Posted on 03. Feb, 2004 by Brian Reid in General
Another magazine cover story predicated on my least favorite assumption, has hit the stands: Fast Company tries to figure out where the women at the top of the business world are. The conclusion: they’ve largely abandoned the goal of running the show, scaling back their work and their aspirations to allow some time for family.
But the story’s undercurrent is that women are either too timid or too smart to climb to the top rungs of the corporate ladder. And it assumes that men care a lot more about work, on average, than family. And while these two assumptions may generally be true, the story never gives a second thought to whether that’s a good thing or whether such stereotypes ought to be challenged.
The author, Linda Tischler, says: “For the most part, men just compete harder than women. They put in more hours. They’re more willing to relocate. They’re more comfortable putting work ahead of personal commitments.”
But why should that be the case? Though a generally thoughtful story, it suggests the stereotypes about what men and women value are fixed. Sure, the story seems to say, some women may have the stomach for the CEO fight, but they’re the abberation. The flip side, of course, is that paints men who chuck their careers as abberations, too. (There is a to-be-sure graf noting that men, too, are looking to live saner lives, but nothing more is said.)
The other omission — not uncommon in these types of stories — is the husbands. Are these women stepping off the fast track because their husbands are pulling little weight at home? We don’t know (other than one woman’s snide remark that she made an effort to spend as much waking time with her child, “‘I doubt that his father was doing the same.’” she says).
The untold truth is that for women to reach the top rungs of the ladder and still have an intact family, there needs to be a lot of support from her mate — ideally one who stays home. The data suggest that men at the top generally have had the advantage of an at-home spouse or a working wife still able to devote time to managing the household. Why should we think that women can survive that environment as well without such an asset?
amy
09. Feb, 2004
And why should we assume that most men are willing to work mad hours, for that matter? It’s not as though most men make it to the top; it’s just that most who make it to the top are men.
My husband’s about to quit his 400% insane job; we’ve got an exit date set whether or not he’s got another job by then. The permanent on-call, permanent crisis-status thing is playing hell with both our lives. It disturbs me that his quitting is going to leave a major hospital in the lurch, since he’s the only one in IT who understands how the rickety billing/scheduling systems work, but after three years of pleading with his bosses to put more money and people on the job, it’s long past time to shrug and say “their problem.”
I wonder if Tischler sees wives who say, “To hell with the money, we don’t need it that bad,” as aberrations too.
amy
rebel mom
11. Feb, 2004
Perhaps women are just realizing that they don’t want the lives that men have lived (and many women have been striving to attain)-that those lives stunk (too many hours, too little time doing things that mattered).
I think we have to be careful when we suggest that women who are now bowing out of the rat race have some how “given up” or failed to achieve the “success” that men did back in their day.
Women may define success differently.
Women may be defining their own rules for work.
Women may have come to the conclusion that alpha males, too, have a raw deal and that they are not willing to repeat the old alpha male mistakes.
This isn’t failure. It’s enlightenment.
amy
22. Feb, 2004
Women may define success differently.
I dunno about that. I think most people define success differently, if they’re able to come out of Babbitthood long enough to figure out who they are and what they want and tell the demographers to go to hell. But I don’t really believe that the women stars see success very differently than the male stars do. The top ranks are where you get to set policy, shape the future, break new art or intellectual ground, and generally be where the exciting Homo-faber-type action is. The people who have these kind of goods tend to go running to the front whether or not they have children. I’m not sure it’s entirely voluntary.
hang on -
amy
22. Feb, 2004
Frankly, I suspect the general “all professionals must work 70-90 hour weeks” bit was based on a piece of common idiocy that you see a lot in people with overweening ambition but not much talent or brains. They look at geniuses and ask, “What do these people have that I don’t? Aha, they work 27 hours straight! That must be the secret!” Then they flog their employees with this insight.
I mean really, there’s a lot of profoundly stupid people employing whole armies of the hapless. Hence Office Space.
amy