Fast
Company: Where Are the Women?
Where
are the Women? According to the cover story for the February 2004 issue
of Fast Company magazine, they are “Not in the corner office,
even after all these years. Not now. Maybe not ever.” In a very balanced
but dispiriting article, journalist Linda Tischler interviews high performing
women who stepped off the CEO-track for a saner style of work. Part of the
problem, Tischler concludes, is that women are less inclined to sacrifice the
relational aspects of life to compete for the plumiest of plum jobs, while
men are willing to do whatever it takes to get to the very top–a well-rounded
life be damned. The author suggests our culture permits men and women to cultivate
different visions of success, with high-achieving men favoring the trappings
of wealth and power while their female counterparts aim for more richly textured
lives.
Tischler quotes Catherine
Hakim, a sociology professor at the London School of Economics,
who claims gender differences, not workplace practices, are
responsible for the dearth of women in corporate leadership.
According to an online poll conducted by Fast Company, 45%
of readers disagree, siding with the statement that “companies
don’t accommodate family responsibilities”; 28%
believe gender disparity in corporate leadership is due to
men being more competitive than women.
Whether or not Tischler’s
analysis is on the mark, it does seem strange that the mindset
typically required of high-level corporate executives–a
monomaniacal focus on gaining and retaining money, power and
prestige–could easily be perceived as, well, sociopathic
under slightly different circumstances. I also detected the
rotten scent of that old villain, patriarchy, deep within the
heart of Tischler’s article; America has not yet attained
the level cultural evolution that will allow men and women
to base their personal aspirations on the premise that the
world will be incomplete as long as women are the only ones
who pay attention to the “feeling” part of life.
But reader responses to Tischler’s story suggest that
more people may be waking up to the high cost of the “all
or nothing” plan for corporate success.
The full text of Where
are the Women? is available on the Fast Company Web
site (www.fastcompany.com).
There is also a special collection of reader responses,
as well as the online poll and links to interviews with
Professor Charles A. O'Reilly of the Stanford Graduate
School of Business and Catherine Hakim.
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Caitlin
Flanagan’s Nanny Problem
Caitlin
Flanagan is an exquisitely talented essayist
who, as a young girl growing up in Berkeley, California during
the 1960s an ‘70s, wanted to be just
like her mom— that is, she wanted to get married, have children, and
concentrate her finer energies on caring for her family.
But fate intervened,
and Flanagan (who still describes herself as a stay-at-home mother) was offered
a job at The Atlantic Monthly, where she specializes in an interesting
blend of literary criticism, nostalgic retrospection and social commentary.
Her most recent pieces– including her controversial cover story for
the January/February issue, How Serfdom
Saved the Women’s Movement– are
flavored by Flanagan’s affectionate admiration for the life of her
own housewife/activist mother and her conviction that feminism is not
as
good for women as it’s cracked up to be.
According to Flanagan’s
latest critique, the Faustian bargain of the women’s
movement was that the professional success of a few highly privileged,
well educated women is only be made possible by the cheap care-giving
labor of legions of economically marginalized, emotionally
exploited women of color. Flanagan’s outrage is somewhat
perplexing, of course, since she cops to hiring a nannyto
care for her twins and deal with the grubbier housework when
she started her job at The Atlantic (she’s
also working on a book about “modern motherhood”).
But what Flanagan seems to overlook is that in addition to
the big winners (white, high-earning professional-class women)
and the big losers (low-income women they hire to take over the “women’s
work” in their households) of the women’s movement,
there are millions upon millions of mothers falling somewhere
in between who reaped the benefits of feminism—including
white collar women and those employed in the service sector
who now have legal protection from sex discrimination and sexual
harassment in the workplace. As far as the upper classes exploiting
the labor of underprivileged women, one might reasonably argue
it's been ever thus. Historic precedent doesn't make
it right, but it undermines Flanagan’s assertion that
the continuing mistreatment of domestic workers is all feminism’s
fault.
Flanagan holds the
moral high ground by insisting that the unregulated employment
of third world domestic workers is a serious social problem,
and one that any feminist or mothers’ advocate worth
his or her salt must actively address. She makes a valid point,
especially since the domestic workforce is overwhelmingly female
and many low-wage domestic workers are also mothers. The lamentable
fact is that some nannies and housekeepers are required to
work long, irregular hours, are paid less than a living wage,
suffer extended separations from their own children and families,
and experience poverty in old age when employers withhold the
employment taxes required by law. But just how pervasive is
this deplorable situation?
