September 11, 2011

It’s Lonely in the Middle

As I’m winding down my MBA experience, I’m taking a management class to prepare for what I hope will be a big career transition over the next few years.  The course launched this weekend with a case about a manager in his early 30s with a wife and three children who relocates to India to open a new corporate office.  Needless to say, as in all business school cases, problems ensue.  The class ended with an update on the manager, who ultimately turned the office around by changing his own values and perspectives, as well as rethinking elements of his strategy.

The update came in the form of a video, which opened with the slightly older and wiser manager talking about the burden of his family obligations in the early days of the new division.  He had underestimated the difficulty of finding schools for his children, and of acclimating the family to a new place and culture.  He spent many daytime hours absorbed with family, and subsequently had to do most of the company meetings in the evenings.

I was appalled.  The case clearly defined the problems, and none had to do with the manager’s family.  Yet, the very first ‘excuse’ the manager made was family obligations.  An ambitious woman — no matter how many family crises she faces — never uses family as an excuse.  It’s career suicide.

Let me explain a little further.  There’s excellent research that indicates that men who have children fare as well — or even better — than their childless peers.  But mothers are less likely to be hired, promoted, and see increases on compensation than their male and childless co-workers.  And not by a small magnitude — one study indicated that women who revealed they had children were 100% less likely to be called for jobs than those who did not reveal any family obligations.

Women who want to succeed are cagey about their family lives.  They never say that a project went awry even in part because of because of family obligations, largely because that’s not why their projects go awry, but also because women who suggest that their family is a priority are immediately discounted and discredited.

As I listened to the manager talk, I felt glum.  In our 70% male program, the group hardly needs reinforcement of the idea that mothers are less valuable to their companies.  Whether they are conscious of it or not, this group is already likely to be biased against women with children.  While this manager was male, his words had much greater impact on the women in the room than on the men simply because women are perceived as more dedicated caretakers. If even this hard-driven, male, Harvard MBA couldn’t handle work and family, how could a presumably even more family-committed woman?

This all feels particularly relevant to me right now.  Women who have already achieved C-suite status usually have some freedom to talk about their family life at the office, but those of us who are on the way up know that it’s best to keep mum about our children.  In many corporate offices, it’s more acceptable to say that you are tired because you were out late drinking with friends than it is to say that you were nursing a sick baby.

But, of course, that puts us in a very lonely spot: never suggesting that it’s hard to maintain a vigorous career and a healthy family, always suggesting that it’s all very manageable because you know that a moment of weakness can mean that your boss ‘takes pity’ on you and ‘relieves’ you of some plum assignment.  He or she thinks that they’re doing you a favor, making your life easier.  What’s really happening is that opportunities are dissolving.

All of this means that it’s sometimes difficult for women to build deep friendships at work, where they need to keep a major part of their lives under wraps.  And that has serious ramifications.  Men build networks of friends and advocates that lead to opportunities; women, always careful, always guarded, may have a harder time connecting with powerful mentors and colleagues.

They say it’s lonely at the top.  When you’re a mother, it’s lonely in the middle, and that makes it a lot harder to climb the ladder.

10 Comments

Filed under Management, Politics, School, Work

Tagged as , , ,

August 28, 2011

Exams and Evacuation: An Open Letter to My Macroeconomics Professor

Dear Professor:

Attached please find my exam submission with graphs.  My apologies for the late graph submission — by way of explaining, I’ve applied the IS-LM-FE framework to my own experience over the past couple of days as follows:

Assume that the Bee family is the closed ecosystem we’re considering.  There are three workers in this ecosystem: me, my husband and our babysitter; sadly, unemployment (u*) is quite high — 2/5 of our family, our two children, pretty much never work.  My husband is traveling this weekend, so output has already shifted slightly to the left.  But that’s okay, in this ecosystem two workers can often carry the load, and my sitter had agreed to come today at 6:30am so I could get to the exam with lots of time to spare.  Output (Y) is the exam.

Yesterday evening, I learned that we would have to evacuate our Battery Park City apartment sometime today in anticipation of Hurricane Irene, and that transit would close in the early afternoon.  Since we had the exam this morning, I packed our bags, put the baby in the carrier, my laptop in a backpack, and wheeled the rest of our necessary possessions in the stroller to my mother’s house in Brooklyn.  This had a fairly dramatic effect on the FE line in our family, since it was a shock both to K, capital (not in our own apartment), and to A, productivity (one of the two workers remaining was very tired on arrival in Brooklyn).

