Good News: Flu Shots Should Work Well This Year

Different strains of influenza circulate from year to year, which means making the annual flu shot is always a bit of a gamble. Twice a year, the World Health Organization consults experts from around the world to help inform its recommendations about which strains should be targeted by the shots used in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Experts’ predictions aren’t always perfect, which is why flu shot efficacy varies depending on the season.

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Preliminary data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests this year’s gamble may pay off. Flu shots used during the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere’s flu season—spring and summer in the Northern Hemisphere—did a good job of keeping people out of the hospital, which suggests the same may be true during the U.S.’s looming fall and winter flu season.

Flu vaccines prevented about half of all possible influenza-related hospitalizations among young children, older adults, and people with preexisting conditions—three groups at increased risk of severe disease—during the first months of the flu seasonin five South American countries, according to the CDC report. That’s based on data about respiratory-disease-related hospitalizations gathered by almost 500 hospitals in those countries from March to July of this year.

Read More: These Are the Flu Shots You Should Get This Fall and Winter

The shots reduced the risk of flu hospitalizations by an estimated 52%, which puts their effectiveness in the same ballpark as those used in the Northern Hemisphere during the 2022-2023 flu season. Efficacy against hospitalizations rose to 70% among kids six and younger and fell to about 38% among adults in their sixties and older, according to the new report.

There’s no guarantee what happens in the Southern Hemisphere will repeat itself in the Northern Hemisphere, but experts often use the earlier flu season to predict what’s to come for the rest of the world. And since the vaccine used in the Northern Hemisphere this year is similar to the one used in the Southern Hemisphere, the early efficacy estimates are encouraging.

The CDC report also holds another piece of important information for people in the U.S. Flu season began early in the countries included in the report, which means people in the U.S. should—in a potential repeat of last season—be prepared for the same. Health authorities typically recommend getting your flu shot by the end of October, particularly if you’re at high-risk for severe disease due to age or underlying health conditions.

An updated COVID-19 booster will also roll out this fall, along with—for the first time—an RSV vaccine approved for certain groups of vulnerable people. Like last year, you should be able to get your flu and COVID-19 vaccines at the same time to go into the winter illness season as protected as possible.

source https://time.com/6312229/flu-shot-efficacy-2023-2024/

The U.S. and Russia Need to Cooperate to End This Conflict

Toward the end of the Cold War, no corner of the Soviet Union was bloodier than the South Caucasus, and, today, it’s on the verge of exploding again. A starvation through siege campaign by Azerbaijan in the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh amid a power vacuum in the wider region presents a dilemma for Washington: Should the U.S. cooperate with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to release a humanitarian chokehold and defuse a political powder keg?

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That is the current reality in Nagorno-Karabakh, which thanks in part to Bolshevik Moscow’s skullduggery, ended up under Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized borders. In the aftermath of an early 1990s post-Soviet war, the disputed territory was locked behind defensive positions and only accessible through Armenia—until Azerbaijan launched a campaign in 2020 that saw it capture considerable territory. Then, authoritarian Azerbaijan began blockading the self-ruling enclave nine months ago, by closing the Lachin Corridor—the sole lifeline road to Armenia and the rest of the world—and shutting off energy supplies and internet infrastructure. 

Azerbaijan’s blockade has turned the mountainous treasure into a gloomy outdoor prison, even refusing the Red Cross’s humanitarian supplies for the region’s 120,000 people. The result, as human rights organizations and local journalists have noted, are devastating: massive unemployment; shortages of survival musts, from basic food to medical supplies to vehicle fuel; and deaths among vulnerable populations, including toddlers and unborn children. On Sept. 6, the inaugural International Criminal Court prosecutor testified at the U.S. Congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, arguing that the siege amounts to genocide. Earlier, on Aug. 16, the blockade was discussed at the U.N. Security Council.

What happens next—preferably, an enforceable U.N. Security Council resolution—depends on whether two key foes can decide to work together.

Russia and the U.S., along with France, have co-chaired the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Minsk Group—tasked with mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh—for decades. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the group effectively stopped functioning. That changed in July, when the co-chairs met in Geneva, during an unpublicized gathering revealed in an interview by a well-informed Armenian analyst, to discuss the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh.

