The good news is that, where top management supports them, work-life policies like the ones Ive listed do pay off. As she described the policy, it applies not only to mothers; others have used it to care for elderly parents or to return to school. HBR Learnings online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. Even without extras (out-of-town trips, client dinners, work functions), this kind of schedule makes it extremely difficult for any professional to maintain a relationship. I distinguish between high achievers (those who are earning more than $55,000 in the younger group, $65,000 in the older one) and ultra-achievers (those who are earning more than $100,000). Risk is healthy; it makes you more creative.. The research shows that only 3% to 5% of women who attempt in vitro fertilization in their 40s actually succeed in bearing a child. For more about the methodology and findings, go to www.parentsunite.org. Such a leave of absence might span three yearsunpaid, of course, but with the assurance of a job when the time came to return to work. Nothing could be further from the truth. I heard a wonderful example of the loyalty these kinds of policies engender when I spoke with Amy, 41, a marketing executive for IBM. By being more deliberate about career and family trade-offs, they take a vital first step toward having it allor at least having what men have. Even if you manage to get one child under the wire, you may fail to have a second. Going into the interviews, I had assumed that if accomplished women were childless, surely they had chosen to be. Womens lives have expanded. IBM gave me this gift, she said, and I will always be grateful. Clearly, in the aggregate, business leaders hold the power to make important and constructive change. Professional men seeking to marry typically reach into a large pool of younger women, while professional women are limited to a shrinking pool of eligible peers. Second, you get to incrementally step further away from the tasks you dont enjoy and that dont help you get where you want to goeven if there are certain aspects of them that may be tempting. At the same time, we need adults at all income levels to become committed, effective parents. High-level jobs should be created that permit reduced hours and workloads on an ongoing basis but still offer the possibility of promotion. But for most people, thats not the full story. Young women are delaying childbirth even longer, too. There is a secret out therea painful, well-kept secret: At midlife, between a third and a half of all successful career women in the United States do not have children. They find oxygen in the form of younger, less driven women who will coddle their egos. She went on to conclude, The hard fact is that most successful men are not interested in acquiring an ambitious peer as a partner.. But a mere 19% of their male colleagues are. In a recent study, economists Susan Harkness and Jane Waldfogel compared that wage gap across seven industrialized countries and found it was particularly wide in the United States. Over the past few years, Ive interviewed hundreds of successful women. If the gap between what men and women earn in this country is wider than elsewhere, it isnt because this country has done an inferior job combating discrimination. Most important, they cannot assume that, as they pursue their careers, their personal lives will simply fall into placeor that medical science will extend their childbearing years into their 40s. Thus, the fact that so many professional women are forced to sacrifice motherhood is patently unfair, and it also has immense implications for American business, since it causes women intent on motherhood to cut short their careers. Youll be amazed at how many people will be drawn to somebody who is doing things differentlyand enabling other people to do things differently. But thats the key: You have to first be willing to do things differently. Primary Child Care and Household Responsibilities High-achieving Men and Women, By contrast, the more successful a man is, the more likely he has a spouse and children.
But sadly, new reproductive technologies have not solved fertility problems for older women. For them, it is not womans lack of legal rights that constitutes her main handicap, or even her lack of reproductive freedom. Her son had just turned three, and Amy was newly back at work. In fact, according to her research, one child produces a penalty of 6% of earnings, while two children produce a wage penalty of 13%. High-achieving women make it abundantly clear that what they want most are work-life policies that confer on them what one woman calls the gift of time. Take Joanna, for example. Ten years ago, she said, an assistant of mine told me at the end of a particularly grueling 70-hour week, You know, Sue, you couldnt have a torrid love affair if you wanted to. And I shot back, I couldnt have a tepid love affair if I wanted to.. The survey was carried out by Harris Interactive under the auspices of the National Parenting Association, a nonprofit research organization. I work 60 hours a week 50 weeks of the year, which leaves precious little time for anything else. Joanna asked for a reduced schedule, but it was a no go. Outside the fiction of human resource policies, a widespread belief in business is that a woman who allows herself to be accommodated on the family front is no longer choosing to be a serious contender. My hope is that this information will generate workplace policies that recognize the huge costs to businesses of losing highly educated women when they start their families. Or maybe its even later. The idea is that once all the legislation that discriminates against women is dismantled, the playing field becomes level and women can assume a free and equal place in society by simply cloning the male competitive model. I include a sample of high-potential womenhighly qualified women who