In our ecosystem we consume a unique bundle of goods, including special books, music, blankets and toys.  Many of these are related to an important commodity that really has no equivalent outside of this ecosystem: sleep.  Unfortunately our consumption dropped considerably because we were unable to take some of these items with us.  In addition, prices increased considerably for other goods we consumed — for example, the cost of dinner was answering questions from my mother like: ‘Why are you getting an MBA again?’, ‘I gave the baby a Hershey bar.  That’s okay, right?’  and ‘When are you getting your stuff out of the basement?’

The IS line in our family shifted left as consumption dropped.  Sleep was also seriously affected, resulting in yet more loss of total factor productivity (TFP) and further shift to the left of the FE line.

At 5:30 this morning my sitter called to say that she would not be able to come since transportation was likely to shut down and she was (appropriately) concerned about being with her family.  The FE line took another hit, as we lost one of our key workers.  My mother, who is a hospital administrator, was called to work to launch their emergency effort.  I was left alone with the baby, who, despite my best efforts, did not sleep.

Perhaps equally jarring to the ecosystem: the black gold that fuels our economy, coffee, was found to be absent.  Apply the oil shock example covered in class; significant loss of TFP.

At this point, let’s assume the FE line shifts by a lot because not only is there no childcare, but the worker remaining is showing some signs of dementia.  She believes that she can still take her macroeconomics exam while the baby naps.  This is clearly crazy.  The baby cried throughout the first hour of the exam, further affecting TFP.

At noon, my mother returned and took the baby for a while, shifting the FE curve slightly to the right with the addition of temporary help.  However, she left again at 2pm, plunging the FE line back to the left.

The effect of all of this was a recessionary effect on Y, output.  I suspect this will be evident when you grade my exam, which is one of my weaker efforts, and it is why the graphs are late.  Thanks so much for your understanding.

Sincerely,

The Mama Bee

5 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

July 15, 2011

Distancing From the ‘Nice’ World of Mommy Blogging

The other day I was invited to an event with a number of bloggers who are mothers.  If you were a marketer you might call it a ‘mommy blogger‘ event.  I knew hardly any of the other women, but one came up to me and asked where I write.  I told her about my blog; ‘it’s about women, work and the politics of motherhood’ I explained.

‘That’s nice,’ she replied.

And I snapped back, ‘No, it isn’t nice.  The working world is not nice to mothers.  Mothers are up to 100% less likely to be hired than their childless peers.’  She sort of half apologized and moved away from me.  I spent the rest of the event scowling in a corner.

Of course, I was unfair to this woman and to the event in general.  I’ve preached that women don’t need to be bitchy to be respected, but when someone suggested that a blog about women and work could be ‘nice’, I flew off the handle.  Somehow, I needed to make a sharp distinction between The Mama Bee and blogs about ‘nice’ things like stuff to do with kids on rainy days and the best new strollers.

I’m ashamed to admit that I fell into the very trap I’ve talked about in other posts: the idea that something professional and serious can’t also be nice.  Implicitly, I also had a sense that I didn’t belong at this event.  Because an event for mommy bloggers couldn’t also be an event for mothers who work in a corporate environment.  In a bigger picture way, I was distancing myself from ‘mommies’, even though I certainly identify that way in my own home.

Over the past year, as I’ve switched roles at my company, I’ve distanced myself from talking about my children, having them visit the office, and generally including them in my work life.  My new department includes very few women with children, and I sense that it would damage my credibility as a ‘serious’ employee to talk about them too much.  I suspect that this shift — to a place where I draw a sharper line between my work and life — won’t change as I strive towards more senior roles.

It’s interesting, because I see that women who have made it to the top, CEOs, for example, can talk about their family life somewhat more openly.  It’s the women who are on their way up who have to pretend that it doesn’t exist, and that their work will always take precedence.  Even when prioritizing work above family would be completely irrational.

All by way of saying: I’m sorry about the mommy blogger event where I had a chip on my shoulder.  And I’m even sorrier that in climbing the ladder, I’ve bought into the idea that women can’t discuss their children and still be seen as candidates for top jobs.