U.S. engagement with Russia is vital due to the latter’s importance and impotence alike. Following Azerbaijan’s 2020 war against Nagorno-Karabakh—which saw a combined 7,000 soldiers die, and nearly a third of the native Armenian population flee—Russia deployed troops to reinforce its own regional interests and to manage the Lachin Corridor. But today Russia seems unable, or unwilling, or both, to keep the corridor open. 

Read More: The Crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh Highlights Russia’s Waning Global Influence

Given Russia’s Ukrainian preoccupation, Azerbaijan is using the blockade to finish off the lingering ethnoterritorial conflict by driving out the region’s Armenians for good. It’s a goal entirely within Azerbaijan’s reach as a distracted world is impassively looking away. Even the Azerbaijani parliament’s recent branding of Armenians as “a cancerous tumor of Europe” provoked little to no outrage.

The three actors trying to mediate the conflict are the U.S., Russia, and, to a lesser degree, the European Union. But the U.S. is the only one that has the tools—ranging from enforcing the statutory Section 907 to introducing executive sanctions—that could end the blockade. Azerbaijan’s belligerent dynasty worships the lavish lifestyle—including a real estate empire in London—that could be a prime target of such actions. 

But an enduring solution to the wider Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict that creates lasting security mechanisms can only come with the U.S. and Russia—and only if they cooperate. Overconfident Azerbaijan, which leverages its energy riches with Russia and the West alike, is less likely to successfully resist this unlikely union of geopolitical foes.

The need for such a solution is high not only for humanitarian reasons. Azerbaijan’s siege of Nagorno-Karabakh could morph into an unmanageable war, attracting powerful players. Azerbaijan’s ethnolinguistic patron Turkey eyes southern Armenia for an unrealized objective of the WWI-era Armenian Genocide: a sovereign Pan-Turkic connection. This troubles the Turks’ historical rival, Iran, which says it won’t tolerate losing its ancient border with Armenia. This alarming scenario nearly materialized last year, when Azerbaijan launched an invasion of southern Armenia in September 2022, occupying sovereign Armenian territory. The danger of war still looms.

Read More: Column: Don’t Just Remember the Armenian Genocide. Prevent It From Happening Again

The hopeful news is that Russia and the U.S. already agree on something—that Nagorno-Karabakh’s 2,500-year-old Armenian presence must endure. But words alone won’t deter Azerbaijan, which is deliberately inflicting conditions that are aimed at doing the opposite. It holds an airtight siege not only on food imports or civilian movement (the few allowed to leave are periodically abducted), but also through its border guards, who have reportedly shot at farmers and keep targeting them.

Still, U.S.-Russian cooperation would not automatically guarantee a fair peace, especially if a deal is made behind closed doors. The two powers could be tempted by the prospects of a seemingly easy solution—pressuring Nagorno-Karabakh to agree to Azerbaijan’s every demand, including capitulating to a food-for-subjugation arrangement that would reward the siege and reinforce the region’s isolation. Yet a lack of U.S.-Russia cooperation would have a similar, if not worse, impact.

Washington has many problems, but on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict it really needs to do one thing: make up its mind. A “durable and dignified” regional peace, to borrow the U.S. State Department’s words, requires Washington to decide how to treat a tyrant. In this case, the U.S. must either sanction one or work with the other. If President Joe Biden won’t keep his promise of sanctioning the Azerbaijani tyranny that’s strangling 120,000 people, then he must cooperate with the Russian pariah.

U.S. inaction on Nagorno-Karabakh won’t punish Russia but, instead, handhold it in greenlighting a genocide.

source https://time.com/6312232/us-russia-cooperation-nagorno-karabakh/

Determined U.S. Open Semifinal Win Brings Coco Gauff One Step Closer to Finishing the Job

On a suffocating night in New York City, Coco Gauff—playing in her first Grand Slam semifinal, and all of 19 years old—fought herself, fought her opponent, and fought a surprise break in the match caused by climate protesters, to win her tense match against Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic, 6-4, 7-5, and advance to Saturday’s final, marking the arrival of a new American player prepared to take women’s tennis into its future. 