have left their careers, mainly for family reasons. It requires saying no, taking risks, and sticking to your guns. Consider Tamara Adler, 43, a former managing director of Deutsche Bank in London. Her story is probably typical. This, too, can trigger enormous regret. My survey results show that women are dealing with long and lengthening workweeks. For if a large proportion of women who stay on track in their careers are forced to give up family, an equally large proportion who opt for family are forced to give up their careers. Choose a career that will give you the gift of time. Among ultra-achievers, a quarter are away on business at least five nights every three months. In January 2001, in partnership with Harris Interactive and the National Parenting Association, I conducted a nationwide survey targeting the top 10% of womenmeasured in terms of earning powerand a small sample of men for comparative purposes. Instead, its key to dig deep and understand the very personal factors that drive meaning for youwhether thats constantly learning new skills or being involved in radical social changeand pursue jobs that incorporate those elements. A version of this article appeared in the, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Course. The two charts below contain some of the startlingand soberingfindings. PwC Cloud and Digital Transformation BrandVoice, How To Earn Cash Rewards For Everyday Spending. And its not because successful executive women dont want kids; most yearn for them. Give urgent priority to finding a partner. And I know a handful of working mothers who are trying to do the half-time thing or the two-thirdstime thing. In the words of one senior manager, the typical high-achieving woman childless at midlife has not made a choice but a creeping nonchoice.. And young women can be more deliberate about career and family choices. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. At age 38, there is one man for every three women. Follow this author to improve your content experience. And thats OK. It's not a matter of creating this rigid plan of like, do this step, do this step, no matter what, explains former CEO and board director Shellye Archambeau. According to U. S. Census Bureau data, at age 28 there are four college-educated, single men for every three college-educated, single women. Only 45% of the younger women have had a child by 35, while 62% of the older women had a child by that age. During that session, a young woman named Natalie commented, This is the third consulting firm Ive worked for, and Ive yet to see an older, more senior woman whose life I would actually want., Natalies colleague Rachel was shocked and asked her to explain. The cost to corporations and to our economy becomes monumental in the aggregate. The findings presented in this article are compelling in the way that brutal statistics can be. The statistics Ive laid out here would be bearable if they were purely historicalthe painful but isolated experience of a pioneering generationbut they are not. At 39, Joanna had worked for five years as an account executive for a Chicago head-hunter. Women pay an even greater price for those long hours because the early years of career building overlapalmost perfectlythe prime years of childbearing. These realities take an obvious personal toll. (See the exhibit Primary Child Care and Household Responsibilities.) Only 9% of their husbands assume primary responsibility for meal preparation, 10% for the laundry, and 5% for cleaning the house. If anything, the choices younger women must make are more difficult than ever. How to avoid this waste of expensively educated talent? The hype around the miracle babies of high-tech reproduction is falling on eager ears. The research shows that, generally speaking, the more successful the man, the more likely he will find a spouse and become a father. In this survey, I target the top 10% of womenmeasured in terms of earning powerand focus on two age groups: an older generation, ages 41 to 55, and their younger peers, ages 28 to 40, as defined for survey purposes. In a nutshell, if youre a young woman who wants both career and family, you should consider doing the following: Figure out what you want your life to look like at 45. My survey shows that younger women are facing even more difficult trade-offs. She believed her company had great work-life policiesuntil she adopted a child. Yet in 2000at the height of the U.S. labor crunch22% of women with professional degrees were not working. Employers can provide more meaningful work-life policies, in particular, by giving the gift of time to high-achieving working mothers. Even in organizations whose policies support women, prevailing attitudes and unrelenting job pressures undermine them. It is because it has failed to develop policiesin the workplace and in society as a wholethat support working mothers. They make it clear that, for many women, the brutal demands of ambitious careers, the asymmetries of male-female relationships, and the difficulties of bearing children late in life conspire to crowd out the possibility of having children. But is such easy confidence warranted? They subject themselves to complex medical procedures, shell out tens of thousands of dollars, and derail their careersmostly to no avail, because these efforts come too late. So why on earth shouldnt they feel entitled to rich, multidimensional lives? Thats all too commonand so the most successful women Ive interviewed have made it clear that its key to widen your perspective. What you think it means at 25 is very different to what you know it means at 50. The lesson? But what happens when we achieve that singular goal, and it doesnt live up to expectations? Top management must work to banish this belief from the corporate culture. Looking back, I cant think why I allowed my career to obliterate my 30s, she told me. I cant tell you how many times over the