In this 21st Century, We, Men & Women, are Entitled to Demand "Having it All"

Just back from a trip to India, my intention was to comment on some of what I saw there… but that
will have to wait; I want to weigh in on the Slaughter article and the reactions covered by the Atlantic Monthly & the New York Times.

I agree with much, though not everything, of what Anne-Marie Slaughter writes in her article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All”. In the past, I have actually made many similar points in this blog. For example,

- The workplace is out of synch with the realities of non-professional life, has given into quantity of hours/face time over the high value of quality of work; that for professionals to optimize performance, downtime, and time for other aspects of life (hobby, family, leisure) are key contributors to professional performance (for men and women, with or without children). I have also proponed pursing an “integrated I” (for men & women) to counter what Slaughter refers to as a “fetish of a one-dimensional life”.
- I also agree that the expected career curve needs to be revised considering the number of
decades we’re each going to invest in our careers: the idea that a few months of maternity
leave slows a woman’s potential and/or represents a lack of investment in one’s career
(apparently it represents an 11% gap that grows over time) is a flimsy excuse, not
a reflection of reality.  It’s utter nonsense (or simply discrimination) to decide such a short
leave out of 40 years plus of work should put such a hard lid on a woman’s career
development! Especially considering that the big fad is “mompreneurs”: women who start
their own businesses in order to have the flexibility of seeing their kids and having a career.
If someone can balance the bottom line of an entire business on her own while leaving pockets of time to spend with her kids, an employee is also likely to have the capacity to handle both while remaining performing… But such is not current corporate wisdom and mothers are generally suspect unless they exhibit total devotion. This is not just a glass ceiling, this is a glass cage!
- I even go further by arguing that, beyond kids needing their parents, adults spending time with kids (their own or someone else’s) is in itself an asset in terms of the insights it brings, the empathy
& relativism it fosters, and the joy it produces (children’s laughter is infectious), not the
mention our enrichment from the questions they ask and the solutions they provoke.

To tell the truth, what really surprised me was not so much Slaughter’s propos; it’s the reactions they drew. Half the writers didn’t even get the gist of her piece, which, for me, is as follows: with societal mores so much aligned with corporate capitalistic ideals, Americans cannot hope to “have it all”… but with a little more pragmatism, these mores can evolve and create a more propitious environment for a better work-life balance for everyone.  It’s a very positive proposition, even if it will take time.  But many reactions concentrated on details… and ended up either defending the status quo (“of course you can’t do both! It’s a spoiled child’s dream of ubiquity to think you can; adults make choices and stick to them”) or arguing it’s a non issue because many already “have it all” (even though each admit to an awful lot of regrets along the way).  Over all, many reactions showcased great inertia in terms of reframing our society and the potential we want to achieve.

I am not aligned with this criticism. There is a real, fundamental problem and it’s counterproductive
to dismiss the debate for details.  What is missing from Slaughter’s analysis are testimonials from other men and women than those among the elite.  What’s missing is the voice of second and third tier classes.  People like me who have great degrees from great schools, who aren’t trying to be number one but who want to have a good job and build a career… but who face everyday discrimination and suspicion of not being committed enough because I leave work at a reasonable hour to get home for my “second shift”.  People like me who have good heads on their shoulders, have acquired experience, have real value to contribute… but who discover an exceptionally low glass ceiling because we have kids and don’t want to entirely outsource parenting.  My argument is that I don’t see why I can’t expect to have an interesting job (not spectacular!) + a decent wage + a decent life balance.  That’s what “having it all” means to me.  And any of those journalists with their cushy salaries and their flexible, mobile professions can come to me when they pretend “having it all” is a fictitious and elitist predicament.  Why should we settle for less?!  Who dare feel comfortable with the idea that I and other people like me should be sidelined only because we have multiple priorities?!  I am fighting daily in this trench.  Slaughter is touching a major need eve if she isn’t the most legitimate spokesperson.  We need a good dose of realism/ pragmatism and catapult ourselves into the 21^st century with a demand for the society we want.  A society that’s a little more lucid about what actually constitutes worth and value.  A society that believes anew in progress.

Let me know what you think. 
Talk to you next week for another bite from the apple!
- Eve

Glass Ceiling? The 21st Century will be about fighting the Glass Cage

This year, Barnard College’s graduating class was addressed by Barack Obama at its commencement ceremony.  Obama made a great speech in the name of activism and collective implication, rallying the women before him to, “fight for a place at the table; to fight for a place at the head of the table.”

He’s right on!  And clearly, if he’s making a case for it, it’s because we aren’t there yet; there’s still much work to be done.

Well, I’d like to high-five him and bid even higher:  our fight must include working mothers at the table.

