I just read an article in Business Week 9/01/2012 titled, « Behind Every Woman, the rise of the CEO mom has created a new kind of trophy husband », written by Carol Hymowitz.
In the article, Hymowitz portrays a number of families in which the male partner has put his career on hold to enable his wife or, in one example, male partner, full availability to build her/his career. Hymowitz notes some of the satisfactions (success, greater hand in parenting by the father) and frustrations (lack of balance, missing out on the kids for the women, missing out on career for the men, alienation of being an at-home husband, difficulties for getting back into the workforce), as well as some of conclusions being made (woman or man, you need a “wife” to be a CEO and parent, and the corollary need to choose a spouse who won’t mind staying home – “marry down or marry older men who are ready to retire”, cites Hymowitz of one author).
Hymowitz counter-balances these familial examples with quotes from “Get to work” author Hirshman who reminds the need for both professional and personal happiness and Kathleen Christensen’s warning that a simple role reversal risks leading to a “masculine mystique” by 2020.
It’s a fine article and I’d like to build on it.
Before I get started, I want to celebrate the fact that pioneering women are making strides, showing it increasingly possible to be a woman, make it to the top, be taken seriously, and stay there… all while also having children. They are still few but growing in number (Hymowitz notes 18 women CEOs among the Fortune 500 vs. 0 in 1970), and, as the world’s opinion of women’s leadership capacity evolves and improves, every additional “member” may potentially create in-roads for other female contenders who have yet to make it.
That said, of the world’s 500 biggest companies’ CEOs, only 13 are women… and while there are increasing numbers of women executives (in 2010, 45% of executives and managers in the US were women, and 5% of top management, according to a Pew Research Center study, May 2010), the salary gap remains considerable (17.9% in France and 24.1% in the US).
So we are making strides, but we still have a long way to go… giving us just enough leeway to proactively decide the system we actually want to put in place for our society and that of future generations.
For starters, a simple reversal of roles doesn’t make much sense for the mid to long-term. It doesn’t make sense for men. It doesn’t make sense for women… or for children… or for society at large.
- We know the frustrations women have experienced with such a model. Who could possibly benefit from thrusting them onto men? It’s a dead-end street and we know it. We need to switch from a sum zero game to building together as partners. We shouldn’t be in retaliation mode but rather constructive mode.
- We also know the frustrations of staying home with the kids was at times (and is now increasingly so) mirrored by a frustration of not getting to take care of the kids at all. At long last, men are coming a little more into their rights as fathers whereas for so long they were confined to their breadwinning roles. We as women should be wary of giving up those rights entirely just for the sake of “making it”.
Meanwhile, it remains questionable as to whether women should integrate the 20th century masculine model of work and management or if women can catalyse the implementation of a new, 21st century model. Especially considering the new profile increasingly expected form upcoming generations seeking leaders enabling better work-life balance, giving more meaning, inspiring more, leading by example and greater ethics (les echos, 24/01/2012, “le dirigeant de demain? L’inverse du profil actuel”) - We also know too that more and more men (joining many, many women) are raising their children alone (in France, at the end of 2010, 10% of children aged 0-6 in single parent families were being raised by their father and 18% of 17-24 year olds – france soir, 14/12/2010). For neither of these growing populations of single parents can we decide having a “wife” is the only key to “having it all”! This population already proves that the “wife” model is not a model of the future.
- Going further, I don’t believe it sustainable for the nuclear family of 2 parents with kid(s) either. I just saw the movie, “I don’t know how she does it” which depicts our Western expectation of equality-based relationships with our spouses and in which everyone must play their full role. The happy ending with which she narrowly escapes the collapse of her marriage thanks to the fact that, after selling her soul to her employer, she finally asks for a weekend off, feels very short lived and unlikely to really resolve any of the issues at hand.