course of this research the women I interviewed apologized for wanting it all. But it wasnt as though these women were looking for special treatment. For example, in France, women earn 81% of the male wage, in Sweden 84%, and in Australia 88%, while in the United States, women continue to earn a mere 78% of the male wage. U.S. industry cannot afford to have a quarter of the female talent pool forced out of their jobs when they have children. Go doctors!. The facts and figures I relate are bleak. I think not. Alumni Status for Former Employees. Even high-achieving women who are married continue to carry the lions share of domestic responsibilities. In fact, women in their 20s and 30s are dealing with the same cruel trade-offs. Media hype about advances in reproductive science only exacerbates the problem, giving women the illusion that they can delay childbearing until their careers are well established. These figures underscore the depth and scope of the persisting, painful inequities between the sexes. My analysis delineated an older generation, 41 to 55, and that groups younger peers, 28 to 40. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. My survey data suggest that high-achieving women have an easier time finding partners in their 20s and early 30s. Professional women who want both family and career know that conventional benefit packages are insufficient. Why? Corporate women were defined as working in companies with more than 5,000 employees. I just didnt pay attention. The other half is convincing women that they are entitled to both a career and children. Going back to the mid-nineteenth century, feminists in this country have channeled much of their energy into the struggle to win formal equality with men. Ready to get started? We plan on having it all.. (The sidebar The Delusions of a Younger Generation suggests that younger women may be more dangerously complacent than their elders.) Its a conclusion backed up by my data: Only 39% of high-achieving men are married to women who are employed full time, and 40% of these spouses earn less than $35,000 a year. Data were weighted for key demographic variables to reflect each samples national population. They endorsed the following cluster of work-life policies that would make it much easier to get off conventional career ladders and eventually get back on: A Time Bank of Paid Parenting Leave. Keep following this formula, and you will organically move in the right direction. How to build a better, more just workplace. The high-achieving career women who participated in my survey were asked to consider a list of policy options that would help them achieve balance in their lives over the long haul. As Katie Fogarty, founder of The Reboot Group, shared on my Facebook Watch show, Work It: Do not wait for people to give you permission. For those workers, extra hours carry no marginal costs to employers. She mentioned the obvious reasonslong hours and travelbut she also spoke eloquently about how ambitious careers discriminate against women: In the rarified upper reaches of high-altitude careers where the air is thinmen have a much easier time finding oxygen. Seize control of your career.. People dont believe me when I tell them that my company offers a three-year personal leave of absence, she said. If youre only focused on getting your current boss job, for example, you may miss other optionsinside or outside of your company. Im only just absorbing the consequences., And there is Stella Parsons, 45, who had just been offered a chairmanship at Ohio State University the day I interviewed her. Just start doing it, she said. Because companies cant be expected to craft all the policies that will make a difference in womens lives, government should also take action. And when women come to understand the value of parenthood to the wider community, they can quit apologizing for wanting both a career and a family. Look for such policies as reduced-hour schedules and job-protected leave. Primary Child Care and Household Responsibilities High-achieving Men and Women Source: National Parenting Association, Yes, these percentages have grown over the yearsbut not much. Examples include: Young women themselves must also actively expand their life choices. Take Sue Palmer, 49, managing director of Grant Thornton, the London-based global accounting firm, and the only woman on its management committee. The problem with the notion that American women should be able to successfully clone the male competitive model is that husbands have not picked up a significant share of womens traditional responsibilities on the home front. (Thirty-nine percent of ultra-achieving women also feel this way, despite the fact that half of them are married to men who earn less than they do.). According to research by sociologists Jerry Jacobs and Kathleen Gerson, the percentage of women working at least 50 hours a week is now higher in the United States than in any other country. But they also face challenges all their own. Its very hard to throttle back during that stage of a career and expect to catch up later. Dont be afraid to adjust course when you realize that youve changed. In my mid-30s, Ill go back to school, earn an MBA, and get myself a serious career. My data show that the high-achieving women of the older generation tended to marry young: 75% of them were married by 25, but only 54% of the younger generation are married by that age. I wish some of this career success had spilled over to my private life. Lets start with the fact that professional women find it challenging even to be marriedfor most, a necessary precondition for childbearing. Too many career women put their private lives on the back burner, assuming that children will eventually happen for them courtesy of high-tech reproductiononly to discover disappointment and failure. She responded, I know a few hard-driving women who are climbing the ladder at consulting