Guilt, shame and the successful South African career woman

By Kurt April and Boipelo Mooketsi

Loving wife. Successful career-woman. Nurturing mother. Resourceful housekeeper. Energetic, fit and healthy. This is the ultimate modern woman: she can do everything, she can have it all ... or can she?

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perfection is just beyond their reach, where success in one area of life means failure to achieve in another. Recent research from Africa’s leading business school, the University of Cape Town (UCT) Graduate School of Business (GSB), has highlighted that an uncomfortable number of women at the top suffer in this way. Although they take immense pride in their work and achievements and are ambitious and driven to succeed against all odds, the sweet taste of success is soured by persistent feelings of guilt and shame. The GSB research, which was carried out

by Prof Kurt April and Boipelo Mooketsi set out to unpack what lies at the root of guilt and shame in the workplace. Intimate and detailed interviews were carried out with fourteen women in the search for answers. All were either founders of their own companies or held executive positions in the public or private sector.

Guilt and shame: what’s the difference? The researchers were looking for themes and patterns in their research – and found that the one common denominator in the lives of successful women was the internal conflict they experienced between managing their career and home life objectives. This appears to be fuelled by old norms, standards and cultural practices, which have,

70 Management Today | August 2011

any South African female executives strive to attain superwoman status, but soon realise that this level of

to a large extent, remained unchanged over the centuries, but are no longer applicable to modern day living. They dictate what is reasonable in terms of a woman’s time management, work-life balance, family interaction and even the level of sacrifice she has to make to be successful in the corporate world. Guilt is one reaction to this and is experienced

when certain ethical and moral principles are violated, or some social value, norm, standard or cultural practice has been transgressed. Shame, on the other hand, is a far more insidious reaction and is directly linked to the self, self-worth and personal ideals, and takes the form of feelings of inferiority, humiliation, shyness, inhibition and embarrassment.

Guilt and its manifestations Guilt manifests in many different ways and the researchers categorised it according to themes as they emerged, from relationship guilt, responsibility guilt, guilt over affluence, guilt over achievement and survivor guilt. ‘Relationship guilt’ often occurs in close

relationships, where one partner blames the self and feels guilty for the other’s unhappiness – even when they have done nothing inherently wrong. Palesa*, a HR executive and consultant often missed going out to dinner with her husband as a result of working late. “I feel guilty when he is embarrassed that I put him through that,” she says. “It’s like you’re implying that work comes first and he comes second.” Like Palesa*, Senior Financial Manager, Lisa* often felt ‘responsibility guilt’ for letting her work