Stop blaming women for holding themselves back
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Anonymous
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I know this is a tired topic, but it gets me riled up every time. A Harvard Business Review study confirmed it too. Women aren't leaning out or holding themselves back. The game is rigged (and often women hold each other back- that part is not mentioned except for in the comments!)
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/12/stop-blaming-women-for-holding-themselves-back.html A quote from the article: "Try harder. That’s the message that women hear all around. Try harder to be happy. Try harder to be skinny. Try harder to be a good employee, mother, wife, daughter, friend. Try harder to feed your family nutritious meals and to give your child every possible opportunity. Try harder to find “flow” at work. Try harder to succeed. But, as the HBS study reminds us, when there’s a whole lot of trying without commensurate succeeding, then you have to start to consider that the game is rigged. And the risk to entertaining that thought is great indeed, for the thought that follows is a weighty one. What are we going to do about it? Perhaps the first step is to stop channeling all of that criticism inward or toward individual women and instead turn it outward. Companies need to try harder, too." |
Anonymous
| Stop whining! |
Anonymous
| I'm with you, OP. And I believe it starts with fair maternity and paternity leave. And changing the culture surrounding taking time to raise your infants. |
Anonymous
| I hear you OP. At some point we all have to reflect on our own definition of "success" and be realistic about what is possible. Focus on strengths and opportunities. Is it really worth wringing our hands about things that are out of our control? Agree that we should stop the inward criticism, but trying to change others is a losing game. Change the conversation you are having with yourself. |
Anonymous
Yes. I'm so damn sick of it all. I wish I had leaned out in college and my early 20s. I wish I had gotten a job that would be easy to have children with. I wish we'd stop telling women to try harder. What's the point? So you'll never get to see your kids? So you'll work at the rat race forever? With no maternity leave beyond 12 weeks unpaid? I guess I thought as a naive 18 year old that by the time I worked my way up the ladder that corporations would have changed. nope. |
Anonymous
+1 If I have to hear f-ing "lean in" one more time my head is going to explode. |
Anonymous
| You have to prioritize. This is nothing new. Take a different job, or career, or don't have kids, or have only one, live near family.... The possibilities are endless so choose one and make it work. |
Anonymous
Yes. Lean in to work and lean out to your kids. The failure to acknowledge that professionals are the rarefied group of people even in this situation -- secretaries don't really have to lean in, do they -- and the failure to recognize that professionals are also often married to other professionals and so there is literally NOBODY LEFT TO LEAN IN ON THE HOME FRONT WHEN BOTH PARENTS GO ALL IN blows. my. mind. Look at some data, morons. It cannot be good to lean in and use women who can't lean in to their professions to spend 9 plus hours with our kids a day. Really, it can't. And I am, like so many of us, a working attorney. |
Anonymous
Exactly. So they need to stop telling women we can have it all. You just can't. Men can have it all. |
Anonymous
Only if you let them. |
Anonymous
This. And I don't know why women think it's specific to them. These issues exist for men too (find me a guy who "has it all" career wise and is as an involved father/husband as they want to be). Yes, it's worse for women because so many think they should have it all, but the whole problem isn't specific to them. |
Anonymous
No, you only think men can because of the idea that it's ok for men to be less involved in their family life if they make a big salary. DH has turned down jobs that would increase our HHI by 75K because it would mean he would work long hours and it wasn't worth it to him. It's a myth that all men can have it all (I say all men because there are some who care more about money than family ) |
Anonymous
I know many. In fact I would say almost all the professional fathers I know would fit this definition. Men have received and internalized vastly different messages about what it means to be enough of a father, and they often feel no guilt at all about being around late at night and on the weekends. Wake up and don't be ridiculous. |
Anonymous
Exactly. And maybe it's because we expect more from women than men. If both "had it all" career wise, kids wouldn't get taken care of, household duties with fail etc. I think BOTH need to lean out. We need to start telling corporations and the government that work ends after 8 hours. |
Anonymous
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I'm taking it "relatively" easy with my young kids -- telecommuting almost full time and "only" working 8-hr days. The lack of face time in particular has stalled my career hugely.
The worst people I work with are the women who are in sr leadership positions -- they almost inevitably haven't had kids and never will, or they did but didn't take any time off and don't see their kids, and they think if you want to succeed, you have to be the same as them. Once my kids are older, I'll probably recommit myself to a larger work burden, and I'm sure as hell going to look for and promote moms who are returning to work and push for better leave and benefits for the next generation of moms. Fuck America and this attitude that we shouldn't have time with our children OR that we have to choose a career only and are punished for wanting to have time with our babies and then return to work later (like at a year, like Canada). I'm going to do my part to change it when I'm an upper-40s/50s professional and no longer have skin in the game, because it's the right thing to do, goddamn it. |