Why
don’t women get to the top? According to a recent
cover story for the New York Times magazine, it’s
because the bright young women who were poised to take over the
world would rather be at home with their kids than climbing the
corporate ladder (Lisa Belkin, The Opt Out Revolution,
October 26, 2003).
The New York Times could have featured a serious investigation of systemic factors
that limit the upward mobility of mothers in the workplace. Or a
more philosophical piece about why our society is still locked into
the idea that mothers, above all others, are responsible for caring
for the nation’s children and how this attitude impacts women
both in and outside the workplace. Even an in-depth commentary about
how U.S. social policy lets down working families, time and time
again, would be welcome. Instead, the Times gave pride of
place to an article which resorts to pop science to make the case that
mothers -- even the really brainy ones -- are biologically hard-wired
to prioritize caregiving over competition.
Perhaps the editors were
hungry for the controversy that followed the publication of Belkin’s
story,(1) or perhaps they were simply content to write off reports of women’s
inequality in the professional arena as a product
of maternal behavior. Either way, The Opt Out Revolution fails to shed new light on the issue it purports to address: the
scarcity of women in political, corporate and academic leadership.
“Why don’t women run the world?” Belkin ponders.
“Maybe it’s because they don’t want to.”
Or maybe it’s because
the world doesn’t want women in charge.
The
motherhood factor
Belkin’s article -- and other recent reports in the popular
media (2) -- might have us convinced there is indeed an Alarming National
Trend of educated, middle-class mothers abandoning professional
careers to take over the messy business of raising children
at home. In reality, the probability a mother will participate in the
paid labor force increases with her level of education -- over 78
percent of mothers with a graduate or professional degree are in
the paid workforce, and they are three times as likely to work full-time
as to work part-time. So if the fundamental question about the future
of women’s leadership is “What’s become of our
best and brightest young women?,” it appears most of them
are at the office, whether they happen to have had a baby or not.(3)
However, as Joan Williams
notes in her book Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict
and What To Do About It, having all the right talent and training
to excel in a career may not be enough to bring mothers into the
mainstream of professional achievement. Success in today’s
workplace depends on an employee’s capacity to meet her employer’s
need for labor on demand -- meaning that the most valued workers
are those who can work long hours any day of the week, at any time
of day or night, without risk of interruption from personal responsibilities
outside the job.
For mothers -- who, by
contemporary cultural standards, are still expected to take the lead in child rearing and homemaking -- conforming to the uncompromising
grind of the “ideal” worker is nearly impossible. According
to Williams, mothers on the professional career track face “Three
unattractive choices. They remain in a good job that keeps them
away from home 10 to 12 hours a day, or they take a part-time [job]
with depressed wages, few benefits and no advancement. Or they quit.”(4)
Women continue to enter
elite professions at a growing rate; a recent study on transitions
in the U.S. workforce found that women are now more likely than
men to work at “professional or managerial” occupations.(5) But only a fraction of these women are reaching the upper ranks -- partly
due to garden-variety gender discrimination, but they may also run into
a barrier William’s describes as “the maternal wall”.
Williams and other scholars who study work-life conflict are adamant
that paid work and motherhood are not inherently incompatible,
and argue that cultural attitudes about women, work and family have
generated workplace practices that consistently marginalize mothers
and other workers with normal caregiving obligations.(6)
Cultural resistance to
mothers remaining in the paid workforce is less strident today than
it was in the 1970s and ‘80s, but it hasn’t disappeared.
A 2002 survey of wage and salaried workers found that two out of
every five male employees -- and almost as many female employees
-- agreed with the statement “men should earn the money
and women should stay at home minding the house and children.”
(In 1977, only 26 percent of men felt it was appropriate for women
to work outside the home).
The same study found
that women in dual-earners couples with children were considerably
more likely than women in dual-earner couples without children
to feel that mom should handle the care work while dad manages the money
work (48 percent versus 34 percent). The authors duly
noted that “the challenge or anticipated challenge of raising
children apparently induces a change of attitude, if not employment
behavior, in some people.”(7)
“It
is really about work.”