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None of this analysis can be called hyperbolic. The full Gauff was on display in New York City, and it’s really something to behold. To wit: Gauff got off to a lightning start against Muchova, racing to a 5-1 lead in the first set. Gauff was on serve, ready to make swift work of this first stanza. She won the first point with her most impressive shot of the match, up to that moment— she’d one-up it later on—a lunging lob that she tucked right in front of the baseline, drawing loud cheers from the partisan crowd.

But Gauff is still 19, and her inexperience showed. With every bit of momentum in her favor, she lost concentration and moxie, and let Muchova back into the match. Gauff inexplicably gave her opponent new life, and Muchova took ample advantage. She broke Gauff, held serve, and then Gauff sent a weak shot into the net to give Muchova another break, and cut Gauff’s advantage to 5-4. 

Gauff, however, reached down deep to quell a disaster. She may be 19, but she’s learned how to win: right before the U.S. Open, in August, she clinched the most important tournament victory of her young career, besting Muchova in the final of the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati. She’s won nine straight matches coming into this semi. 

And it showed in that final game of the first set: Gauff kept her composure, returned Muchova’s serve and kept the ball in play, allowing Muchova to make all the errors. 

Then, one of the more bizarre moments in the U.S. Open history unfolded. Gauff held serve in the first game of the second set, but suddenly a persistent shouting could be heard from the upper level of Arthur Ashe Stadium. A group of spectators protesting climate change disrupted the event: security was able to remove three of the protesters, but a fourth one affixed his bare feet to the floor. Police officers and medical personnel surrounded the protester in the stands: in the chaos in the crowded halls of the stadium, security guards ordered fans to clear a path, even though they were scrunched together, some trying to capture the scene on camera phones, others filling the beer and food lines during the delay.

Gauff and Muchova retreated to their locker rooms. After about 10 minutes, Gauff said, she changed clothes and ate a bar. Finally, the fourth protester was removed: all four were taken into police custody, according to the U.S. Tennis Association, and in all, it took 49 minutes for play to resume. 

This isn’t the first environmental protest to interrupt a Grand Slam: at Wimbledon in July, protesters stopped play by throwing confetti onto a court. Tennis is an ideal forum for such disruption: since fans have to stay silent between points, those who want to shout, like the protesters Thursday, stand out. Plus, the game is played outside, in increasingly hotter temperatures. Arthur Ashe Stadium was a Thursday night sweatbox. Tennis can expect more of these kinds of delays going forward.  

After the match, Gauff said she expected some kind of protest at the U.S. Open, given the action at Wimbledon, but admitted she would have preferred a disruption not come in the middle of her match, when things were going her way.

“I wanted the momentum to keep going,” says Gauff. “But hey, if that’s what they felt like they needed to do to get their voice heard, I can’t really get upset.” 

Perhaps bolstered by the break, in the second set the rallies started to increase in length, and the level of performance, from both players, started to rise. Gauff finally broke Muchova to go up 5-3, with a chance to serve out the match. Gauff got to match point, but a backhand winner from Muchova at the net saved it for her, and an unforced backhand error from Gauff gave Muchova life. 

Once again, Gauff would have to pull this out the hard way. With Muchova serving, trying to force a tiebreaker, Gauff couldn’t take advantage of four more match points. The frustration, however, didn’t stop Gauff from winning the point of the match: back at deuce, Gauff won an incredible 40-shot rally. When Muchova left a drop shot a little too long, Gauff rushed in and slapped a forehand winner past her. The crowd of 23,859 erupted. 

“I know I had the legs and the lungs to outlast her in a rally,” says Gauff. “It was whether I had the mentality and the patience to do it. So 10-15 shots in, I was like, ‘well, this is going to change the match.’ I knew that if I could win that really, that next match point was going to go my way.”  

Gauff was correct. She would not come down from this high. And Muchova couldn’t recover from losing the marathon point: on Gauff’s sixth match point, Muchova left a forehand long, putting Gauff into the final. Gauff screamed and waved and put her hands to her ear, inviting more noise. New York complied. 

Gauff said she was off to watch some anime after the match. “I’m trying to enjoy the moment, but also knowing that I still have more work to do,” says Gauff. “Yes, the final is an incredible achievement. But it’s something I’m not satisfied with.” 

She can finish the job real soon. 

source https://time.com/6311939/coco-gauff-us-open-semifinal-win-muchova/

Attacks by Islamic Insurgents in Mali Kill Dozens

BAMAKO, Mali — Two attacks by Islamic insurgents in the restive north of Mali on Thursday killed 49 civilians and 15 government soldiers, according to a provisional death toll given by the country’s military junta.

