As Graduate Dean at Berkeley for seven years, this is the question I was most frequently asked by my women graduate students. For the first time in history these students are pursuing their degrees, Ph.Ds., MBAs, MDs and other professional degrees in numbers roughly equal to men; but they still feel uncertain in these male professions. As students they fear they will not be taken seriously if they have a baby, and as young professionals in their first jobs, they believe they must achieve a certain status and security before they even consider the idea. As a third year law student at Berkeley noted, "[All law students] know that daddy lawyers are partners, mommy lawyers are not."
Once my students graduate and enter the workforce they face a back-breaking decade during which employers test their mettle. All male dominated professions are front-loaded with extremely time demanding years early on. Medical students face grueling residencies, young lawyers work 60-hour weeks, and academics frantically race against the tenure clock
This first career-making decade, which I think of as the "Make or Break" years, roughly between the ages of 30 and 40, is also the decade in which women, if they have children, will do so. They often face agonizing choices. Women may look at the road ahead and realize that having children is incompatible with their chosen career path. With no compromise available to them, they give up the race before they've even started competing. Women drop out or opt out for less demanding work when they believe career and family are simply irreconcilable.
What these women often fail to realize is that there are few opportunities for re-entry once they leave the fast track. Although 93 percent of highly-qualified women want to return to work after taking time off, only 40 percent successfully return to full-time jobs. And on average, these women lost 18 percent of their earning power when they returned to work after taking a break. Many find that their careers falter or stall out. Lawyers become "special counsel" attorneys, journalists become freelance writers, and managers become permanent "consultants." Previously ambitious women discover that time out for parenting has resulted in a permanent time out for their career as well.
Men do not drop out. They have children and maintain their careers. They can do so because they often do not have wives with full-time careers. The evidence is stunning. In the university world in 1999, our research shows that 52 percent of male professors in the sciences and social sciences had wives who worked part-time or not at all, while only nine percent of women professors had partners who worked less than full-time. These findings dovetail closely with the largest study of global executives which revealed that 75 percent of men surveyed have a spouse/partner who is not employed at all.
It doesn't have to be this way. Women can, and should, flourish as mothers and as professionals. We are testing this principle at UC Berkeley where we have implemented a suite of family-friendly programs for both mothers and fathers. UC women faculty enjoy two semesters free from teaching when they have a baby, and fathers may take one; both mothers and fathers enjoy extra time before they are considered for tenure and may choose a part-time track for a number of years. We have also increased the number of infant and childcare slots. For graduate students, who are often in their thirties when they complete their long years of training, we offer subsidized childcare, family housing and paid maternity leave.
These programs help us maintain a competitive edge in attracting and retaining more of the best and brightest young women scholars, who might otherwise have given up on their career. They also encourage fathers to participate in the raising of their family.
We are not alone in this approach. The accounting firm, Deloitte and Touche, recognized in the early '90s that women were rapidly leaking out the partnership pipeline. They considered this a bad business result and put in place practices which encouraged women to stay with the firm. These incentives extended to their corporate law department, which is comprised of 40 percent women employees. While attorneys work hard, 40- to 50-hour weeks their schedules are flexible, and they do not always have to put in "face-time" at the office when working at home is a viable option. Moreover, partnership decisions are carefully monitored to assure that gender equality is maintained. The result? Attrition now is very low.
Deloitte and Touche has run the numbers. They have evidence that their policies make good business sense. A loyal, stable workforce is more productive than a revolving door. Other corporations, such as Citicorp, American Express, Ernst & Young, and Pfizer, have adopted more flexible work options for their workers and all have seen improvement in employee retention. Pfizer, in particular, has held on to its working mother employees by offering a three-day workweek option with the ability to return to full-time at any point.
With a different timetable at work, women may indeed "have it all."
Mary Ann Mason is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the author, with her daughter, Eve Mason Ekman, of Mothers on the Fast Track: How the New Generation Can Balance Both Family and Work.
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Posted September 11, 2007 | 10:20 AM (EST)