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3 Lessons From Ivanka Trump’s #WomenWhoWork Campaign

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Being a working woman takes on a whole new meaning in today’s fast-paced, technologically advanced age. There’s much more responsibility to deal with and so many more expectations to live up to when trying to juggle life and work. See how Ivanka Trump’s new #WomenWhoWork initiative aims to end the unrealistic stereotypes of working women and, instead, empower them to live authentic, successful lives.

#WomenWhoWork

(Photo Credit: David Shankbone/Flickr)

As you probably already know, Ivanka Trump is a mother, wife, and entrepreneur, so she gets it, despite her celebrity status. In fact, she recently told Business Insider, she hasn’t been able to attain work-life balance in her own life.

Do You Know What You're Worth?

“People obsess too much about balance,” Trump says. “A scale is only in balance for a brief second. Inevitably the pendulum swings. It’s impossible to maintain. Rather than obsess over perfect balance, I like to focus on my priorities.” Amen, Ivanka.

In the #WomenWhoWork campaign video, one of the featured working women, Angela Benton, the Founder and CEO of NewME Accelorator, hits the nail on the head with her response for how she balances work and life: “I’m trying to think of how to answer the question, because I don’t think it’s a choice. It [balancing work and life] just is.”

For many working women, work-life balance means:

1. Getting ready, which includes the daunting task of finding an outfit that agrees with whatever your body does or doesn’t want to do that particular day.

2. Getting the kids dressed, fed, and off to school, and still managing to make it to work in the nick of time.

3. Earning lower pay for equal work as a man and trying to break the lingering and stubborn glass ceiling … still.

4. Taking care of 60 percent of unpaid work (e.g. household chores and childcare).

5. Feeling guilty about being a working mother.

6. And so, so much more.

Many of the items listed above aren’t going to change for a while, if at all, so the question is, what do we do from here? Here are three key takeaways from Ivanka Trump:

1. Being different is good. Trump indicates that being a female helps her stand out in her industry as she tells Business Insider, “If we were sitting in a room of bankers, most of them 50-year-old men, likely I was the one they’d follow up with. So it’s not always bad to stand out.”

2. Do what you love, and love what you do. “Identify what you love doing and do it,” says Trump, because “[i]t’s very hard to be great at what you do if you aren’t deeply passionate.” Her words of wisdom stem from her experience around numerous high-profile professionals who are “successful, but miserable.” The key to success, in Trump’s opinion, is happiness.

3. Prioritize differently. In the #WomenWhoWork video, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, the Founder and CEO of Center for Yourth Wellness, encourages women, particularly those in leadership positions, to start deciding the norms for themselves. This means “[f]inding those things that are important to us [working women] and prioritizing those things,” according to Harris.

Trump states that the #WomenWhoWork brand is a “celebration” of working women – an initiative that empowers women, rather than shames them. The conversation should now be focused around “having a full life, lived to the fullest – 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” declares Trump, because that’s the reality of the everyday lives of women who work.

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Leah Arnold-Smeets
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