As one of the Ivy League educated mothers Belkin interviewed for her Opt Out Revolution story observes, “The exodus of professional
women from the workplace isn’t really about motherhood at
all. It is really about work.” Several other women profiled
in Belkin’s article openly admitted their departure from
the workforce was precipitated by an employer’s refusal to
negotiate a more family-friendly schedule. Even for women contemplating
an exit from less prestigious jobs, the inexorable pull of maternal
love may only play a small role in the decision to leave the workforce.
As Americans advance
into the 21st century, access to new technology lets us work smarter
-- but we are also working harder. Despite a consistent preference
among employed adults for shorter working hours -- most would like
to spend around 35 hours a week on the job(8) -- hours of work continue to increase in the U.S. as companies trim
down staffing (and payroll costs) in order to survive today's economic conditions. Dual-earner couples with children under 18
worked an average of 91 hours a week in 2002, up from 81 hours a
week in 1977. Fathers in dual-earner couples spend an average of
51 hours a week of paid and unpaid time on work related to their
jobs, and mothers’ weekly hours of job-related work increased
from 38 in 1977 to 43 in 2002.(9)
Not surprisingly, levels
of stress from work/life conflict are also on the rise. Employees
with families report significantly higher levels of interference
between their jobs and family lives than they did 25 years ago (45
percent in 2002 versus 34 percent in 1977), and men with families
report higher levels of interference between their jobs and their
family lives than women. (10)
It’s not only moms
and dads who are feeling the pain of the American way of work. A
September 2003 report from The Conference Board, an international
organization tracking corporate and employment issues, found that
less than half of all U.S. workers are happy with their jobs. Employees
reported the least satisfaction with their employer’s promotion
policy and bonus plan. But only one out of every three workers was
satisfied with their company’s plans for health care coverage,
pensions, flexible time or family leave.
While all groups of workers
reported lower levels of job satisfaction in 2003 than they had
previous years, the steepest decline occurred for those between
the ages of 35 and 44 -- job satisfaction for this group slipped
from 61 percent in 1995 to 47 percent in 2003.(11) It may not be entirely coincidental that workers in this age range
tend to be in the middle of their most active parenting
years -- and this is especially true for professional women, who
are increasingly likely to delay child-bearing until their early
or mid-30s.(12)
Workers employed by businesses
with more supportive work/life practices and cultures are more likely
to be satisfied with their jobs and life in general, and express
higher levels of commitment to their employers. However, the 2002
National Study of the Changing Workforce found that employer’s
progress in adopting family-friendly practices and attitudes has
been steady over the last two decades, but slow. With the exception
of additional services and programs to help workers balance their
workload with responsibilities for elder care, the study found there
has not been a significant increase in other types of employer-implemented
programs to reduce work/family conflict in the last decade. (13)
Even if work-life supports
on the job are gradually improving, a recent news report in USA
Today highlighted several new industry studies suggesting
nearly one-third of U.S. companies are downsizing their family-friendly
programs in response to high levels of unemployment. As the pressure
to retain talent recedes, employers are scaling back options for
telecommuting, flexible schedules and job sharing. According to
the article, a group of industry experts concluded that, “with
9 million people out of work, companies no longer need to offer
varied benefits to attract and retain workers.” (14)
As work hours escalate
and the number of family-friendly programs employers offer remain
stagnant or decline, employed mothers often find themselves in an
untenable situation. For married couples, men’s commitment
to longer hours of paid work -- and their limited contribution to
carework at home(15) -- is often justified by their higher earnings.(16) But something’s got to give, and it’s usually mom –
her time, long term economic security, general well-being,
and aspirations for getting ahead on the job are all up for grabs
in the dispiriting shuffle of priorities called “balancing”
work and family.
