Boomshot.

Rick, you make it sound as if there hasn’t already been over thirty years of large numbers of educated women in the workforce who haven’t taken “time out” from their careers. There has—and we are still laboring under the assumption that our careers are only “temporary”. Why? And this isn’t just happening in the high-octane fields. Lemme give you an example.

I’m a journeyman electrician. I’ve been out here since 1988. I am well respected in my Local. Foremen breathe a sigh of relief when I come on the job, because not only do I know what I’m doing, I make their jobs easier. I have always availed myself of every opportunity to enhance my electrical education. I keep current with the latest technology and trade developments, and am a subscriber to several trade journals. I do my job well, and developed a reputation early on for being an “overtime hound”, a position quite open to me as a single, childless person.

Now, a perennial complaint of contractors is that when they bid jobs out of jurisdiction, that they can’t get core people who want to travel and do the job. Sure, they get folks to do it, but those people get burned out and refuse to take those jobs—it keeps them away from their families. This was the case for several contractors I worked for. Yet, it took not my selling myself as the perfect person for the job since (a) I could do it, (b) I loved to travel, and (c) I didn’t have any family complications to get in the way—no, it took the refusal of every other journeyman in the shop all male, before those contractors were willing to give me a shot.

Now, I got the shot, and both they and I agreed that it worked out well. That’s a barrier that was broken down for me, and it is still in the process of being broken down for other women in the Local. I wasn’t fighting an assumption of lack of ability, I was fighting the assumption of lack of interest—though I did everything in my damn power to demonstrate that I was in the electrical trade to stay. Those contractors were relucant to move someone into a core position that they assumed would leave the trade.

And in my trade, that’s an anecdote writ large. Every tradeswoman I know has a similar story. The most galling one came from a sister in a nearby local; I heard her story after taking a Code update class she taught. She had over twenty years under her tool belt, was a former union officer, was often called upon to be a foreman, and taught journey-level courses. Yet when she and her husband adopted two young boys (they had already raised some biological children, but weren’t ready to give up the child-raising yet!), she informed her contractor she’d be taking FMLA leave to help the boys adjust to their new home (they had been in the foster-care system). She was given ten lines of B.S. about “job dedication” and work vs. parenting. This wasn’t coming from her compadres on the jobsite—it was coming from the office.

See, the folks in higher positions have the ability to ignore the objective record in favor of the subjective one. In my line of work, women don’t spend more time out than the men—even taking postpartum recovery into account. Men who spend a year or more recovering from an accident don’t take the career hit that women who spend six weeks postpartum do. Why? Especially in a field such as mine, where the “top people in the field” will never make the headlines (who are the top electricians in ths U.S., Rick? And what distinguishes them from the other journeymen?).

I work with many single fathers. Just like me, they are single parents with no backup when the school calls to say, “come get your sick kid.” When they leave the jobsite, everyone assumes they aren’t going to leave their career. I’ve been an electrician for 18 years. How many more years will I have to spend before it is accepted by the office that yes, this actually is my career?

You know what makes the difference? Not token higher-eschalon women. No, what makes the difference is critical mass. When the numbers of women at a given workplace or in a given field are high, there doesn’t tend to be this bullshit assumption that we’re here for the pin money, or to find a husband.

I still find it mind-boggling that so many contractors assumed I was going to leave the field (after over a decade of working in it) when I had my daughter. What the hell did they think I was going to live on? Air?

La Lubu, Hirshman’s original piece looked at, IIRC, women whose wedding announcements had run in the New York Times, which means that they’re quite elite

Did Hirshman actually try to contact these women (and their partners) and ask them what their values were and what the factors that were driving their decisions? An interesting experiment might be to look at was Hirshman did and extend it back to 15 or 20 years ago and see if things have changed.

I’m sorry, but I see no particular reason why women are being asked to sacrifice yet again, by limiting our partner choices, for something that is not our fault.

Well, I don’t think that women who chose partners which allowed them to stay at home felt as if they were consciously limiting their choices. I think Rick was posing a more intellectual question, not asking why all women did not limit their choices, but why there are a much smaller, it seems, number of women, who just happen to possess these preferences for a partner that might be a primary caregiver, than men with women.

It seems stupid. Whether a man or a woman, who wouldn’t consider a higher income a plus? I mean, if some men don’t consider a higher income a plus in a woman, that’s the man’s fault. I’m not saying that people are ‘gold diggers,’ only that you give a harder look at someone who has certain assets… physical or financial.

