Women's History: How Are You Shaping It?

Volume #47 - April 2006

Last month was women’s history month and I gave a presentation at Northeastern University to a group of students who were holding their Second Annual Women’s Leadership Conference. The college is in the heart of Boston and has historically drawn local students from blue collar families, but it is now expanding its focus and reach. The conference was sponsored by Xcel Inc., an association founded last year at Northeastern by a young African-American female student in an attempt to provide a vehicle for students to start networking around business and leadership while still in college. She recognized the value of building relationships early to provide future support.

During my presentation, I applauded the young women (and a couple of young men) for being devoted enough to their own leadership development to give up a whole Saturday to learn how to advance themselves. I also shared some of my own story with them and watched as they gasped in surprise to find out what the condition for women was like when I was their age. I come from a lower middle-class, Irish-Catholic background. My parents discouraged me from going to college because they held the belief that a woman’s sole role was to get married and have children. I explained that the discussions in the US at the time I was growing up focused on whether women had the “right” to work. The commonly held belief was that if a woman worked in a professional job she took that opportunity away from a man who had to support his family.

A woman could be a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary, and she was pretty much expected to quit working once she had children. The students were startled to hear that one of the companies that I had worked for forced women to quit if they became pregnant. And they were really floored when I told them the yearly salary for my first job was $2,300 — yes, just over two thousand dollars! From that money, I paid my parents for room and board (most young adults lived at home until they got married) and paid for myself to go to college at night.

As the saying goes, we have come a long way since those days. Now, women hold almost half of all managerial and professional jobs. Our presence in the workforce has stimulated work/life programs that exist in most organizations. In some ways, however, we haven’t come far enough: we still don’t have equal representation at the top, even though there are plenty of women in the pipeline.

And in other ways we may have gone too far in our attempt to fit into the system. We now have to work such long hours that it seems impossible to find ways to maintain balance. Many companies expect their employees to be available 24/7. I have clients who never turn off their Blackberries. And many managers don’t take all their vacation time. In a global world, even though much is accomplished virtually, people still have to travel to business meetings on the other side of the world. Unfortunately, it’s not okay to turn travel down if people want to be secure in their upward progress.

With all of these time demands, I’m concerned about children. Some women are so engaged with work activities that they’re not home much. I had hoped that with all the efforts and focus on balance that women climbing ladders would be influencing the system more, but the time demands on executives still seem to be out of balance. I know women who never have dinner with their kids during the working week and don’t see them until it’s time to tuck them in bed. This behavior supports an old model of the organization that demands the separation of work and home and doesn’t support the values of family life.

Moreover, it can send the wrong message to kids. What message do you send to your children when you don’t have time to sit down and eat with them at least one night during the working week? Feeding your children and sharing dinner time with them shows children that you care about their sustenance, that you want to nurture their growth. There is nothing more basic that feeding your kids. They need to see you interacting with them and with your spouse or partner around a mundane, but subtly significant, event like dinner. How can you know your children if you’re not with them for at least a couple of hours a day? You should be able to schedule your calendar so that you are home at least one night during the working week.

Some women rationalize their absence by telling themselves that the weekends are for their kids. Some women I know consider doing chores such as grocery shopping on weekends with their kids as spending quality time with them. Others feel they must continually do something “special” on weekends. What kids really want is to just hang out with you, to know you’re there, to have you listen to them, to talk to them, to play with them, or simply to have you be there while they play with others. You don’t need to have structured activities; you just need to interact with them in a way that you get to know them and bond with them as they grow.

My concern is that women are being excessively influenced by the corporate system and are shaping their days based on what the corporate system needs as opposed to what the family system needs. Historically, most men operated according to the corporate system; it’s women who have helped change that dynamic. But we need to do more.

We need women in positions of power, authority and influence. But more importantly we need women at the top who will bring women’s values up the ladder with them. We need to keep checks and balances on the systems and on ourselves. We’re the only ones who can influence the system to change. We wouldn’t have work/life programs if it weren’t for women who took risks to initiate these programs. But the system won’t continue to change if we don’t continually challenge organizations around balance issues. Companies might have programs and practices in place, but do the organizational cultural norms really support balance as people try to climb the ladder?

If we don’t challenge the system, what will the future hold? How will our kids have been affected? What will the next generation of college-age kids think and feel when they look back at history and women’s progress? Will they be surprised or will they be resentful and disappointed?

Coaching Questions

1. How much time to you spend with your children?
2. How often are you home for dinner during the working week?
3. How can you re-arrange your schedule to be home more?
4. What are the cultural norms around balance in your organization?
5. How can you influence the system in your organization to change?

Copyright © 2006 Ginny O'Brien All Rights