 

5 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

July 13, 2011

Macreconomics and Mothers

The dismal US jobs numbers and GDP growth have got me thinking about Norway.  Recently the New York Times asserted that the country’s prosperity is fueled by the number of working women, 7% more than in the United States and 10% more than in the rest of Europe.  Norway is still seeing negative GDP growth, but the depths of their despair are significantly more shallow than in the US and the rest of Europe.

It’s an interesting hypothesis – that enacting policy that allows women to more fully enter and maintain presence in the workforce leads to greater labor supply, output and tax revenue.  And from a macroeconomic perspective, it makes sense.  If gross domestic product is a function of productivity, labor supply, and capital, an influx of qualified women would increase at least two of those three factors, bumping up GDP.

There’s reason to think that this effect might be even more pronounced in the US.  Most economists see GDP growth in mature economies as stemming primarily from increases in productivity, including better technology, more highly skilled workers and better management practices.  Women now earn nearly 60% of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, roughly 50% of professional degrees and 55% of PhDs, suggesting that in the coming years women will be a more skilled labor pool.  If they haven’t already, the Department of Labor projects that women will make up more than 50% of the workforce in the near future, meaning that they are likely to have more experience in a variety of jobs.

On the flip side, Norway’s matrix of policies in this area is complex and comprehensive, including maternity/paternity leave, quotas in the boardroom and affordable childcare among many others.  Political will for this kind of legislation has been weak in the US, even among women who should know better.

I suspect, however, that we would not have to enact the entire suite of Norwegian policies to fuel GDP growth with female capital.  I’m not a fan of quotas, for example.  A fourteen-month maternity leave is a ridiculous thing to ask of companies, and most would hire significantly fewer women (as has happened in other parts of Europe).  And part-time work is only an option for women who don’t mind parking their career for a few years; a lot of us want the C-suite.

So what would work in the US?  Great, affordable childcare.  (Added bonus, this too would boost long-run productivity.)  Incentivized and promoted paternity leave that would equalize childcare and housework in marriages.  Equal pay for equal work that would keep women in the workforce.  Corporate environments where politics and bad management don’t kill the joy of challenging, meaningful work.

Norway’s solution doesn’t fit the US; we have different challenges and opportunities when it comes to women and work.  But we can achieve the same result by investing in women, and especially working mothers: greater economic success for everyone.

2 Comments

Filed under News, Politics

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 6, 2011

Marketing By Gender

Catching up on TED Talks, I recently heard Johanna Blakley speak about how social media will end gender as we know it.  Blakley’s hypothesis is that new media offers marketers the ability to segment in radically different ways, making traditional demographics obsolete.  Because so many of our notions about gender are driven by media and marketing, Blakley believes that our current definitions of gender will also become irrelevant.

It’s funny to me that Blakley sees things this way – I see just the opposite – that marketing based on gender has become more prevalent, not less.  Just look at the marketing bonanza around Blogher.  The companies that support the conference do so because women are a prime audience for their products.  And while I’d love to say that these marketers are thinking very differently about their target audience, the reality is that the products they promote tap into all of our traditional gender stereotypes – food, cleaning products, clothing, toys.

Blakley notes that the opportunity is great because websites collect masses of information about our interests, rather than just our age, gender, income and education.  But even if that audience is cut into niche slivers, it’s not likely that the gender targets will be vastly different.  After all, the people with the greatest interest in shopping and cleaning are the people who DO the shopping and cleaning.  And the data suggests that’s still primarily women.

Recently comScore, a source of information for digital marketers, released a report on women and the internet.  While the data is fascinating, it’s very clear that this industry leader has not abandoned traditional gender demographics.  The report indicates, for example, that women are less likely to use Twitter to post original content and more likely to use the site to find deals and promotions, follow celebrities, and have conversations.   If you were to cut the audience by interest, that data might look very different.  comScore might say, for example, that women who are interested in celebrity gossip are more likely to follow stars, but that women who are interested in politics are not.  But the report makes no such distinctions.