firms, but they are single or divorced and seem pretty isolated. In addition, I include a small sample of men. So this is the difficult position in which women find themselves. In this article, I lay out the issues underlying this state of affairs, identify the heavy costs involved, and suggest some remedies, however preliminary and modest. According to my survey, 66% of high-potential women would like to return to full-time jobs. A disturbing new study reveals that, 30 years into the womens movement, female executives still dont have what they wantand probably never will. Two recent studies lay out these penalties in very specific terms. In January 2001, in partnership with the market research company Harris Interactive and the National Parenting Association, I conducted a nationwide survey designed to explore the professional and private lives of highly educated, high-earning women. Thus, we are all stakeholders in parents ability to come through for their children. Lets start with the fact that they are marrying even later. Rather, it is her dual burdentaking care of a home and family as well as holding down a jobthat leads to her second-class status. So, what do professionals want? You have to be open to that.. Theyre all extraordinarily unique, of course, but theres one thing they have in common: Theyve charted the path to work that they love. Often, we have a pretty narrow view of our ultimate goals. But as a result, youll be doing the work youre passionate about and building a life that works for you. Theyre a fact of life in corporate America, where management is under intense pressure to use its professional workforce for as many hours a week as possible. But she waved my congratulations away. And in Hewletts more recent survey, 66% of high potential womenhighly qualified women not part of the workforcewould like to return to full-time jobs. High-achieving mothers who have been able to stay in their careers tend to work for companies that allow them access to generous benefits: flextime, telecommuting, paid parenting leave, and compressed workweeks. Given such a huge disincentive, why do women persist in trying to have it all? Choose a company that will help you achieve work-life balance. 3. By staying flexible and open, she explains, you might encounter an opportunity that you had never before considered., Lindsey Knowles, VP of Marketing at Winc Wines, echoes this sentiment. We envision achieving a specific job title or working for a particular company. A decade later, the situation is radically changed. How do I cope with mortality? Think of what a 55-hour week means in terms of work-life balance. Policies like these are vitalthough in themselves not enough to solve the problem. Be Intentional About What You Say Yes To, Cathleen Trigg-Jones, journalist and founder of CatScape Productions, once explained to me her strategy for evaluating opportunities. But companies and the overall economy also pay a significant price. According to my survey, some employers take family needs into account: 12% offer paid parenting leave and 31% job sharing. ), Its easy to speculate that these women are delaying childbirth because they dont feel a sense of biological urgency. You know, comments like, If shes not prepared to work the clients hours, she has no business being in the profession.. And we should promote legislation that eliminates perverse incentives for companies to subject their employees to long-hour weeks. In particular, companies must guard against the perception that by taking advantage of such policies, a woman will tarnish her professional image. And try different things. They were quite prepared to shoulder more than their fair share of the work involved in having both career and family. The vast majority, in fact, yearn for children. This simple rule can move you toward a career you love in two important ways. Adler was the banks most senior woman, and her highly successful career had left no room for family. Indeed, some have gone to extraordinary lengths to bring a baby into their lives. She would yes to the things that would move her closer to her dreams, and she would say no to the things that didnt serve her. Straight from some very successful women, here are five lessons about creating a career you love. In February 2001, I conducted an informal focus group with young professionals at three consulting firms in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I figure Ive got 14, 15 years before I need worry about making babies, she e-mailed me. For example, Kristin Lemkau, Chief Marketing Officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., emphasizes that its critical to be flexible when thinking about your dream job. But in 2000, at the height of the labor crunch, Census Bureau data showed that fully 22% of all women with professional degrees (MBAs, MDs, PhDs, and so on) were not in the labor market at all. More recently, the National Organization for Women has spent 35 years fighting for a wide array of equal rights, ranging from educational and job opportunities to equal pay and access to credit. Pursue What Matters To YouNot To Anyone Else. If you want a meaningful professional life, you have to be willing to take risks. You may opt-out by. Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor. This is the harsh reality behind the myth of having it all. When it comes to career and fatherhood, high-achieving men dont have to deal with difficult trade-offs: 79% of the men I surveyed report wanting childrenand 75% have them. I have urged policy makers at the national level, for example, to extend the Family and Medical Leave Act to workers in small companies and turn it into paid leave. She gave her take on these disturbing realities when I interviewed her for the study. Maybe its simply giving yourself permission to try something wildly different. Only 19. If you want children (and between 86% and 89% of high-achieving women do), you need to become highly intentionaland take action now. My survey tells us that 89% of young, high-achieving women believe that they will be able to get pregnant deep into their 40s. I just didnt get it together in time. Then she whispered, Im almost ashamed to admit it, but I still ache for a child..