A passenger boat near the city of Timbuktu on the Niger River and a Malian military position in Bamba further downstream in the Gao region were targeted, according to a statement from the military junta read on state television. It said the attacks have been claimed by Islamic extremist insurgent group JNIM, an umbrella coalition of armed groups aligned with al-Qaida.

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The Malian government announcement said its forces, in responding to the attacks, killed some 50 assailants.

Three days of national mourning to honor the civilians and troops killed begin Friday.

Timbuktu has been blockaded by armed groups since late August, when the Malian army deployed reinforcements to the region. The insurgents are preventing the desert city from being supplied with basic goods.

Over 30,000 residents have fled the city and a nearby region, according to an August report by the United Nations’ humanitarian agency.

The deadly attacks come as the U.N. prepares to withdraw its 17,000-strong peacekeeping mission MINUSMA from Mali at the government’s request. The pullout is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

Mali has struggled to contain an Islamic extremist insurgency since 2012. Extremist rebels were forced from power in Mali’s northern cities the following year with the help of a French-led military operation, but they regrouped in the desert and began launching attacks on the Malian army and its allies.

The growing insecurity in Mali has increased instability in West Africa’s volatile Sahel region. Mali has had two coups since 2020 in which the military vowed to stop the jihadi violence.

source https://time.com/6311926/mali-islamic-insurgent-attacks/

It’s Been a Tumultuous Year for Britain’s Royals Following the Queen’s Death

Between the reshuffling of royal titles, two globally broadcast events, and a few public embarrassments, Britain’s monarchy has had an eventful year since the death of Queen Elizabeth II last Sept 8.

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When the head of state died at the age of 96, bringing her 70-year reign to close, it triggered a number of changes—both large and small—in the royal family and in the nation. Not least, King Charles automatically ascended the throne after more than seven decades of waiting.

In the weeks that followed, the British public paid their respects in masses, queuing for as long as 24 hours to attend the Queen’s lying-in-state in Westminster Hall. World leaders and global royals flew to London to stand alongside British politicians at the monarch’s funeral viewed by more than 29 million viewers in the U.K. and estimated billions more across the globe.

In May, Charles was crowned in a widely televised coronation ceremony branded as inclusive and pared back. But in the midst of a cost of living crisis in the U.K., Charles’ big day came with a hefty price tag of between £50 million-£100 million ($63-$125 million), particularly compared to his mother’s coronation in 1953, which cost the present-day equivalent of £20.5 million. With the transfer of power, U.K. institutions underwent a rebrand, swapping in Charles’ face and title across its institutions, products, and currency (which will be in circulation next year). The Queen’s death also renewed discussions about the future of the monarchy at home and in the Commonwealth nations.

Read More: Charles Was Crowned King. Here Are the Highlights From His Coronation

Ahead of Friday, Charles paid tribute to his late mother with a statement issued via Buckingham Palace. “In marking the first anniversary of Her late Majesty’s death and my Accession, we recall with great affection her long life, devoted service and all she meant to so many of us,” the statement read. “I am deeply grateful, too, for the love and support that has been shown to my wife and myself during this year as we do our utmost to be of service to you all.” 

The 74-year-old King will spend the day reflecting in private at the Balmoral Estate in Scotland, where his mother died. The Prince and Princess of Wales, Kate and William, are set to lead their own tributes during a small service in Wales. 

As the royal family observes the one-year anniversary of the Queen’s death, here’s everything that has changed for them since.

His Majesty King Charles III

For 70 years, the Queen was stitched into the fabric of the U.K. Her face was on coins, banknotes, and stamps, while her title Her Majesty was emblazoned on everything from prisons to postboxes. Now, Charles’ image is ever-present and the official language of government has switched to His Majesty. For example, the senior lawyers working in the U.K. are now referred to as King’s Counsel, as opposed to Queen’s counsel. 

The British national anthem, which dates back to the 19th century, has also changed its lyrics from “God Save the Queen” to “God Save the King. 