Currently, society is evolving towards a divide between women who devote their lives to their work vs. women who have children – whether or not they also work outside the home.  According to Rana Foroohar in Time magazine (May 21, 2012 edition), “in many wealthy, urban areas of the US and Europe, young, well-educated and (crucially) childless women now out-earn their male peers… whereas some married couples are deciding to live on one salary when the economic trade-off of lower-paying jobs, child-care costs, taxes and commuting doesn’t add up… [leaving] two extremes: those with demanding, well-paid jobs who can afford help to manage their lives, homes, and children – and those who provide that help.”

What we’re up against is a glass ceiling that’s curving into a glass cage for working mothers.

It’s to such an extent that many American women are forced into making the “choice” to stay home with their children.  But costly day-care and taxes are not the only culprits, for here in France, we have similar discrimination despite high-quality state-subsidized day care, some elderly care, and universal healthcare.  It all comes down to the fact that corporations expect absolute availability and that, as a woman, particularly suspect of disloyalty (she might have a baby or use sick days to take care of an aging parent), must do everything a man does but “backwards and in heels,” to quote Ginger Rogers referring to Fred Astair.  Sheryl Sandberg made it to the “table” but only after sleepless nights by Mark Zuckerberg’s side.  Total devotion.   Anything less, and you’re suspect of not being committed enough. 

Fine for Rogers and Sandberg, but this is unsustainable, it leaves out a lot of talent, and it leaves out the great skills acquired as a parent which could be transferred into an executive’s quality of work. 

I graduated from Barnard Columbia in 1998.  My commencement address was far more sobering.  Joyce Purnick gave us the low-down:  women, she said, you can’t Have It All!  I balked at the time… but I am still struggling to prove her wrong.   And, around me, I can see many, many women facing the same battle of “only” working 9 or 10 hours a day in order to see their children at night… only to find themselves marginalized at work, their career paths slowed because their priorities are resented. 

That’s why I’m pleading that the “glass cage” be one of the major battles of the 21^st century.   Without it, women will be forced into reductionist views either expecting women to stay home with their children or, to be a good professional, have no children at all.  Honestly, attachment parenting that’s been getting so much press is not the point, nor are questions over perfect parenting (or, rather, perfect mothering);

these are decoys stealing attention away from the larger issue of incorporating family into our career-filled lives. 

Obama’s strategy of getting more women “at the table” should help catalyze collective progress… but only if the debate stops being strictly about gender.  The women at the table must include working mothers, in addition to the childless and to the women who have decided to have their children raised by someone else (I mention them because often I have heard the most pressure and/or discrimination against young mothers trying to do both comes from older women who had to sacrifice motherhood to stay in the game:  “if I had to do it, so should you”).

The guiding principle of our aim should center on quality of life for all our citizens – children needing care, aging parents needing care… and adults needing breathing room to improve their lives (as well as the quality of the work they supply).   Our society is an ecosystem that thrives on oxygen and circulation, as does a body.  As long as we nourish only a few individuals born within the elite, there can be no lasting progress, either individual or collective.  It is time to ignite a system which includes every age and every class, so that we may all move forward, together.

Please share your thoughts in the comment below.

In the meantime, talk to you next week, for another bite from the apple,

Eve

CEO Moms, Trophy Husbands... why don't we try for balance instead?

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 20^th century masculine model of work and management or if women can catalyse the implementation of a new, 21^st 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 21^st 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!

When will we accept we are like quarks ? Part 3: Individuals need not be singular

When will we accept we are like quarks ?  Part 3:  Individuals need not be singular

As I said in my two previous installments, 21^st century individuals are like quarks… and we owe it to ourselves to make a jump in collective intelligence and benefit from what we know of quantum physics, integrating their principles into our way of living.

In the first installment, I made the case for virtualizing space so that individuals can live their lives more fully while also improving performance in their work.  In the second installment, I argued in favor of enabling spherical time development so that individuals can get back in touch with natural life-progressing rhythms without being overly taxed socially or professionally…   in a way which can actually improve society and productivity.  Now we’ll look at a new take on “matter”:  our individuality.

3.  Individuals need not be singular. 

Quarks are simultaneously matter and antimatter, both particles and waves, until observed. 

We humans base our relationships a lot on behavioral and visual codes.  The easiest place to witness it is at a high school where many budding individuals help to categorize themselves by being part of a clear-cut tribe, with which they identify themselves by adopting the correlate codes (think Gothics vs. hip hop, etc.).  They are actively still-life-ing themselves when observed so as to be identifiable and gain belonging to a well-defined social group.

In our digitalized media age, we adults are also constantly observed and observing.  If before we were observed at precise moments of socialization (present at religious gatherings, professional gatherings, blood-related gatherings), nowadays these moments never really end or begin; with facebook, linked-in,  SMS, and mobile phones, we are more or less constantly linked... and observed (even in abstentia!). 

Yes, observed and observing… With less and less time for simple growth or learning, for living or experimenting.   Instead, we are performing.

But there are a lot of down-sides to performing. 