Cutting back to a part-time
schedule may seem like an ideal solution for easing work/life stress
in families who can still make ends meet with one or both wage-earners
working less than full-time. A 2000 survey by the Alfred C. Sloan
Center at the University of Chicago found that nearly two-thirds
of mothers who worked full-time would have preferred to work part-time,
and one-half of all mothers who were out of the paid labor force
would have preferred part-time paid employment to staying at home
full-time.(17) But the part-time option is not without a downside. In 2002, three
out of every five employees who worked for organizations employing
part-time workers reported that part-timers received less than pro
rata pay and benefits compared to full-time employees in the same
positions just because they work part-time.(18)
When it comes to managing
the conflicting demands of work and family, affluent married mothers
who can afford to hop on and off the career track at will have a
definite advantage -- for most single-parent and dual-earner families,
reducing or forgoing one parent’s wages in the interest of
“putting family first” is not a realistic option. As
author and career coach Elizabeth Wilcox emphasizes in her 2003
book The Mom Economy, women with post-graduate education
and advanced professional skills have considerably more bargaining
power when it comes to negotiating family-friendly work arrangements. However, she also notes that even the most qualified
workers must be prepared to make substantial trade-offs in terms
of wages, professional prestige and quality of assignments in order
to land a good part-time or flexible time position.(19)
In other words: no matter
what you bring to the table, if you want a good job with good pay
and reasonable opportunities for advancement – and you also want
time to have a fully developed family or personal life – you
are pretty much out of luck. As Wilcox remarks, "I can't tell
you how many women I come across who are so disgruntled with the
state of the workforce and the existing inequalities that it leaves
them in a state of paralysis."
The
other Big Picture
One major reason work and family conflict in America is because
our social policies -- which are a direct reflection of the national
ethos -- run contrary to having it any other way. Other than sustained
efforts by feminist organizations to secure workers’ rights
to parental and medical leave and expand access to affordable child
care, easing the strain the system puts on working women with children
has not been a political priority.
The peculiar reluctance
to actively address the needs of working families in the United
States results from a muddled confluence of ideology about women,
work, family, children, personal responsibility and the power of
the free market to serve the true needs of the people.(20) According to Dr. Sheila Kamerman of the Clearinghouse on International
Developments in Child, Youth & Family Policies at Columbia University,
the U.S. sends
“mixed messages
about how to balance work and family life. We believe that it is
in the best interest of our children to be with their mothers when
they are very young, and more recently, have come to see the benefits
of fathers spending time with their young children. We also believe
that it is the responsibility of both parents to contribute to the
economic well being of their families. Yet we continue to hold back
from putting policies in place that will allow working mothers,
and fathers, to succeed in both the workplace and at home.” (21)
Although a 1998 survey
found that 82 percent of women and 75 percent of men “favored
the idea of developing a new insurance program that would give families
some income when a worker takes a family or medical leave,”(22) the U.S. remains one of only two wealthy nations lacking a national
program of paid parental leave for working men and women. Australia,
the other laggard in the paid leave department, offers working women
up to 52 weeks of unpaid, job protected leave for the birth and
care of a newborn. The 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave guaranteed
to American workers who qualify under the provisions of the 1993
Family and Medical Leave Act (23) look downright skimpy compared to the benefits provided to working
families in Western Europe. (24)
31 states are currently
studying the feasibility of implementing paid leave programs. In
2002, California became the first state in the nation to pass legislation
providing up to 6 weeks of wage replacement benefits to workers
who take time off work to care for a seriously ill child, spouse,
parent, domestic partner, or to bond with a new child. However,
the national campaign for paid leave -- which is coordinated by
the National Partnership for Women and Families, an organization
which was instrumental in securing the passage of the FMLA -- suffered
a serious setback in October 2003 when President George W. Bush
revoked the “Baby UI” rule -- an experimental regulation
allowing states to tap into unemployment funds to cover wage
replacement for leave takers who were caring for a newborn or newly
adopted child.