With a year under his belt, royal watchers say Charles is holding his own in the new role. “The Royal Family has found new energy. The general feeling over here is that the King has done a good job in the first year,” royal biographer Hugo Vickers tells TIME. He adds that the King’s dedication to inclusivity—which was demonstrated at his tradition-breaking multi-faith coronation—is faring particularly well. “People were afraid he would not adapt but he did so at once.  He was well prepared for the role,” Vickers adds.

Charles has hosted a number of high profile state visitors, including the President of the Republic of South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa, and U.S. President Joe Biden. He also oversaw the appointment of U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who took on a new role of his own when replaced Liz Truss in October.

Line of succession and titles

Charles’ ascension had a knock-on effect for the line of succession in the royal family. The monarch’s long-held title of Prince of Wales and heir-apparent passed to William, thereby making Kate the Princess of Wales. The line of succession currently features 23 members of the royal family, ending with Master Lucas Tindall, aged 2, one of the Queen’s great-grandchildren. William is followed by his eldest son Prince George, his only daughter Princess Charlotte, and his youngest son Prince Louis, with Prince Harry fifth in line. 

Meanwhile, Camilla has benefited  “enormously” from the title of Queen, which helped legitimize her reign, says Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams.

Charles’ ascension was also lucrative. Forbes estimates that he inherited $500 million upon the death of the queen, across her private estates and her personal investments. He has also inherited a large portfolio of land and property that are technically owned by the U.K. government, estimated by Forbes at $24 billion. William is also a billionaire, at least on paper. The heir-apparent inherited the Duchy of Cornwall, approximately 130,00 acres of land in southwest England worth around $1.2 billion.

Prince Harry’s Scandals 

Prince Harry’s controversies

While the royal family has tried to project an image of stability during the last year, Prince Harry has made the task difficult for them. Charles’ younger son secured a number of high-profile collaborations that revealed disputes in the royal family.

In December, Harry and his wife Meghan Markle released a six-part Netflix docuseries which told the story of their courtship and departure from royal life in the U.K. and the racism Markle faced there. Bigger bombshell came in Harry’s memoir, Spare, which became an instant bestseller when it was published in January. The book covered his history of drug use, the loss of his virginity to an older woman, his killing of 25 people in Afghanistan while serving in the military, and being physically assaulted by his brother.

Read More: Spare Is Surprisingly Well Written—Despite the Drama Around It

The future of the Commonwealth

While the U.K. easily transitioned to a new King, some of its former colonies took the change as an opportunity to reconsider the role of the monarchy in their governments. “It is thought several of the 14 Commonwealth realms may become republics, but there is no timetable for this,” says Fitzwilliams. Yet rather than shrinking, the Commonwealth expanded when Gabon and Togo, neither former British colonies, joined in June 2022, he adds.

But in November 2021, Barbados transitioned into a parliamentary republic, with an elected president as the head of state. During William and Kate’s March 2022 Caribbean tour, leaders of the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Belize expressed their desire to break away from the British monarchy. The couple were met with waves of protest and calls for the slavery reparations.  William has expressed “profound sorrow” for the slave trade, but fell short of a formal apology for his family’s role in it.

The Queen’s death caused further nations to reconsider its future ties with the monarchy, with Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, and St Vincent and the Grenadines rethinking the relationship. 

source https://time.com/6311897/queens-death-anniversary/

Why You Should Think Before Telling Mothers ‘They’re Only Little Once’

As soon as I became a mother, I began to hear the phrase. They’re only little once. Parents and those without children all seemed to agree: most of the sacrifices mothers make can be explained away by the crushing force of time, which threatens to take our young children before we’re ready, or before we’ve done enough to ensure their success.

When my first child was a toddler and I could not afford daycare, I tried embracing the phrase. I found a job at an in-home childcare center where I could care for my daughter and work at the same time. Childcare was not my chosen profession, but I knew many mothers who had altered their careers and personal lives entirely so that they could spend more time with their children. When I spoke of my strange and sudden life shift to other mothers and fretted about how long this upheaval might go on, they called up that familiar retort.

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Things were not quite how I or they wanted them. We had lost ourselves, given up professional ambitions, friends, community, the pursuit of other forms of fulfillment, everything that gave us an identity and a personality. We were confused and overtaxed, unmoored, a little unhinged. But it would pass, we nodded to each other. They’re only little once.