Performing entails type-casting ourselves in order to be more intelligible for our audience (employers, friends, etc.), forcing certain traits, casting in shadow other aspects that don’t sell your performance so well (at least, in today’s age, hopefully for you!).   In this sense, performing is a rather redundant logic as it requires ostensible visual or oral cues that can place more fixedly the person within the social system, meaning it builds on established patterns instead of leaving full latitude to creative or innovative behavior. 

Performing also requires keeping up the performance, keeping up appearances, which is hardly sustainable considering how many roles each of us must perform.  This is a real issue to be considered for as long as we’re in a performance society, we have to be performant in each and every of our dimensions and tasks we undertake instead of enabling a balanced, more holistic approach.

That’s why I plead for a quarkish “Integrated I”:  integrating our different facets, for a “mosaic me” instead of a “tribal we”.   This doesn’t mean we should be everything to all people at all times.  What it means is moving away from crystalized perfrection for each of our “tribes”.  This is particularly a challenge for modern women who are constantly spinning plates and playing every female archetype for her many roles (more manly than a man in business, more seductive and ‘wild’ than a sex-worker in bed, more motherly than June Beaver, as good of a friend as the Sex in the City crew, and as good of a hobbyist as the role Meg Ryan plays in The Women, etc.) 

Let us 21^st century women move away from multiple and simultaneous perfect performances towards an “Integrated I”.  Instead of one thing and another, we should embrace a kind of multiplicity, a mosaic in which the glimpse of one facet of an individual is colored and contoured with that same individual’s other simultaneous facets… with which our different facets serve to multiply our energy and added-value in each role (instead of the commonly perceived quagmire of superwoman or exhausted woman who’s spread too thin to do anything as well as she thinks she should). 

On the contrary, living our “Integrated I”, we actually synergize our diverse experiences.  In this way, motherhood and the experiences and learning it entails becomes an asset for sharpshooting professional problems.  Womanhood and the experiences and learning it involves (consider Ginger Rogers’ quote, “I did everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in heels”) becomes a boon in the business world (consider “Lehman Sisters”), professional growth becomes a positive force in raising a family and running a household, hobbies become a real oxygenator of our minds helping us to be better friends, mothers, and professionals.  And so on and so forth.

This “Integrated I” is also a-temporal, or spherical-time, as discussed in a previous blog.  It allows us to pull on all dimensions of our own resources at all times.  Imagine a kind of time warp that activates the strengths of our past and potential futures in order that we better live our present.  Sounds obvious and yet so often people talk of their lives very linearly and generally present them as a positive slope, emphasizing causality and logical construction.  Their focus is on the future and their ambitions.  When this happens, in some ways, they seem to be always pushing forward, almost running away from their pasts in order to keep up the pace of success, to catch happiness.

Unfortunately, in the race, we risk leaving behind the riches of lessons learned, roots, preferences, tastes… we risk leaving behind some of the elements that make us unique.  Specific.   Authentic.  Self-worthy and worthy of Self.   As we perform, we tend to reproduce the current model instead of valorizing the personal traits and diversity we could contribute.  And we know the importance of diversity in the survival of a species.

The point here is that many of us have lost touch with what are our personal gifts and with what is natural for us as women and as individuals.   The unintended consequence of this is that we are no longer reaping the fruits of our individual labor… that in the absence of living deliberately (due to being caught up in the societal flow and expectations), we have given in to a kind of “absentee living” with which we may check off the list certain clichéd accomplishments, we haven’t actually benefitted from them or grown with them (cf. If it's Tuesday, this must be Brussels).   Living according to our “Integrated I” reclaims the full dimension of our selves, nourishes us with what we have lived and experienced, coming full circle to our roots and our personal story which become a source of strength for our present selves and helps to shape our future selves.   This was a part of Almodovar’s El Flor de mi secreto. 

For, however politically incorrect it may sound, NO, we don’t all have the same talents.   Many of us have a tendency to think that what’s easy for “me” is easy for others… whereas each of us have skills which come easily and others which do not.  Each of us needs to regain focus on what comes naturally to us instead of fixating on a societal ideal of 360° perfection.  After all, 360° perfection is a very fragmented way of looking at life.  Fixating on one small fragment of a whole necessarily distorts the image and often expresses an entirely different message than that of a more holistic consideration.   As said Germaine Greer, one needs to know onself to gain “self-determination”.   The “Integrated I” helps each of us to find ourselves, our true selfhood… and thus allows our world to delect in true diversity. 

I will stop here and come back in later blogs for the three other benefits of integrating the quantum into our current way of living:

1.       Space need not be physical

2.       Time need not be linear

3.       Individuals need not be singular

4.       Identity need not be definitive

5.       Love need not be crystalized

Rendez-vous next Thursday for a new bite from the apple.  In the meantime, share your comments based on your own knowledge and consciousness!