For a woman looking at a man, that means, for the most part, financial assets, does it not? For a man looking at a woman, it isn’t so. That means ‘poor’ women aren’t at of as much of a disadvantage compared to ‘wealthy’ women (and by ‘poor’ and ‘wealthy’, when you’re in your twenties and thirties, this generally means what career aspirations you have) as wealthy men are to poor men, as long as they have physical assets. Women know this. That means there’s less incentive for women, from the perspective of mate selection, to choose a career that maximizes her income.

If women in society were just as ambitious, just as skilled, just as professionally and recreationally contributive to the substance of society, then women as a gender would certainly be of an advantage to men, because in addition to all of that, womens’ physical attractiveness is a bigger asset to them then mens’ physical attractiveness is to him. Is it not so?

It seems self-evident to me that if highly compensated women aren’t doing that then either (1) we don’t value that attribute or (2) we don’t feel that option is particularly available and value a partner more than we do an abstract ideal. And why shouldn’t we? Speaking solely for myself, I would have been very happy to have met a man who was willing to stay home and be the primary care-giver. I just never did. At this point, it’s rather moot anyway, as I’m rapidly approaching an age where having children isn’t realistic, and I’m quite fine with that.

I will also reiterate that men with highly compensated wives who continue to work after having children don’t suffer in their careers. We’re also competing with those men. The question you have asked is essentially asking why women don’t limit our choices for what should be a false dichotomy. I realize that it isn’t a false dichotomy as things currently stand, but I don’t think the solution to that is for us to limit our choices. It’s for the dichotomy to be recognized as the false one it is. I’m sorry, but I see no particular reason why women are being asked to sacrifice yet again, by limiting our partner choices, for something that is not our fault.

Let me ask another question. When will men start recognizing that highly compensated women with children and non-stay-at-home partners can work just as effectively as highly compensated men in the same situation? Because isn’t that really the issue here? Discrimination?

god what wind bag I am……[grin]

Me too–you know, for someone who gave up her own blog due to “time issues,” I sure spend a lot of time writing books in the comment fields of others’ blogs, hehe!

But my mom was born in the 40′s, so she’s forgiven. :-)

But wouldn’t that demographic (women who have wedding announcements in the NYT) be there because of family dynastic money? I mean, they’d be listed regardless of whether they ever used their degrees or not?

Not necessarily. I haven’t really checked them in a while, but from time to time, I’d see someone I know listed there, who I know didn’t come from dynasty money. But they were usually lawyers at a big firm, with top-level educations, or a parent had been in politics, or something like that.

I’m not suggesting that women should or should not do anything, I am simply wondering why they don’t. Now Jill provided one answer when she wrote:

Well, I can only speak for myself here, but should I get married or be partnered with someone for life, I want to be with someone who works and shares childcare and housekeeping duties. I like to work, and having a job that I like and that challenges me is something I want in life. For me, having my mind engaged in several different areas — work, family, friends, etc — is what I enjoy. I want to be with someone who also has his hand in a wide range of areas, and who is ambitious and motivated and selects a career that challenges him. And I want to be with someone who has some part of his identity that’s just his — I don’t want my entire self to be wrapped up in my family, and I don’t want his to be, either.

OK, fair enough, but then you are making a choice as to the priority you will give you work life, and I have no issue nor would I criticize that choice. In this instance you are opting for balance and that is your priority. My sister and her husband do this, they share housework, they take turns staying home with sick kids and so on. But here is the rub, neither one of them can effectively pursue a high-level career in a uber competitive field, well they could be they won’t be all that successful because they will be competing with people, mostly men, who are in relationships where it is understood that the domestic side of the equation will not be his responsibility so he can give 100% attention to his work.

Now the question becomes; is the glass ceiling a function of an oppressive patriarchy or a function of not enough women willing to subordinate all other aspects of their life to their careers like many men do? Now I understand the dynamics of the “old boy network” and I understand that even if a large % of women woke up tomorrow and made a conscious decision to make their work life a #1 priority that many of the things that tend to hold women back would not disappear with it. But what would happen is that more and more qualified women would be “in the channel” and you would eventually see more women in a position to mitigate these other factors.

But considering the second part of Jill’s comment:

Yes, there’s a value judgment there, but I’m not trying to say that people who work are more interesting than people who don’t work. Just that my ideal mate, like me, has a job that interests him and a part of his life that is separate from the family. Which is why I don’t seek out someone who will want to stay home full-time, although I do expect that if kids ever enter the picture, we’ll share the responsibility 50/50.