In part this line of thinking was an effort to cut each other some slack. We brought each other back from the brink of disappointment, sadness, depression, and fury. And we believed that our children were better off when we gave up everything to spend more time with them.

Read More: The Conversation That Changed How I Thought About Early Motherhood

But the effect of this thinking was more guilt, less release. It was hard to parent children who were young without affordable childcare, sufficient paid leave, comprehensive postpartum care, or any reentry programs to help me get back to work. I felt disconnected from many moments, particularly as I contemplated who I had become and why I didn’t find more joy in caring for children all day, but I understood that it was still crucial that I cherish every moment. I didn’t yet see the outlines of the misogynistic belief that women’s unhappiness was an inevitable side effect of parenthood, much less the limits of how we think about time well spent with children.

In 1965, John Bowlby, sometimes referred to as the father of attachment theory, listed a mother who worked full time alongside the death or imprisonment of a parent, war, and famine, as part of his broader thesis on “maternal deprivation.” Since then, ideas about the supposed “peak experience” of parenting children under 4 have given new life to such claims. Conservative figure Jordan Peterson, for instance, has warned that parents “miss” this time at their “peril” and can’t “get back” precious time lost with young kids. His words have made the rounds on social media, softened by nostalgic images of young kids and their parents. But our cultural overemphasis on optimizing this period primarily implicates women, who are more likely to feel the pressure to reorient their personal and professional lives around the creation of “core memories.” Peterson himself acknowledges that women may experience career setbacks trying to make the most of these years, and that such setbacks contribute to the gender pay gap, but, he says, “no one knows what to do” about that.

Read More: Motherhood Is Hard to Get Wrong. Why Do So Many Moms Feel So Bad About Themselves?

At its best, the phrase “they’re only little once” urges parents to cherish small moments with their children. At its worst, however, the phrase bullies new mothers into martyring themselves in service of their children’s development, often by sacrificing their own autonomy, sense of self, and connections to a wider community outside the home.

I have since returned not just to my career ambitions, but to other forms of work and connection. At first, I felt pangs of sadness about what I might be missing when I was away from my children. But over time, I came to see that these worries prevented me from recognizing and appreciating the other relationships my kids had built–with daycare teachers, with extended relatives, with other children in our growing network of care.

The years we spend with our children when they are young are indeed fast and fleeting, and parenthood often feels like a state of mourning. We reckon with a certain loss of closeness with our children that is unavoidable and healthy, and the longing that sometimes comes with our own experiences of aging. But there is much more grief to be found in keeping to ourselves, in a world that so often wants us separate and divided.

The way we understand time well spent with kids also overlooks the fact that a mother’s time matters too. What me, after all, was always there in the early years with my children when they were so young? Certainly a less whole version of the person I am today. However present I may have been in the room, I was not me, but some image of what a mother should be. This is yet another great potential loss for children, and more important, for women, who cannot “get back” the years so many lose to early parenthood.

I no longer apply a lens of scarcity to my time with my children, nor do I hoard time with them. We have so many years, and they have so much to extend to others beyond me, and beyond our home. The unavoidable passage of time still weighs on me as I enter midlife, and as I watch my children age, too, coming into other versions of themselves. I long for pudgy baby legs and lost turns of phrase as much as any parent. But now, I also find pleasure in my evolving relationships with my kids. They are less me, more them, every day, an utter delight to witness, as I become less mother, more myself.

Rather than cherish every moment, I now cherish the forward movement of time—my children making friends, finding more adults they can trust, picking up slang at school, feeling new emotions, bringing home lessons about how to live among others. My own time spent away from them is richer and fuller too. We are bending toward the wider world, and toward a future that is a bit freer than the present moment.

source https://time.com/6311184/theyre-only-little-once-motherhood-essay/

Burned Out at Work? Find Someone to Split Your Job 50-50 With You

Anybody who has ever been burned out at work and wished for a few days to breathe without using precious vacation days may be interested in the solution employed by Sarah Hammer and Mimi Su.

The two, senior marketing directors at the consumer giant Unilever, share one job. One works for an intense week in their current role, at Unilever’s Pepsi Lipton Partnership, and then, when Wednesday comes around, she hands off responsibilities to the other for the next week. 