Ironically, Blakley’s talk wasn’t at the main TED conference, but at TED Women, a shadow gathering focused on women’s issues and interests.  I’ve talked about how I dislike separating women from the greater group in the past – launching a separate platform like ForbesWoman for example, versus just incorporating more women’s writing into Forbes’ regular content.  To me this is the ultimate in gender marketing.  It’s crystal clear why shadow forums for women are launched; women are seen as an independent group of consumers with a separate set of marketing opportunities.

From where I sit, the internet has done little to change our definitions of gender.  What it has done very effectively is build community that allows us to have a more transparent understanding of what gender means and how it is used to sell us all kinds of things.  Call me a pessimist, but I think it’s unlikely that we’ll see a radical change in gender definition by marketers anytime soon.  But that doesn’t mean that the digital world hasn’t helped us to overcome sexism in other, perhaps even more important way.  The open conversation we are having about the implications of gender marketing will provoke change.

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 1, 2011

Are Modern Parents Really So Miserable?

I’ve been reading a lot about the phenomenon that is ‘Go the F**k to Sleep.’  Some like it, some hate it.  Strangely viral, the book strikes me as no more than a novelty.  Who would want to read it more than once?

I wanted to like the book.  I see myself as the kind of cool, subversive mother who can laugh about the indignities of parenthood.  But I didn’t think it was funny at all.  In fact it sort of put me in a bad mood.  And it made me wonder whether it’s really parents who are buying this, versus non-parents who think their parent friends might like it.  Or non-parents who want to enjoy a moment of schadenfreude.

What bothers me about the Go The F*ck to Sleep is the implication that parenthood is not consistent with a satisfying adult life.  That, as a parent, your pleasure is severely limited.  The parents in the book are unable to enjoy even so much as a movie or a good night’s sleep, much less other meaningful and fulfilling adult activities.

But of course this is absolutely not true.  Most of us do find limitations in parenthood.  But alongside those limitations come incredible moments of joy.  I’ve never met a parent for whom the limitations outweighed the wonder.

Some see the book as an indictment of attachment and ‘helicopter parenting’.  Maybe that was also a reason I didn’t like it.  The implication is that if this father would just make their kid stay in bed – cry it out, so to speak – he wouldn’t be filled with rage.  Both of my children were ‘cry it out’ babies, but never for a moment have I thought that using another method would have driven me to fury.  If it had even come close, I would have done something different.

And that’s part of the crux here – why doesn’t the father in the book let the child cry it out?  Why does he do something that makes him so furious and resentful?  Why doesn’t the mother step in?  The anti-helicopter faction says it’s because modern parents have been conditioned to give in to their children’s every need and whim.  But that doesn’t give modern parents much credit.

Even when they have been otherwise awful, putting my children to bed has not been unpleasant.  Cozying up with books, singing songs and nursing have all been wonderful ends to my day.  Which is not to say that it is never frustrating.  But the discrete times of unpleasantness are usually forgotten within hours if not minutes.

So many other things make me very angry.  That spending time with my children is sometime compromised by my worries over work.  That my husband and I both work long hours and spend less time with each other than we would like.  That countless securities – healthcare, life insurance, retirement pay – are bound up with my job, making me feel inexplicably trapped, even though I like my job and don’t plan to leave anytime soon.  But not putting my kids to bed at night.

So I’m trying to figure out why this book has struck such a chord.  And I think – if indeed it is parents who are relating to this content – that it’s not about putting your kids to bed per se.  It’s about the minute amount of time at the end of the day that husbands and wives have together.  It’s not really the kids who are squeezing this.  It’s the number of hours we spend at work.  But a book titled ‘Put the F**king Computer Down’ probably wouldn’t have done as well.

7 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , ,

June 29, 2011

The New Victoria Woodhull. But Not As Smart.

I’m finally catching up on New Yorker articles, and was fascinated by the recent piece on Silvio Berlusconi, the scandalous President of Italy.  Although he has been roundly criticized for alleged sex with underage girls and Bunga Bunga orgies, Berlusconi also made women central to his cabinet, appointing them as parliamentarians, and supporting them in mayoral elections.

How to consider a man who simultaneously objectifies women and lifts them to play previously unheard of roles in Italian politics?  My initial instinct was to think fondly of a leader with the courage to elevate marginalized women – women from humble backgrounds, perhaps some who had earned money in less socially acceptable ways than we’re used to from public officials.  I love the Victoria Woodhull story.

