BBC World Service Program Business Daily.

We've been noticing gender differences and wages in advancement and negotiation.

Burn out for women is much greater than it is for men.

Their dissatisfaction with their work is much greater.

And we've been trying to sort of address all these objectives with lots of different methods and techniques.

And what is interesting about the noncommutable work is that it sort of, in a very structural sense, contributes to all of the those differences.

Professor Vesterland lists some workplace gender imbalances, including job dissatisfaction and burnout.

That's tiredness and exhaustion caused by working too hard.

Many of these issues are made worse by nonpromotable tasks.

Natalie Quail agrees. Natalie started her successful dental cosmetics company Smile Time after winning a business competition on the TV show dragons Den.

Here, she tells BBC World Services Business Daily about her experience of being asked to take on nonpromotable tasks in her work as a trainee solicitor.

As a trainee solicitor, pretty much every task that you take on is a nonpromotable task.

Note taking is one of them.

In meetings where you kind of told what you can't really speak or say anything.

I was tasked with being their team party organizer, so that was my role.

It does definitely occur that the women in the team, the level of multitasking they're doing, is just far outstrips the men in a lot of cases.

E.g. a lot of women in the team would also be juggling having kids at home.

Being a working mom, naturally found herself doing nonpromotable tasks.

She thinks many women in the workplace are expected to be good at multitasking, doing more than one thing at the same time, for working months who are raising a family as well as developing careers at work, this involves some juggling, trying to manage your life when you're involved in many different activities which all demand your time.

In the 40 years since the term glass ceiling was invented, it seems not much has changed for working women.

But there is some good news.

The number of female managers and women working in jobs traditionally seen as male has increased dramatically.

And those companies where getting promotion is based on ability, not gender, have benefited from talented, hard working female leaders.

And speaking of female leaders, neil, what was the answer to your question?

You ask me who was the 1st female British Prime Minister?

And I said, margaret Thatcher,

you were right. Mrs Thatcher, nick named the Iron Lady, became Prime Minister in may 1979, the 1st woman to break the political glass ceiling in the UK.

An invisible barrier to advancing in your career.

OK, let's recap the other vocabulary weve learned,

starting with promotion, moving up into a higher, more important position in your company.

The term nonpromotable tasks describes those unimportant jobs which help your organization but do nothing to advance your career.

They are often given to women.

If you have burn out, you're exhausted from working too hard.

Multitasking is the ability to do several things at the same time.

And finally, juggling involves managing many different activities which all demand your time.

We've managed our time pretty well so far, but now our 6 min are up by fi Now.

Bye. 6 min English from the BBC.

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