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This job sharing allows each woman to pursue ambitious career goals while still having time to spend with her family or explore other interests. Hammer, for instance, was the president of the parent-teacher organization at her children’s elementary school for two years during the pandemic while job sharing at Unilever. Though each woman gets 60% pay, they say that working together, they’re much more productive than one person would be. One person would have to work 65-hour weeks to get the job done, they say.

“I’m almost off and I’ve been dying these past couple days, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel because Sarah’s coming on,” Su said on a recent Wednesday. “And then your brain really does recharge, and when I am ready to come back, Sarah’s almost dead. So it’s a great dynamic where we’re able to rest a bit.” 

Women’s participation in the workforce has essentially flatlined since 1999, and the share of women working or looking for a job, 57.4%, is still below pre-pandemic levels. As employers report labor shortages, many women say that the pandemic motivated them to want to work less, not more. Job sharing could enable both women and men to have it all, allowing them to work less but still stay engaged with their careers.

Though job sharing is still extremely rare, it’s a solution that some employers are using to recruit and retain key talent. In September 2022, Ford launched a matchmaking tool to help employees find compatible people within the company with whom to job share; the tool now has more than 70 profiles. As police departments struggle to recruit and retain staff, a March 2023 report from the Bureau of Justice Assistance suggested job sharing as a way for police departments across the country to hire more staff. And in Australia, the number of job postings using the term “job share” or “work share” spiked during pandemic-related lockdowns, according to research by the hiring firm Indeed.

“Many companies, like us, recognize the benefits of allowing associates to split a full-time position, such as healthy succession, job satisfaction, and work-life balance,” says Mark Mathia, chief experience officer of Signature Performance, a health care administration company based in Omaha. In health care, many workers are approaching retirement age, Mathia says, and his company is looking for ways to extend the time that high-performing older employees contribute to the firm. Job sharing will allow Signature to keep on older employees while transitioning management to the younger generation, he says.

The pandemic has been a push for many employers to explore more flexibility. Companies that offer more flexibility are having an easier time growing quickly and recruiting new workers.

“Over the last three years, we’ve learned a lot about how to work in new ways and recognize that there is simply no one-size-fits-all approach to benefits,” says Kimberly Jones, people experience leader at PwC, which offers job sharing.  “We also know that having the ability to work flexibly—and get work done where and how it best suits our people—is one of our most valued offerings.”

Read more: Companies Requiring Full-Time In-Office Are Struggling to Recruit New Employees

Job sharing isn’t just for women—it could help men and fathers get more involved in their family life by allowing them to balance ambitious careers and their families, says Josh Levs, the author of All In: How Our Work-First Culture Fails Dads, Families, and Businesses—And How We Can Fix It Together. “The key is to give people choices,” he says.

Job sharing is part of what helped keep Sarah Hammer at Unilever. After the birth of her third child in 2016, Hammer wanted to work fewer hours, but the part-time marketing jobs available weren’t appealing to her. They were often project-based, and not very fast-moving, and didn’t include managing a team. But Hammer knew Unilever allowed for job sharing in some departments, so Hammer pitched her boss on the idea of job sharing with Su, who she knew from business school—and had formerly worked for Unilever and who had also just had a child. Though no one else in the marketing department was doing it, the company approved their job share as marketing manager of Hellman’s mayonnaise, a Unilever brand. They were so successful in the position that last year, they got promoted to an even bigger role within Unilever, handling bottled tea for the Pepsi Lipton Partnership.

Rethinking work

Even before the pandemic, many professional workers were starting to rethink work. Open-plan offices were full of distractions, and many workaholics were questioning whether spending so many hours at the office was really making them happy. The pandemic normalized working from home and also got many people thinking about what kind of work-life balance they would have in an ideal world.

Now, more people are trying different ways of working—taking a few months in the summer off, pursuing a four-day workweek, working fewer hours, and even job sharing.

“There has been a sea change for many organizations and leaders,” says Jessica DeGroot, the president of the Third Path Institute, which helps workers find a better balance between work and home life. During the pandemic, “leaders’ eyes were opened and they realized they could do their job well without going into the office every day—and that they liked how it felt for their families.” 