On the other hand, it’s clear that Berlusconi wasn’t scouring the backstreets of Italy looking for brilliant political minds.  And it’s likely that these women are more Berlusconi stooges than they are advocates for innovative public policy.  They are part of the government because they ponied up for powerful men.  Their looks and willingness to be the women ‘men want’ got them their jobs.

When you think about this paradigm it doesn’t feel all that good.  And it reminds me of Sarah Palin.  Palin capitalizes on her looks, her simultaneous domesticity and sexuality, and a stereotype of ‘what men want’.  As a stooge for the Republican party, how different is she from Berlusconi’s ladies of the night?

This is also why Palin’s brand of political ‘feminism’ is so odious to many of us.  If your political power rests on being cute, but not too bright, attractive but ineffectual, you do nothing to advance the role of women in society.  If you got where you are by pleasing an man – directly or indirectly – you’re just a modern Victoria Woodhull.  A novelty candidate there for laughs.

There are Republican women who provide important role models.  I don’t agree with them, but they add value to discussions about the issues.  Olympia Snowe.  Kay Granger.  Kay Bailey Hutchison.  This isn’t a political divide, it’s about how women in politics position themselves relative to their peers.  It’s about sounding intelligent and well-prepared.  It’s about elevating our best people, not because they adhere to someone’s idea of what a woman should look like, but because they can create effective public policy.

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

May 24, 2011

The MamaBA

I started writing this post last October — with an apology for being away for more than a month.  Already I had heard from my online friends and community asking if I was okay.  I never answered because I kept thinking I would finish this post and all would be explained.  Little did I know that it would take nearly seven months to get my act together.  Here goes.

Over the past year The Mama Bee has transformed to “MamaBA”, a student at Columbia Business School.  Despite my concerns about women and part-time work, at first I thought that I would cut my hours to accommodate my academic schedule.  But soon after being accepted to the program I was offered the opportunity to shift roles at my company – an offer that I didn’t want to turn down.

So with two young children, a full-time job, a breast pump, and an immensely supportive husband, I went back to school.  I thought I could document the whole crazy experience through The Mama Bee, but it soon became clear that I could barely keep myself clean, fed and clothed each day, much less write cogently.  So I gave up blogging for a month, saying that I would pick it back up when I was more in the swing of things.  One month became two, and two became six – and before I knew it, half a year had passed without a single post.

Worse yet, I was starting to lose the courage of my convictions.  Only 35% of business school students at Columbia are women (this number dropped to 25% for the class immediately following mine), and in my group of 128 students with an average age of 32, there is just one other mother.  There are roughly 16 fathers, and counting – men have babies during the program, but women typically don’t.  Part of my vision had been to prove that working mothers could tough out the program as well as their male counterparts, and compete at the highest levels with the rest of the class.

I set forth to document the injustices that lead to mothers being just 2% of the class, while fathers were close to 13%.  (Adjusted for the overall male/female ratio, the difference is still alarming — .5% mothers, 8.1% fathers.)  But what became clear to me is that, while Columbia doesn’t make it easy for mothers, women themselves hold back from applying to MBA programs because they feel the combination of work, school and family is too challenging.  And the opportunity cost of doing one at a time is too high.

And it breaks my heart to say that they might be right.  For the first time in my life, I’m watching some figs on my tree of choices wither as I pick others.  It’s not that school isn’t an amazing experience — it truly is.  I’ve met extraordinary people, made lasting friendships, and learned so much about a breadth of topics out of my comfort zone.  I’ve never felt more prepared to take the next step in my career.  And yet I’ve given up so much this year.  With no leisure time, I haven’t really been happy.  I’ve had to give up this blog, which kept me intellectually stimulated and driven.  I’ve lost social networks that help ground some of my core values.  My children have missed me in their lives.

With the bulk of the core curriculum finished now, I’m pausing to take a breath and see if I can’t re-enter the world of women, work and the politics of motherhood.  The irony is that business school has given me the most enormous amount of material to write about.  Did I mention that of ten classes taken to date, only one was taught by a woman?  Here’s hoping I can pull it together to share the outrageous, egregious and moments of joy and laughter back here soon.

