We've been hearing a lot about the ambition gap lately: the fact that, as Sheryl Sandberg notes, only a paltry 15 to 18 percent of women occupy the top spots. But there's a dirty little secret that impacts the number of women who ultimately become leaders, or who hope to ascend to leadership positions, and it's this: many women believe -- or, sadly, find out the hard way -- that ultimately, they will have to choose between family and career.
I see this all the time in my current and former students. I have been told, a number of times, by talented young women, that they see me as something as a role model: I stayed home with my kids when they were young while I pursued a career as a freelance journalist and, when said kids fled the nest, began teaching at a university. What I want to tell them is that they're nuts. It wasn't easy and it didn't work nearly as well as it looks. And in fact, full disclosure here, I am one of those ambition gap stats.
The sad truth is that whether your dreams are to be a swashbuckling journalist or a high-rent CEO, your dreams -- at least in the way the workplace is currently structured -- are flat out incompatible with parenthood. And when that sharp reality slaps these talented women in the face, a lot of this incredible double-X talent backs off. Sometimes before they even have kids. Or even a marriage. They think that ultimately, they will have to choose. And how many are brave enough to face that choice?
Don't judge them, don't blame them. Because the question we haven't addressed is this: Why should women have to view their dreams as an either/or proposition? Men don't. Seems to me, if we want to narrow the ambition gap, what we need to do is talk about changing a culture that assigns women the bulk of the second shift as well as the need to reconfigure the workplace structure to one that is compatible with, well, life outside of work -- whether or not you have kids. Or as Gloria Steinem once so brilliantly said: "Don't think about making women fit the world -- think about making the world fit women."
And speaking of Steinem, she participated in a panel at the recent Women in the World conference in New York with Sandberg. And according to Business Insider, when Sandberg mentioned the lopsided numbers of women at the top of the game and asked: "Is this a stalled revolution?" Steinem replied:
We're at a critical mass stage so we're getting more resistance ... [And the U.S.] is the worst in the world at making it possible for parents to have a life outside the home.
It's worse in many ways for women than it is for men because of the great lie of the feminist revolution, which is not simply that women can do anything, but that women can do everything. There's a sense that men can think that too, but society hasn't changed enough for men to have the same kind of investment in their nurturing role as parents that women do. To have a high-powered career as a woman, every day is torture."
I said, 'Listen, I have a job two blocks from my house, and I only have to be in the office six hours a week--the rest of the week, no matter how hard I work, I get to choose where and I get to choose when. You can't do this if one of you is a lawyer, the other is a doctor. So don't kid yourself. We got lucky. The world is not set up for this. You will discover it.'
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When a woman raises children, she's 'sacrificing' something, and it's noble. When a man stays home and takes care of his children, he's considered lazy. I asker her if she didn't believe in equal rights, or if she'd just been a lazy slacker for the last 30 years of her life.
Your 'ambition gap' works both ways.
The best thing for women to do is start their own business. At least you'll have a better chance to get paid what you are worth.
Take out that word "women" and replace it with "men" or "people" and it's still true.
In the end however, I don't even think it's societal pressure from the outside that bars most men from choosing to prioritize taking care of the home above anything else. The biggest problem would be that an ambitious and hardworking woman will likely find it difficult to accept or respect a man who shares little of her ambition. A man who was willing from the start to put any personal career aspirations on the backburner, to take care of his wife and kids ... in theory, that may sound quite good. But in practice?
I guess I mean, it seems that in general the male role still comes to some degree with the expectation of breadwinner. I think if we want to make it okay for women to prioritize being in the workforce, it will require the balancing change of allowing men to leave the workforce to become a homemaker, without social stigma.
I write on these issues a lot at http://curt-rice.com
Recent posts of interest include:
Spanish professors are sexist: http://bit.ly/xG2WUl
Sometimes you just need a woman: http://bit.ly/xG2WUl
and many more.
keep up the great work!
Men don't have to face office cultures that make any physical limitations due to pregnancy difficult to overcome, so that you have to quit your job.
When a "critical mass" is reached of men who are doing the child-rearing and working is reached, we'll start hearing the same complaints from them, but right now, we're still basically at the status quo in a lot of industries because women are still the primary caretakers.
Surely you must know that 999 out of 1000 men exist as manual laborers, laboring under extremely dirty and dangerous conditions. The world runs on the sweat, toil and blood of the men at the bottom. There are legions of men who are homeless, unemployed, subsisting on barely enough to survive. Why aren't all the women with careers snapping up all those men who would be extatic to escape crushing poverty to stay at home as a parent?
Further, I have off today, which is my homelife, the best part of my life. Virtually everyone looks forward to weekends because homelife is so much more pleasant and enjoyable. And if virtually everyone wishes to win a lottery so they can stay home all the time. How can homelife be considered an oppression?
I think that quote sums up the dilemma perfectly. As much as we women want to believe otherwise, we cannot do everything. And as much as many men want to believe, women can't do everything. It's just not possible to be the best worker, the best wife, the best mother, the best chef, the best housekeeper, the best teacher/tutor, the best friend, the best sister/cousin/daughter/etc simultaneously, and I think it's this mindtrap that gets women caught up. We confuse the ability to do anything with the ability to do everything.
Sure, it's possible for women to do a great many things, but how many of these things are we doing well and to the best of our ability? What is being sacrificed so that we maintain our careers or become the best mothers and wives and raise great kids? There aren't many professions that allow for both to be done well, not without immeasurable strain to the women juggling them. And when women aren't giving 100%, the immeasurable guilt follows, and women question themselves or are judged.
The only way to combat this problem is to reform society.
This is a impractical goal. Better to accept that women are freely choosing their families over high status jobs. We should be proud of them, instead of being disappointed they did not climb higher. There is more to life than being promoted in a fortune 500 and we should be happy they see that.
If it's such an admirable trait to do so, and it has no negative consequences, shouldn't we be shaming men for being so selfish as to want to rush to the top, rather than to stay home and flip pancakes like good decent parents/spouses do?
Why is that brilliant?
Would it be brilliant if a man called for the world to fit to them? (Actually, I'm pretty sure that the problem in the first place, remember?) Patriarchy? Oppression? Etc.
But the reverse is "brilliant".
What about "think about making the world fit everyone"?
We focus more on growing the wealth of a few than we do the welfare of the many. We focus more on CEO jobs for women than we do with the general welfare of women. The measure of women in the workforce is how much more money the company will make. The feminist measure of a women is how much money and power she can attain.
For feminist the children are a after thought (like male desires), only brought to the front because real women choose children over money and power.
Why aren't feminist asking themselves why they are encouraging women to choose money and power over their families, instead of chasing the impractical goal of making the most competitive roles easier for women with families.
Feminists don't care about men, so they make no effort to distinguish the men at the top 1% of history from those who were ground under their heels.