This is not the first time office workers have tried to re-balance their personal and professional lives. As more women entered the workforce in the 1970s and 1980s, the MIT management professor Lotte Bailyn called on companies to help employees better attend to personal obligations; without parents who go to back-to-school nights or volunteer in classrooms, she argued, schools couldn’t adequately educate the next generation of workers. “Framing the issue as a conflict between employees’ private needs and the competitive and productivity needs of U.S. enterprise is self-defeating for both,” she wrote, in her 1993 book Breaking the Mold: Women, Men, and Time in the New Corporate World.

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Companies need to think less about how much time someone is spending at their actual job and more about whether they are getting the most important work accomplished, she argued at the time. But not many companies changed their way of thinking until recently.

There were some: Ford, for instance, has long offered job sharing, and the team that redesigned the Ford Explorer in 2011 was led by two women, Julie Rocco and Julie Levine, who were job sharing at the time. Ford’s European offices have quite a few people who job share, the company says, including Sian Hodgson-Wood, a senior IT manager who has been sharing her job for eight years and has worked at Ford for 27. The job she shares has expanded into a bigger role because she and her partner are so effective together, she says. Both she and her job share partner started at Ford 27 years ago. “One of the amazing things about our company is that it is very good at supporting work-life balance,” says Hodgson-Wood, who is based in the U.K. “It’s the reason many of us stay for many, many years.”

Hodgson-Wood helped launch Job Share Connect, the Ford tool that allows employees to seek other internal candidates with whom to job share, last fall. She has also worked to educate Ford colleagues about job sharing; now, when the company lists a new position, managers have to say why it couldn’t be a job share. Otherwise, it’s assumed that it could be, she says.

Obstacles to job sharing

Even today, just around 20% of U.S. companies say they offer job sharing, estimates Melissa Nicholson, the founder of Work Muse, a company that consults people and businesses looking into job sharing. And even at companies that do offer it, in many cases, managers may not realize it’s an option. That’s often because HR representatives or company leaders discourage job sharing because of the potential headaches in hiring two people for one role. (Nicholson did a job share for nine years in the radio industry, and says it allowed her to be so focused on work for the days she was working that, on those days, she never set foot in her kids’ daycare.)

Nicholson says inquiries from people who want to job share but can’t find companies that support it are growing. Workers can also struggle to find someone with whom they’re compatible.

Nicholson says inquiries from people who want to job share but can’t find companies that support it are growing. Workers can also struggle to find someone with whom they’re compatible. There have been a few start-ups, one in the U.K. called Roleshare, and one in the U.S. called Job Share Connect (which is different from the platform with the same name that is an internal Ford employee tool) that have tried to match prospective job seekers with one another. But those job seekers sometimes have trouble convincing companies to hire them, says Jina Hwang, one of the co-founders of Job Share Connect. “I worry that job sharing is a bit ahead of its time,” says Hwang. “We’re just not in the right place to have it widely adopted.”

Job Share Connect was about to enter into a contract with a health care company to build out an internal job sharing model when the company got acquired, Hwang says, and the new owner “was threatened by job sharing.”

The experience of dreaming of job sharing but never quite getting it to work is common. Kelsey Sevening had a job share approved by her boss and two executives at the tech company where she worked until recently, and had found a job share partner, but at the last minute, human resources nixed the arrangement. She still works full-time.

Still, as companies struggle to recruit and retain workers in a tight job market, job sharing could catch on—especially at firms committed to recruiting and retaining women in leadership. Job sharing has, according to various studies published in research journals over the past few years, helped encourage more women into senior roles in higher education, prevent burnout among female physicians in Canada, and improved employee productivity and firm performance at small companies in Nigeria.

There are obvious benefits for short-staffed companies: since the workers coordinate vacation time and days off, there will always be someone “on” in a job share position, and job sharers have the benefit of many more years of experience, combined, than just one person would have. And of course there’s the benefit of coming back to work after a few days off.

“Mimi comes on after having been off for a while, and she has good ideas and suggestions that I can’t even get to because I’m like so deep in the weeds,” says Hammer. “She’s looking at it with fresh eyes.”

Hammer and Su are proof that job-sharing can work in more than one way: After they left their old role and were promoted to a new one, the company struggled to fill the job. Eventually, the company upgraded it to a more senior role, figuring it wouldn’t be able to find one person at a junior level to do all that Hammer and Su had done.

source https://time.com/6311034/50-50-job-sharing-burn-out/