14 Comments

Filed under Happiness, School

Tagged as , , ,

August 27, 2010

Making Pin Money

The other day one of my blogger friends forwarded me a message she had received from a marketer representing a lawyer looking to break into social media through the “mommy market.”  The marketer wrote:

Many professional women plan to go back to work after they have a baby.  But when the reality of a little one at home sets in, some aren’t eager to get back to the office.  For women in the professional services field, there is another option – they can become ‘entreprofessionals’ and start their own businesses.

Mommies considering this path will certainly find advantages, like more time at home with baby.  But there are also some potential pitfalls if they don’t protect themselves.  XXXXXX is the founder of XXXXX law firm.  He has helped many people legally start and protect their businesses.  He can offer your readers tips and advice on starting a business.

I was appalled.  The implicit sexism.  The talking down to female business owners — most of whom do not spend significantly “more time at home with baby.”  The suggestion that women who start businesses do it because they want to “work from home” and not because they have big ambitions that can only be fulfilled by running their own companies.  The reference to these women as “mommies.”  (Note to marketers: Only my own children can refer to me as “mommy” without me taking offense.)

The trivialization of female entrepreneurs is disturbing for a number of reasons.  First, it minimizes the incredible impact women are having on the economy: as Forbes recently reported, women-owned businesses are expected to create millions of jobs this year.  To expand our economy as a whole, we need to be thinking collectively about how to support women in business, particularly by giving them access to the same networks as their male counterparts.  This is not just about women and their desire to be “mommies.”

Second, we have to stop giving women the false impression that starting their own business is going to be a panacea for their lack of fulfillment in the corporate world or their work-life crises.  Successfully starting a business is very labor intensive.  It is often not very lucrative at the beginning.  It requires tremendous personal drive and passion far beyond a desire to have a more flexible work schedule.  This needs to be understood, lest women opt out of their corporate jobs only to find themselves working harder for less money and fewer benefits.

The internet is rife with marketing ploys aimed at mothers who want out of the corporate world.  (Sharon Lerner had a great piece in The American Prospect about this recently.)  The irony is that many of these schemes ask women to invest money in services they don’t need or get-rich quick scams destined to fail.  They victimize women who are desperate to change their lives, while simultaneously damaging the credibility of the millions of real female entrepreneurs.

But even worse, legitimate marketers and businesses, like Lawyer X, are adopting the language of their slimier counterparts — language that implies women who start businesses are just doing a little something on the side to make pin money.  It’s offensive and untrue, and yet the more this kind of language seeps into the marketplace, the more it becomes the narrative of female entrepreneurs.  We start businesses to get out of the corporate world and spend more time with our kids, not because we are real businesspeople who have important ideas to actualize.

By the way, those of us who work for companies and don’t plan to start our own businesses, we need to be irate about this too.  It promotes the idea that women aren’t real businesspeople and that their ambitions are limited.  The success of female entrepreneurs boosts the credibility of all women; their trivialization hurts us all too.

Related links:

  • Part of the problem is online resources for work at home moms assume they are really stay at home moms who need a little extra cash — not ambitious, powerful women in their own right.  Consider the WAHM.com homepage, which reads: New to working at home?  Learn from our large library of articles and recipes.  (Emphasis is mine.)  This is only appropriate if you are a work from home chef.
  • The Wall Street Journal recently posted this article about people who work from home being asked to do favors.  While men were substantially profiled in the article, I suspect that women who work at home are even bigger targets for such requests.
  • A few months ago Joanne Bamberger (PunditMom) posted this open letter to The New York Times about the paper’s trivialization of women in the business of social media.  Funny how The Times never writes stories like these about men’s efforts to build their businesses and brands.

11 Comments

Filed under News, Politics, Working Mom Blogs

Tagged as , , , ,

August 11, 2010

It’s the Small Stuff That’s Going to Bring About the Revolution

Last week I was at BlogHer, and it was great — great to meet so many amazing bloggers in person, and great to feel like feminism and activism are alive and well.

The closing keynote was nominally about using your voice, your platform and your power for advocacy, but really was a much deeper conversation about the role of women in public life.  As much as I liked what the panelists were saying — their commentary skirted a big elephant in the room of the women’s movement: that mothers (80% of women) are being left behind.  When I asked about this, the women on the panel were most interested in absolving the women’s movement of blame.  And it’s true; feminists have tried to advocate, but not practically.  Corporate cultures don’t change because they recognize “the right thing to do,” and they won’t spend money on programs to support working mothers without seeing significant pay-off.