The campaign for universal,
affordable child care -- which was a centerpiece of the feminist
agenda in the 1960s -- is now so politically untouchable that advocates
have been forced to “reframe” the public debate to focus
on universal access to “early childhood education.”(25) Child care remains a problem issue, and not just because Americans
remain uneasy about young children being cared for by someone other
than their mothers. (Despite the regular bashing child care takes
in the media, nearly every reliable study has shown that a moderate
amount of high-quality non-parental care is, in many cases, beneficial
to the learning readiness and social development of young children.) A more immediate concern is the economic marginalization of low-income
female workers -- often mothers themselves -- who typically provide
child care for more affluent families. On the other hand, low-income
families spend as much as 25 percent of their household earnings
on childcare, and in some urban areas, low-income families spend
more on center-based day care for their young children than they
do on housing. (26)
So far, the private sector
has failed to produce an acceptable solution to address the fact
that when parents must work, someone else has to take care of their
kids. But don’t expect the state to step in to pick up
the slack any time soon. Lurking in the shadows of our national
mentality is the unhealthy fiction that if we could just get every
working mother happily married and send her back home to stay, some
of our more pressing economic and social problems would magically
evaporate.(27) But the old “normal” -- that idealized retroland of
1950s family life -- is gone for good. We’re living in the
new normal now, and it’s high time we figured out how to do
a better job of it. Meanwhile, the pressures on working families
are only getting worse, and mothers are especially likely to feel
the squeeze.
Push
comes to shove
There will always be women -- and men -- from all walks of American
life who passionately believe that the only way to bring up happy,
healthy children is to do it the “old fashioned” way:
mom taking care of things on the homefront, dad out bringing home the bacon.
Couples who hold this view are not necessarily anti-feminist reactionaries
longing for a bygone era where men were men and women were housewives (although some of the most vocal proponents of traditional
“family values” definitely fall into this camp).
Anecdotal accounts suggest
that a number of single-earner couples with children share a more
enlightened understanding that unpaid care work and wage-earning
work contribute equally to the security and well-being of the family.
Some mothers and fathers ultimately decide the most realistic
way to manage the range of responsibilities that come with the job-marriage-children
package is for each parent to "specialize" in a different
kind of work. While dual-earner families are by far the norm, the
number of children being raised by full-time stay-at-home mothers
in the U.S. rose 13 percent between 1994 and 2002. Analysts believe
both economic and cultural factors fed this trend.
In families with two
married parents and children under 15, the parent that specializes
in caregiving is predictably more likely to be the female one. In
2002, 5.2 million married mothers stayed at home to care for their
families while their spouse was in the full-time labor force. Young
children living in two parent households are 56 times more likely
to live with a stay-at-home mother/employed father than they are
to live with a stay-at-home dad. (28)
While cultural attitudes
about male and female roles contribute to this disparity, there
are also economic considerations. Women’s earnings are, on
average, 23 percent lower than those of men with the same qualifications
in comparable jobs. Of married mothers who worked for pay in 2002,
46 percent of those with at least one child under 6 years old and
one or more children aged 6 to 17 earned less than $5,000 in wages
or salary; 80 percent earned less than $30,000 a year – in
other words, less than the baseline living wage for a family of
four in most U.S. communities. (29,
30)
When the cost of child
care and the rate of taxation on the wages of secondary earners
is factored in -- not to mention the advantage of having one parent
available to act as a buffer when the primary breadwinner brings
home negative spillover from paid work -- some middle-class couples
with children may conclude that it’s more cost effective and
better for all concerned if mom quits her job.
Plenty of women who trade
in fast-paced careers for a life lived on child time are happy with their decision. They see the work of
child rearing as personally rewarding and socially important and
take enormous pride in being the primary caregiver for their families. However, not every mother who's retreated from the paid
labor force -- temporarily or for the long haul -- is prepared to
describe the stay-at-home arrangement as her first, best choice.
Joan, a 38 year-old mother
of one living in the Midwest, left her well-paid IT job four years
ago when her son was born -- not because she felt caregiving was
a higher calling, but because she was convinced there were no other
realistic alternatives. “In my utopia, benefits like health
care and retirement wouldn’t be attached to a particular job
-- they’d be available to all citizens. The workweek would
be 30 hours and there would be state-funded child care. Part-time
jobs employing high-education skills (with prorated advancement
possibility) would be available,” she says. “If I lived
in my utopia, I would not be a stay-at-home mom. But the way things
are now, being the stay-at-home mom is simply the least worst choice
for our family.”