Career Breaks. (The group of ultra-achieving men was not large enough to disaggregate.) Modern medicine notwithstanding, the chances of Amys getting pregnant in her 40s are tinyin the range of 3% to 5%. Clearly, successful women professionals have slim pickings in the marriage departmentparticularly as they age. This would allow for three months of paid leave, which could be taken as needed, until the child turned 18. Consider Lisa Polsky, who joined Morgan Stanley in 1995 as a managing director after successful stints at Citibank and Bankers Trust; she managed to make it on Wall Street, the ultimate bastion of male market power. Female entrepreneurs, for example, do better than female lawyers in combining career and familyand both do better than corporate women. Its also essentialfor women, their organizations, and U.S. business overall. She said, What gnaws at me is that I always assumed I would have children. But for me, the most powerful evidence of a problem came from the personal stories I heard while conducting the research. First, it pretty much guarantees that you get to do more of the work youre excited about. I believe we can. In fact, 33% of such women (business executives, doctors, lawyers, academics, and the like) in the 41-to-55 age bracket are childlessand that figure rises to 42% in corporate America. At the end of the day, women simply want the choices in love and work that men take for granted. They might be tapped for advice and guidance, and the company would continue to pay their dues and certification fees so they could maintain professional standing. Because, as a large body of research demonstrates, women are happier when they have both career and family. They have every type of journey you could dream of: There are women who have reached the C-suite in Fortune 500 companies and well-funded startups, women who have started and run their own ventures, and women who have made dramatic career turnarounds. The opposite holds true for women, and the disparity is particularly striking among corporate ultra-achievers. Walmart's Tom Ward Says To Fall In Love With Customer Problems, The Success Of Any Retail Initiative Hinges On Its People, Small Talk Can Lead to Big ROIs - If You Follow These Tips, Consumer Behavior And The Ever Evolving Retail Landscape, Top 10 Interview Questions For Hiring The Right People, After Years Away, Jenn Colella Returns To The Role That She Originated On Broadway In Come From Away, 12 Ways To Reduce Your Reliance On Single Use Plastics. Young women are told that a serious person needs to commit to her career in her 20s and devote all her energies to her job for at least ten years if she is to be successful. But the fact is, if you take this advice you might well be on the wrong side of 35 before you have time to draw breath and contemplate having a childexactly the point in life when infertility canand overwhelmingly doesbecome an issue. In a series of books and articles that span more than a decade, University of Michigan sociologist Lois Hoffmann has examined the value of children to parents and finds that, across cultures, parents see children as enormously important in providing love and companionship and in warding off loneliness. If you compare women in the two age groups by calculating what proportion had a child by 35, younger women seem to be in worse shape. These less ambitious policies seem to be of limited use to time-pressed, high-achieving women. Polsky was 44 then, and her childbearing days were over. But the grudging attitudes of most corporate cultures weigh down and constrain what individual women feel is possible. Theres so much you cant know until you do it, she shares. At the end of the day, the division of labor at home boils down to one startling fact: 43% of the older, high-achieving women and 37% of the younger, high-achieving women feel that their husbands actually create more household work for them than they contribute. Yes, creating a career like this may seem like a lofty goal. (Indeed, among ultra-achievers, no one in the older group had her first child after 36. Joanna began looking for another job. Anyone who believes that women in the United States can have high-powered careers and families should consider these sobering statistics from economist Sylvia Ann Hewletts January 2001 survey: Clearly, women dont have it allwhile men apparently do. They work reduced hours so they can see their kids, but they dont get the good projects, they dont get the bonuses, and they also get whispered about behind their backs. Similarly, were conditioned to believe that the traditional markers of success, like money or a C-level title, will make us happy, too. At 40, Ill be ready for marriage and family. Is It Better To Lease Or Buy A Car In Summer 2022? One professional woman, a 29-year-old lawyer, told me: The pioneer women of the 1970s and 1980s paid some kind of special price for their careers. According to recent studies, an increasingly large part of the wage gap can now be explained by childbearing and child rearing, which interrupt womensbut not menscareers, permanently depressing their earning power. Until youve been in a few different types of workplaces, you cant know what your preferred working style is or the types of problems you like to solve., 2. These days, only a small portion of this wage gap can be attributed to discrimination (getting paid less for doing the same job or being denied access to jobs, education, or capital based on sex). The sample was drawn from the Harris Poll on-line database of cooperative respondents.
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