05.04.07
Family unfriendly
In this recent Globe article, Sacha Pfeiffer writes, “Female lawyers continue to face intractable challenges in their attempts to become partners, causing them to abandon law firm careers — and the legal profession entirely — at a dramatically higher rate than men, according to a local study to be released today.”
The article could almost be a reprint of a dozen similar stories over the past years. While overt discrimination has been greatly reduced (not eliminated), the most prestigious, powerful, and lucrative positions remain largely empty of women. Partner in a law firm? Tenured professor at Harvard? Nationally prominent politician? Corporate officer of a Fortune 500 company? Forty years after the Women’s Liberation movement in the 1960s brought some semblance of workplace equality, we still see no more than 20% female representation in the upper echelons of our leadership.
How can this be? Women are equally intelligent, equally educated, and equally hard-working as men. In fact, female managers tend to be more highly rated than their male counterparts, perhaps because they don’t let their egos get in the way of the job. If you were to choose among candidates on ability and merit alone, you would likely end up with 60% or greater female representation.
Unfortunately, there is one qualification in common for nearly every leadership position in our society: a willingness to work 60 to 80 hour weeks, dedicating nearly every waking hour to your career. Tenure requirements at top universities mandate the candidate generate a prodigious quantity of published research on top of their teaching, mentoring, and service activities. Partnership-track lawyers must produce 40+ “billable hours” a week, on top of meetings, secretarial minutia, and personal business. (Estimate 12 hours at the office to produce 8 billable hours, not even counting commuting time.) The expectations for an aspiring business executive may be less well defined, but no less intense.
Single, childless women can compete on an equal basis with men, perhaps even holding an advantage in some fields. Marriage helps a little, though men seem to benefit more (perhaps because women tend to take a greater share of the household chores). Yet when children enter the picture, the male fortunes rise while women often drop off the fast track.
It is logistically impossible for both parents to pursue high-powered careers with children in the picture. Even if daycare centers were open for 14-hour days, such a schedule would not permit young children sufficient time to even sleep, let alone spend valuable personal time with their parents! So compromises are inevitable. Sometimes both parents scale back their careers from the front ranks. Yet often, the father continues his career unabated while the mother takes time off or moves to a less demanding career path. It is this decision that leaves so few women at the top.
This decision is not imposed by the institution, but a choice made one family at a time. Why, then, are the choices so statistically lopsided in favor of the father continuing his career? Some ideas:
- Women must necessarily bear the burden of pregnancies alone. Breastfeeding can also be time consuming. If job parameters are sufficiently inflexible, even these modest disruptions can be sufficient to derail a career.
- Men define themselves by their profession first, so putting a career on hold to raise a family may involve a greater degree of self-abnegation. Being a “homemaker” might not get the appreciation it deserves but it is a culturally accepted role for a woman.
- Women are viewed as being more patient, caring, compassionate, and calm. Whether these traits are learned or due to biological differences, they are essential for dealing with young children.
- Subtle workplace discrimination encourages women to make the “easy choice” to leave rather than attempting to fight through the challenge of juggling family and career. Even when family-friendly policies are on the books, women feel pressure not to invoke them.
There are hints that gender differences continue to fade. The younger generations participate more equally in both the workforce and in child rearing, as well as exhibiting more similar attitudes. Nevertheless, the most powerful positions continue to be dominated by men whose families are structured along more traditional lines, with the childless filling much of the remainder. Who else can afford such a single-minded devotion to career?
I can understand the corporate desire to squeeze the greatest possible value out of top talent, yet is this culture healthy? And is it efficient if half of your brightest fall by the wayside? Some possible answers:
- Create “slow-track” career paths in which a reduced quantity of work is expected over a greater period of time. The compensation along these paths would necessarily be reduced, but that is a compromise that many might make.
- When evaluating a candidate for promotion, place greater emphasis on the quality of their work, less emphasis on quantity. Which is most important in a leadership position?
- Allow for up to one year of family leave per child without prejudice. (Easier said than done — leave is often available, yet the prejudice or perceived prejudice against this option remains.)
- Encourage men to consider themselves as possible homemakers. With a third of all wives earning more than their husbands, the role need not automatically fall to the mother.
Your thoughts?
Pontifex said,
May 5, 2007 at 12:04 am
What? In your world there are no gender differences? Or in your world you would advocate no gender differences? Perhaps what you’re looking for is a world where there are no differences at all… no nasturtiums to offset the tulips. Hey, they’re flowers. They’re the same.
Yes, women are eminently capable. So are men. But they are different. Play to the strengths of the differences, don’t create a bland paste of sameness.
Valentine said,
May 5, 2007 at 8:00 am
Gender differences?
(1) There are definitely some innate differences, though I believe these are unnecessarily reinforced through childhood socialization.
(2) These differences do not impede the ability of a woman to compete in these careers, as seen in the performance of childless women. I would argue that our academic, economic, and political leadership could greatly benefit from these differences if they were more broadly represented.
(3) It isn’t clear to me that an 80-hour workweek is healthy for any parent, male or female, or for the children involved. Is this the ONLY model we can use for leadership positions? As I said, I believe too much emphasis is placed on quantity, not enough on quality of results.
So yes, let’s grow both nasturtiums and tulips in our gardens. Perhaps we can thus enjoy blooms all year around?
David said,
May 6, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Note that top firms now are asking up to 2400 billable hours out of associates, and there are some who bill over 3000 hours.
Spok said,
May 8, 2007 at 2:54 pm
There is an informal “slow track” in many organizations, and it often goes by the name “mommy track”. There’s been a fair bit written about the split between that track and others, whether it’s chosen or imposed against the track-er’s will, whether it works out to be equitable or unfair and discriminatory, etc.
The name suggests that it’s usualy women more often than men that go onto that track, for one reason or another. But there are daddies on the slower track too, though it may be more of a step out the ordinary line for men than for women in current American culture.
The slow tracks includes not just parents who act as primary homemakers, but also those that work outside the home but deliberately pick jobs where they can spend more time with their families, and have more continuity and stability at home, than those who let their work consume their lives on the fast track.
There are tradeoffs, of course. Those that are willing to consider the 80-hour-week careers, or pull up stakes repeatedly for new, higher-paying opportunities, cam end up earning substantially more than those on the slower, more stable track. But some of us find the slower-track tradeoff worthwhile.
Michael Webb said,
July 2, 2007 at 12:50 am
And yet, despite these 60-80 hour weeks, we still have so many companies run by melonheads.