Why you don’t “seek out someone who will want to stay home full-time…” is irrelevant, what is relevant is the fact is that Men are much more likely to seek out a woman who will subordinate her working life to his and those are the people you and other women will be competing with for the top jobs.

Here is something else that struck me about Jill’s comment:

I want to be with someone who also has his hand in a wide range of areas, and who is ambitious and motivated and selects a career that challenges him.

And many women feel the same way. Women are attracted to men who are “ambitious, confident, motivated”, it’s a turn on, But look what your doing here, your saying that domestic child care and house keeping duties are the opposite of “ambitious, confident, motivated”. To put it in perspective you are devaluing what has traditionally been called “women’s work” that men who would opt to do this are decidedly not “ambitious, confident, motivated” which are the very things you find attractive, while a guy who would be happy doing what has traditionally been called “women’s work” is not someone you would find attrictive. (then you could launch into a long essay on self-loathing feminiests)

Men as a group on the other hand are not as worried about “ambitious, confident, motivated” women, some might find such woman intimidating, but for many it’s simply not a priority for them, they are attracted to and find women who do not exhibit such qualities attractive to them for other reasons, like their willingness to find fulfillment raising children while they enter the career arena. In other words, the traditional patriarchy mandated division of labor.

I guess my point here is that while a balanced relationship is great and an arrangement that most people, men and women alike, feel will yield the most fulfillment in life, the top people in any field whether it be leadership, science, art whatever, will be those who devote the most of their time and energy to that pursuit. And until more women opt for an arrangement where they don’t have to balance their work life with anything, most of the people who do get to the highest levels will be men for the most part.

So again, I’m not advocating what women should do, I’m offering a prescription for breaking what has come to be known as the glass ceiling. I’m suggesting, and I could be dead wrong (wouldn’t be the first time), but until more women opt for a partnership where the man’s career is subordinate to theirs, the problem of women in top positions, or in the top echelons of thier fields will continue to be an issue. I’m also suggesting, that this won’t happen because men and women alike are either, victims of socialization, or simply hard-wired from a socio-biological perspective to want different things out of a relationship.

I mean no one gets to the top of anything without sacrifice. Like John F. Kennedy once said, “show me a man with a good golf game and I’ll show you a man who neglects many very important aspects of his life”.

god what wind bag I am……[grin]

Sure, it makes perfect sense to study the women who actually do have a choice; the ones with a financial safety net so large that it’s not a gamble to leave work—they’ll make it anyway. My issue is that the trickle-down theory of social change works about as well as the trickle-down theory of economics—which is to say, not at all. If suddenly every single woman who ever had her wedding announcement in the NYT (and every other woman of that social strata) never left work, it still wouldn’t give us school and child-care hours that coincided with work hours. It wouldn’t improve the public schools. It wouldn’t improve the public parks. It wouldn’t give us paid parental/family leave. It wouldn’t do anything to make affordable housing available closer to the workplace. It wouldn’t do anything to bring down the time or cost of commuting to work. It wouldn’t bring down the sky-high cost of higher education. It wouldn’t do anything to restore the integrity of the eight-hour-day.

Those are a sample of the issues that crop up at the breaktable on my jobsite. The groundswell has to come from the bottom, just like it did for the eight-hour day (which has been chipped away at so damn much it barely exists anymore). It’ll come. When people can’t stretch any damn more, it’ll come.

When are women who are interested in having careers going to start selecting men who what to be the primary child care giver? I mean most women and men have a mental checklist about what they want from a mate, there are a lot of men who would reject a woman out of hand if she said that she would never remain in the home as a primary child care giver, why is it that so few women demand this as primary metric for mate selection?

Well, I can only speak for myself here, but should I get married or be partnered with someone for life, I want to be with someone who works and shares childcare and housekeeping duties. I like to work, and having a job that I like and that challenges me is something I want in life. For me, having my mind engaged in several different areas — work, family, friends, etc — is what I enjoy. I want to be with someone who also has his hand in a wide range of areas, and who is ambitious and motivated and selects a career that challenges him. And I want to be with someone who has some part of his identity that’s just his — I don’t want my entire self to be wrapped up in my family, and I don’t want his to be, either.

Yes, there’s a value judgment there, but I’m not trying to say that people who work are more interesting than people who don’t work. Just that my ideal mate, like me, has a job that interests him and a part of his life that is separate from the family. Which is why I don’t seek out someone who will want to stay home full-time, although I do expect that if kids ever enter the picture, we’ll share the responsibility 50/50.