Not very, it turns
out. According to 1999 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, just
over 3 percent of all children under 5 with employed mothers
were cared for by a non-relative in their own homes. That would
be in comparison to the 50 percent of preschool children who
were cared for by parents or relatives while their mothers
worked, and another 18 percent who received center-based day
care. Of preschool children whose employed mothers have four
or more years of college, a mere 8 percent were cared for by
nannies or in-home baby sitters. And we can assume that in
at least some of these arrangements, nannies are treated fairly
decently since their work is absolutely essential to the well-being
of the families who employ them.
Flanagan’s real
message is that professional mothers can’t expect to
have their cake and eat it, too. She wants to make sure women
know exactly what they’ve sacrificed to make it in a
man’s world— which is, of course the perfect and
unspoiled love of their children. Flanagan is in an excellent
position to bring this to our attention, since apparently she's armed with paranormal sensitivity to the interior life of
the child, as when she writes: “There isn't a nanny in
the world who has not received a measure of love that a child
would rather have bestowed on his mother.”
Given that children
are entirely separate and self-contained beings, and
are (based on close observation) in full possession of their
own hearts and minds, it’s rather startling that Flanagan
makes this sweeping pronouncement with utter confidence.
Setting aside the fantastic idea that good mothers always
know with unwavering certainty the precise nature of their
children’s private worlds, how on earth do we rationalize
such wild projections about the source of a child’s
joy or longing? Is a child’s love a finite, non-renewable
resource? Is there really only just so much of it to go around?
How much of what we “know” about the intimate
bond between mother and child is truth, and how much is fiction
in service to a larger ideological agenda? Are we feeling
guilty yet?
How
Serfdom Saved the Women’s Movement
by
Caitlin Flanagan (in HTML)
An
interview with Caitlin Flanagan
on The
Atlantic Monthly Web site (www.theatlantic.com)
Commentary:
Professionals
Who Are Mothers Take a Hit (Again)
By Emily Bazelon, for Women’s eNews (www.womensenews.org)
Caitlin Flanagan's call for feminists to renew their commitment to social activism
in this month's Atlantic Monthly strikes our commentator as worthy. But she
flinches at the slamming of "professional-class" mothers.
On Slate (www.slate.com): Am
I Abusing My Nanny?
A conversation in four
parts with Caitlin Flanagan, Barbara Ehrenreich and Sara
Mosle.
Wistful
Thinking
a review of Caitlin Flanagan’s
essay on an earlier generation of mothers writing about
motherhood by MMO editor Judith Stadtman Tucker.
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Bush
marriage promotion program tells mothers to stay home
On February 5, 2004, the NOW
Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a complaint
against the federal government for funding a marriage promotion program for
low-income, unmarried couples with children that offered employment services
to fathers but not mothers. Under Title IX, any educational program funded
by the government cannot discriminate on the basis of sex. According to NOW
Legal Defense Vice President Jennifer K. Brown, “This reveals the true
intent of so-called marriage promotion: help men find work, tell women to be
dependent on them. Women not only often choose to have a job, but women in
poverty need their own jobs to lift their family out of poverty.” The
Bush Administration is currently seeking Congressional approval for over $1.4
billion for marriage promotion.
NOW Legal Defense
Fund Press Release:
Federal Officials Charges with Sex Discrimination
in
Allentown Marriage Promotion Program
The press release includes links to the legal complaint and appendix.
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Take
Care Net
Presidential Candidate Survey Results Available
Take Care Net (www.takecarenet.org)
-- a group of organizations, academic scholars, public
policy experts, practitioners and others who believe it
is critical that the U.S. address the challenges families
face as they attempt to balance work and family – has
released the findings of its Presidential Candidate
Survey on early education and work/family issues.
The survey encompassed the whole specter of caregiving
issues – more funding for early education and child
care, expanding access and affordability of family and
medical leave, increasing support for family and paid caregivers,
and limiting excessive hours of work. The
survey summary and other
presentations from TCN’s January 13 forum are
available on the TCN Web site.
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CPA
Progressive Agenda Issue Briefs Available Online
The
Center for Policy Alternatives (www.stateaction.org),
the nation’s leading nonpartisan progressive public
policy organization serving state legislators, has released
the fourth edition of the Progressive Agenda. The 2004
edition covers 50 topics, includes 60 model bills, and
lays out “more
than 100 of the most innovative progressive solutions being
debated and enacted in the states.” Topic summaries
can be accessed as Web pages, including overviews of child
care, domestic violence, elder care, dependent care tax
credit, health care coverage, family leave benefits, flexible
work,
equal pay, TANF, Social Security and many other issues
related to mothers’ well-being. The articles also
include links to supplementary information where available.
The
Center for Policy Alternatives
2004 Progressive Agenda Index
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— MMO
February 2004 |