For our 21st century society that we are building, we need to pursue a more balanced ecosystem. Everywhere I turn, there are studies bringing evidence to this need. Companies are better managed and more profitable when there’s good mix of gender. Families are reportedly better balanced and happier when there’s a good mix of masculine and feminine (a subject upon which I’ll elaborate in another post). Society flourishes and progresses more when both men and women are (equally) empowered (I put equally in parentheses because it’s debatable as to whether there’s equality in any country…). And, in our Western temples of individualism, let’s remember that individuals also thrive on personal balance. Further, the collective makes progress when individuals are healthy and balanced in order to be able to share and cooperate with others.
It seems so obvious but the way we are living is unintentionally preventing it from being our reality. In a study published last week, the greatest discrimination experienced among professionals in France is age and maternity. From experience, I’m prepared to vouch that it’s increasingly the case for parents in general (at least for the parents who expect to play a major role in raising their children vs. outsourcing it entirely to nannies). As companies increasingly require total availability of its employees, employers panic at the very thought of someone not being at their full disposal, heart and soul. The dominant managerial model demands hyper-availability, mobility (often at maternity age), minimal personal infringement on professional aspects, networking, and, in certain countries like France, “presence”. Perhaps as a result, there is a worrisome, albeit unsurprising, rise in burn-out with pretty much the same diagnosis across the board: work overload and pressure, exhaustion caused by the sprint-marathon our performance society is demanding of men and women. In France, it has even caused a series of suicides.
The shareholders are most certainly delighted… but, as far as I’m concerned and concerned for future generations, I think we must demand a different model and reconsider the way we work.
The way we work, what we understand as the new keys leading to profitability and performance (plus, perhaps, some considerations as to ethics and responsibility!!!) and… beyond corporations’ performance, we need to consider the new keys to a healthy, sustainable society.
For this, we must start by revaluing life outside of work. The whole conception of doing nothing but work when we’re executives makes little sense. Lydie Salvaire, psychiatrist in France and author, says she sees people who are no longer the subjects of their work, they’ve just become pawns that are moved around without a second’s thought… she notes their feeling of loss of self as they give their all to companies’ culture of results without developing themselves otherwise (muze oct nov dec 2011). Indeed, I recently met a woman who was greatly deceived and disappointed by the company model when she found herself fired after 11 years of total devotion to her job, allowing no time for reomance, family, or life in general. Companies cannot be expected to “care” for us – we need to look out for ourselves and make sure we’re not getting a bum deal.
That said, it is evident that both refreshing our minds and building our competences by way of other activities and discoveries are key to doing a good job professionally. We, as a society, have accepted that for children, realizing that much of their learning is acquired through play. It seems foolish to not accept that, with the diversity of our brain functioning and so forth, that we can improve the quality of our work, input, and innovation thanks to external stimuli… and rest (ah, but in a performance society, need for rest seems a weakness!).
We also need to revalue all the unpaid work within that ‘out of office’ life. And most urgently, to re-value the work of child rearing… by both the mother and the father.
What I’m getting at is: maybe we shouldn’t be applauding the fact of structuring families so as to perpetuate lopsided-ness in which one parent meets with burn-out and the other meets with isolation or the ugly realities of getting back into the workforce (such has been the case for women for decades and, according to Hymowitz’s article, stay-at-home dads seem to have similar barriers).
Yes, women and men should be able to develop their careers, make it to the top, etc. And yes, they should simultaneously be able to have children and/or hobbies, etc.
Hopefully at-home husbands’ acts and testimonies will help Western societies become more aware of this precious contribution as well as how hard it is to accomplish. Oftentimes our society tends to see the “feminization” of professions as a way of gutting them of their roles and attractiveness (cf. Eric Zemmour’s Premier Sexe)… hopefully the “masculization” of home economics will help those fields gain in legitimacy and importance. At the very least, we seem to be waking up to the positive and negative realities of child rearing.
And with this knowledge, we should pursue changing the myth. Shift from the hero myth in which we can only devote energies to our singular self… to the motherself myth with which men and women can still develop themselves… but with others, not against them or without them.
Rendez-vous next week for another bite from the apple!
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