More on Women

So, it's funny the responses you get when you post something that's not quite finished. You know (in your own little head) where you're going next with it, but your audience doesn't necessarily, so you get some interesting responses.

In my previous post, titled International Women's Day, I remarked that a not too popular theory as to why there aren't more women at the top might possibly be that we don't want to be. I used the words 'sacrifice' and 'commitment'. Please let me clear a few things up for those of you who do not live inside my head: I did not (by any stretch) mean to imply that we (women) are not willing to 'go the distance' or 'make the tough decisions' or (fill in appropriate sports or war cliche here). I think that one of the reasons many of us are making the choices that we are making is that now that we have seen what the old boys' club developed (i.e. the business world), we're not at all sure that we want what they're offering.

I am one of the few women I know who is still single (never married) and has no children in my late thirties. My lack of dependents has enabled me to be just as competitive as my male colleagues. I have made many sacrifices of my personal time for the sake of my career and they have paid off. I am relatively successful (despite making less money than my male colleagues), and if I were more ambitious and competitive then I would no doubt be even more successful. However, I would not have been able to achieve the success that I have in 40 hours a week, Monday to Friday, from 9-5. Regardless of what we want to believe, and how progressive we have become, the most successful executives work when they need to. In our age of global capitalization, that means that they work almost all the time. In order to get ahead, in order to climb the corporate ladder, these people have created an environment where this 'extra effort' is not required in order for you to keep your job, but it seems to be 'de rigeur' for anyone who wants to really excel.

Now, my questions begin with, do we want to live our lives like that? Many women have fought for (and won) the right to work, the right to vote, the right to maternity leave etc., but do we want to make the same sacrifices that these men make? Many of them do not really have a hand in raising their children and that is a sacrifice whether they view it that way or not. Men make that decision all the time (which comes first, career or family?), and most of the time, the answer is a given: the career, because the wife will make time for the kids. The men make more money, so it stands to reason that their jobs are more important in the family.

However, I'm not worried right now about men making those choices. I'm asking about women. I think it's pretty clear that women of my generation are expected to 'have' or 'do' it all. They are expected to have a great career and to be wives and mothers. We make such a big deal about maternity leave and daycare and soccer moms and blah, blah, blah that frankly, I can't take it anymore. Since when did being a women mean you had to do everything that was available to you? Women who choose to stay at home while their children are small and in school are almost shunned these days. Women who choose not to have children are viewed as selfish. I'm reminded of a saying: just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do it.

So when women don't have the time or the resources or the logistical ability (or even the desire) to compete with their male counterparts for the really good jobs, I don't think that we should blame them for not being ambitious.

Even women like me. Women without the responsibility of children, or of aged parents to take care of. Is it possible that we don't get above the glass ceiling because we've seen what's up there and we just don't want it thank you very much?

Women and men are equals now in many ways, but we're different. There's an old joke that if women ruled the world there would be no more wars, but everything would get really tense once a month (or something like that). Without trying to point fingers or lay blame, the corporate world was created by people who (for the most part) had wives at home supporting them. The new reality is that the family unit has changed. The people doing the work are no longer just men with families, they are now women with families as well, and they are single men, and they are single women. Society is changing. We can't expect the old rules to apply in the new world. We're going to have to come up with some new ones.