Joan doesn’t know
when she will return to paid work, or what kind of work she may
be doing when she does. “After four years out of the IT workforce,
my skills are obsolete. But I can’t see myself wasting my
time working for a minimum wage at WalMart.”
Moms determined to stick
it out in the paid labor force hold another piece of the motherhood-and-work
puzzle.(31) Julie, an architect living in Southern California, is expecting
her second child. She works 32 hours a week in an office of 70 people.
“Half of the employees are women. I am one of two women with
children. My male co-workers who have children (about 20) have wives
who stay home. Many of these men have said to me, ‘I wish
my wife could work part-time so I could spend more time with my
children, but as the single bread winner I cannot push for family-friendly
work options for fear that I will be out of a job’.”
Julie worries that no
one will be left to agitate for a change in the workplace if more
high-powered women opt out. “What do I tell the younger women
I work with now? ‘…Don't focus on your work, honey,
you better get yourself married to a guy who can provide’?
Furthermore, what do I tell my daughter?” Julie says that
she battles thoughts of leaving the workforce versus staying with
it every day. But she adds, “It’s hard for me to see
how the women who ‘opt-out’ will lead a revolution in
the workplace when they are not there to push for things to be different.
I think that everyone's choice has a place, I just think a complete
rejection of the system has the potential to create a different
(perhaps parallel) system rather than changing the one we have.
Back
into the fray
What happens to women who gear down their commitment to paid employment
when they're ready to pick up where they left off is another issue
altogether, and so far the news on that front is not exactly encouraging.
Some advisors warn it’s extremely unlikely that women who’ve
been out of the workforce for three to five years will be hired
for positions offering the same level of responsibility or compensation
they had in their previous occupations. Others feel the employment
patterns of the downsizing culture -- where most experienced workers
have periods of unemployment, as well as several jobs listed on
their resume -- may be more favorable to women who have an extended
gap in their employment record.(32)
According to Ann Crittenden,
author of The Price of Motherhood, much depends on the
strength of the labor market, but it’s not impossible for
moms re-entering the workforce to find exactly the job they really
want -- if they persevere and are prepared to do whatever it takes
to show employers they have the skills and experience to do the work. “Mothers
returning to the workforce also face a tremendous cultural bias
against women who stay at home,” says Crittenden, who is working
on a new book about job skills and motherhood. “Employers
are not immune to negative stereotyping that characterizes homemakers
as incompetent individuals.”
Wilcox is cautiously
optimistic that mothers who return to the workforce may have their
best years ahead of them. “The highest proportion of overall
work/life success -- meaning success at home, at work, and with
balancing the two -- is reported by women ages 50 - 64 with no children
at home. That is the only time that the rate of overall feelings
of success of women with children exceeds that of men with children.”
Wilcox notes that both men and women feel least successful when
they’ve got preschoolers at home.
The trend Wilcox
finds the most promising, though, is the explosion of woman-owned
businesses. “Women are starting businesses at twice the rate
of men. And I'll be very interested to see what sort of impact these
businesses have in the future, particularly as women are more able
to give their time and energy toward them.” Wilcox hopes that
these new women-led businesses will provide a more receptive conduit for women re-entering the workforce. “After
all, as the Families and Work Institute has found, women in senior
management can be an important indicator in determining the relative
family-friendliness of an employer.”
Only time will tell if
the resurgence of “sequencing” mothers into the marketplace
will merit attention as another stage of the family and work “revolution”.
But in so very many ways, the media-driven focus on the fate of
well-to-do mothers who bag the full-time-plus-overtime treadmill in favor of the
joys of family life is utterly irrelevant. Of course, it’s
a pot shot at feminism – a smug “we told you so”
aimed at those of us who still believe a woman should be able to combine
public achievement and personal happiness without making inordinate
compromises in any important area of her life. It’s also
a slight of hand, a misdirection of our cultural angst about the
changing meaning of family, that deflects public attention away
from truly serious social problems that put millions of mothers
and fathers and kids at risk every single day -- social problems
that could be resolved if not for a pathetic shortage of political
will.
mmo : december 2003
Judith
Stadtman Tucker is the editor and publisher of The Mothers Movement Online.
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