It irks me when we talk about the “sacrifices” or “trade-offs” that women make without contextualizing those choices with an understanding of the institutional discrimination mothers face.  The women’s movement has been careful to validate every woman’s individual life decisions, especially to work in a formal setting, full-time, part-time or not at all.  What the movement hasn’t said is that this “choice” is frequently made under duress.

Most stay at home mothers are not homemakers by choice; circumstance, lack of skills and under-education has forced their hand. Those who do have education and skills may still have their hand forced by institutional sexism that values a male or childless employee over an equally credentialed mother.

Part of this is mindset.  Certainly we must win the hearts and minds of our supervisors and colleagues so that they no longer believe that mothers work less hard or are less ambitious.  But institutional discrimination against mothers manifests in small and unnecessary ways that are much easier to address than hearts and minds.  Fostering women’s advancement in the workplace need not require painful choices between work and family — they can coexist without either suffering.  Consider the following three scenarios:

Scenario #1: A friend started a prestigious MBA program recently that had a week long “in-residence” period at a conference center.  She was nursing her new baby during this time, and asked to be allowed to bring the child along with a 24-hour caregiver so that she could continue breastfeeding and participate fully in the planned social and academic activities.  (As any nursing mother knows, pumping round the clock for six days takes a lot of time out of the day.)  Allowing the baby would represent a relatively minor exception, while holding firm to their no-family policy would require my friend to make a life-altering decision between continuing to nurse her baby and pursuing an MBA.  The program ultimately allowed the baby, but not without much discussion.  Small change for the school, huge impact for the working mother.

Scenario #2: At BlogHer, I met Susan Niebur of Women in Planetary Science.  She pointed out that one reason women are marginalized in the science community is that there isn’t childcare available at most conferences.  Since many female scientists are married to other scientists, the two have to make a decision about which partner can attend a particular conference, and which stays home with the kids.  Typically women stay back, and are therefore less able to present and may have their name omitted from important papers.  The diminished public attention hurts their careers.  I would love to see some of the money we commit to promoting women in STEM support childcare at conferences; it’s an easy fix, but no one recognizes it as a root of the problem.  Small change for the scientific community, big impact for the working mother.

Scenario #3: TechyDad was liberated enough to attend BlogHer, and told a story at our Worklife session about a company he worked for that offered sick pay, but stipulated that it could only be used for the employee, not an employee’s child.  So if an employee had to stay home, s/he was required to use a vacation day.  This kind of policy — that would be easy to change and would have relatively little impact on a company’s bottom line — signals that primary caregivers have low value in the corporate infrastructure.  It’s the kind of policy that makes women think they are powerless in their company environments and that they might as well just quit.  It means something to women, but virtually nothing beyond principle to companies.  Small change for the company, big impact for the working mother.

These are three of dozens of small changes that could meaningfully address institutional sexism, gender inequality and the pay gap.  Because it appears that gender discrimination persists in the working world at least in part because mothers are not treated fairly.  And I’m not waiting anymore for the women’s movement to recognize this.  Feminist advocates are focusing on massive change, but it may be that relatively small and inexpensive modifications in how we do business would help to achieve our goals bigger, stronger and faster.

Related links:

  • David Indiviglio has a bogus post on “Why Mothers Fall Behind” in The Atlantic.  Indiviglio suggests that women take off more time to be caregivers and therefore are fairly denied advancement opportunities commensurate with their peers.  This is an old and discredited canard.  Maria Shriver’s report, A Woman’s Nation includes research indicating that only 10% of the pay gap can be explained by career choices including taking time off to be a caregiver.
  • Nancy Folbre at The New York Times Economix blog writes about how the women’s movement has supported mothers.  My beef is not whether they have supported, but how.  Their solutions have been impractical.
  • Fertile Feminism points out that it’s not feminism’s fault that mothers have fallen behind; it’s bad public policy and corporate culture.  I agree, but the women’s movement hasn’t done enough to practically combat the problems.
  • Momania asks “Do Kids Kill Women’s Careers?”  Spoiler alert: yes.

8 Comments

Filed under News, Politics, Work

Tagged as , , , ,