When Efrat Givati decided last September to resign from her job as the manager of a community center in Jerusalem, she discovered that no fewer than seven of her female friends had resigned at the same time. “We were a group of eight female friends in Jerusalem, all upper middle class, academics, mothers”, she recounts. “Together we opened a group that we called ‘Outgrow, Move On.’ We got together, all women aged 40+, and talked about it. That’s how my research was born.”
Givati, 45, is a doctoral candidate and researcher in the Sociology and Anthropology department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In her research, she examines the Great Resignation, the emerging trend of workers leaving their jobs in record numbers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, from a gender perspective. “I understood that there is a phenomenon here”, she says. “That there is a need, and that there are very many silenced issues regarding women’s employment in the post-COVID-19 era. That there are power dynamics here, that there is an issue of the construction of the work world and how it treats women of these ages, and the employment possibilities we have.”
Givati conducted in-depth interviews with 20 women and 10 men, all university graduates, ages 38-52, who had held relatively senior positions in a range of fields: high-tech, education, local and national government, non-profits, business, and more. They all worked through the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and resigned recently. “These are people who worked in established workplaces,” explains Givati, “some even worked for 20 years in the same place, who saw their life in this workplace, and the crisis situation is what caused them to move. I’m trying to understand why.”
“You love your job, but it doesn’t love you back”
“What stood out very prominently was that even if the women were dissatisfied before, and felt that they had professionally outgrown their jobs, they worked through the initial outbreak of the pandemic, they worked very hard, they felt a kind of high, there was a sense of intense mobilization, of giving”, explains Givati. “And then, after the return to the routine, they were left with very difficult feelings. For a long period of time they had been dedicated, worked under emergency conditions, given their all, neglected their family and their home, and with the return to the daily routine there was a steep decline in the sense of urgency and a feeling of confinement or belittlement, a return to the same place they were before.
“Even in relatively institutionalized organizations, the pandemic provided slightly more freedom to grow, to develop, to advance projects, and enabled flexibility and creativity. And then, everything that had been gained was abruptly taken back; they were put back in the small, confined box that they were in before.”
“And did women really suffer from this more than men?”
“Yes. Women in the study described more feelings of confinement, of belittlement, of ‘they didn’t see me,’ ‘they didn’t listen to me.’ One of the women said to me in an interview: ‘They took all the fun from me, and left only the bad.’ She was referring to the social aspect of work: the work environment, the team, the hallway conversations, the enrichment and team building days, lunchtime, the informal encounters. During the pandemic they took away all of the relationships around her work, and she was left with only this meager thing, and then she understood how much her job bored her.”
When these same people gave notice at work that they intend to resign, the employers were unperturbed. “The interviewees, both women and men, described how their employers didn’t call to ask how they were doing, didn’t care for them, didn’t try to dissuade them from resigning. We’re talking about people who were valued, not people that the employers were unhappy with. Responses such as ‘take it or leave it.’ There was no recognition, no appreciation, no acknowledgement, there was no ‘thank you.’”
Even in high-tech?
“During the lockdowns they were sent various pampering gifts, but nobody picked up the phone to ask how they were doing, and they were deeply insulted. People understood that they loved their jobs, but that their jobs didn’t love them back.”
Five of the interviewees had routinely experienced abuse at work, sometimes for years. “They describe very difficult things. They describe their work using the terminology of war, emergency, of being in the trenches, in battle. Yelling, banging on the table, putting out fires – difficult testimonials. There were interviews where we actually cried together. It happens with women and with men, but men talk about it less.”
Their employers didn’t call to ask how their employees were doing, didn’t care for them, didn’t try to dissuade them from resigning. We’re talking about people who were valued, not people that the employers were unhappy with. Responses such as ‘take it or leave it.’ There was no recognition, no appreciation, no acknowledgement, there was no ‘thank you.’”
Working from home led these same people to understand that things can be different. “Suddenly their patience for this kind of workplace wore out. One woman actually described to me how when she returned to her office after the lockdown, the first time that her female boss banged her fist on the table, she simply got up and left, after 7 years. In my opinion this will be the next revolution, like Me Too.”
“Women have to break down and rebuild”
The midlife crisis, which women and men also experience differently, was another reason for some of the resignations. “I think that men view the midlife crisis more in their physicality, in their fear of the aging body”, explains Givati, “and that women take it very much to a place of a self-esteem crisis. Even when they consider age, they view it in the sense of ‘I already know what I’m worth, I’ve gone through things in life.’ For men this is perhaps more taken for granted.
“For women, the midlife crisis brings with it a series of questions that begin with, ‘Is this all there is? And what comes next?’ On the one hand you look at what you have achieved in all areas of life, including in your career, and on the other hand you also look ahead, going forward. You ask yourself if this is how your life will look, and it frustrates you.”
The work world and its inequality play an important role in arousing these feelings. “Sometimes it happens because they have managers who are younger than them”, says Givati. “Among women you see them getting stuck in middle management, while men advance faster, and the women’s managers are then young men; this is of course very frustrating when you feel that someone less experienced and less talented than you is above you, but in this situation, you, as a professional, can also learn from them. There was a woman who said to me: ‘the only thing my manager says to me is “you’re great,” he is incapable of telling me anything that will help me improve.’
“It’s social, sociological, not personal. In my research I saw that women resign in pairs: deputy manager and manager, advisor and manager, deputy department head and department head. They actually leave in pairs, and it’s contagious and creates circles of resignation. There are in fact those who made agreements – if you leave then I will too. It’s a generational change of sorts. Our generation is leaving, and a new, young, different generation will begin. And this of course is tied to the issue of the feeling of family in the workplace, the team and the work environment.”
You see a lot of women getting stuck in middle management, and their managers are younger men. There was a woman who said to me: ‘the only thing my manager says to me is “you’re great,” he’s incapable of telling me anything that will help me improve.”
There were also romantic partners who influenced each other’s decision to quit. “Surprisingly, I actually found couples who resigned together. Usually the man resigns first, gets better terms and conditions at another job, and then the woman says: ‘If he can do it, so can I.’ Or the pandemic aroused the feeling that ‘you only live once.’ There was a couple who left everything and traveled to Thailand for half a year.”
Givati emphasizes that many of the people she interviewed returned to the workforce, but under different circumstances, and here she also found differences between women and men. “Among the women, many of them became self-employed, and many do both: part-time salaried work plus a business or a private clinic, etc. Some return but on their own terms, saying for example that ‘I decided to shape things according to my needs.’ Among both men and women I saw two-time resignations – I resigned once, got really anxious, took the first job that accepted me, and after half a year resigned again. There were five such interviewees out of 30.”
However, among men this is less common, according to Givati. “Either they returned to their former workplace, or slightly upgraded their salary, or transferred to a business company in a different field in the same position. Less drama. Many times they describe it somewhat like a rebound – I left, I saw what goes on outside, I turned around, I came back.”
Women, on the other hand, have to break down and rebuild: “We are rebuilding the work world for ourselves, and understand that the employment market is gendered. It is structured such that there will always be a man that earns more than me, or a manager who is younger than me and less talented than me, and we ask ourselves if we’re willing to go along with this.”
"There is a tectonic change here"
Givati says that there are many similarities between the wave of resignations among middle-aged workers and that of younger generations. “One of the women I interviewed said: ‘I learned from the millennials. They know how to balance better than I do, they know home is home and work is work.’ Perhaps there is a reverse influence here, of the younger generation impacting the older generation.
“I think there is a tectonic change here. The pandemic crisis was a trigger for feelings that may have been there before, but that we didn’t see, or didn’t feel with such intensity. And then, after the pandemic, it also touched on the midlife crisis, on the view of the future, and particularly people who were in quarantine began to think about what was happening outside, and that they want to be appreciated. I think there is a significant change here. Time will tell, but I think that what we have here is the breakdown of the fixed and structured hierarchies of the work world.”
According to Givati, workplaces must address these gaps, and this must be reflected in an entirely new approach to the employment market. “Employment flexibility is the next thing. To understand employee motivation and what they need, not what the job requires. I see want ads and I’m astounded. What does ‘irregular work hours’ mean?! You can no longer speak in these terms. The entire approach of HR needs to change, all of the ‘I am my workplace’ is no longer relevant. Greater focus needs to be placed on the employee, what motivates them, what development tracks are offered to them, and the issue of how you are treated in the workplace, the team and the work environment are beginning to come up more and more. If in the past employees asked about benefits and salary, now you see increasingly more importance placed on the social aspect.
There is a significant change here. Time will tell, but I think that what we have here is the breakdown of the fixed and structured hierarchies of the work world.”
“People who left the workforce at these ages are an asset. They are people who want to work. In my research as well, everyone returned to work one way or another. These are by no means people who want to sit at home, and many of them also work more, not less. But they want to redesign their identity and their workplace, and they should be given the possibility to do so. Flexible work models need to be formulated, in the private sector as well as in government offices. The hierarchical single-type approach needs to change.”
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Efrat Givati presented her research “And Then Came Corona: Gender Differences in the Way COVID-19 Contributed to the Decision to Resign Among Midlife Employees” at the Labor Relations Association Conference in Tel Aviv. She also discusses her research on the podcast “Working on It”, which she hosts together with the psychologist and career coach Leah Gelband.
