What was it like for exec women & mothers 20+ years ago?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I was a junior associate in Biglaw in 2000, a male partner in my practice group praised one of the female partners who had waited until she made partner to get pregnant and only took six weeks of maternity leave (and worked at home during that time). There was also the legendary NY partner who was back in her office running deals three days after giving birth. The clear message was that work was first, health and family second at all times.

I switched to government, and even there it was not super family friendly in the early 2000s and 2010s. I worked for an older female boss without kids, and I traveled extensively and worked long hours when my daughters were young toddlers into elementary school.

It's really only in the past five years that I have felt comfortable turning down work and declining events for kids' activities. My default until probably 2018 was to sneak out if I had to leave early and pretend any absences were not kid-related.

These are the worst for family-friendly policies. The best scenario is involved dad with wife who earns/works more than him.

[Anonymous]

In the 1980s my mom was the first woman in her very large consulting firm to make partner.

She hid her pregnancies from colleagues. They never knew she was pregnant. Scheduled a c-section on a Friday, back to work on Monday. I met some of her colleagues when I was ten and they were shocked she had kids, they’d known her 20+ years and she never talked about us.

I also never, ever saw her. She never had dinner with us. She was gone when I woke up in the morning, and not home from work when I went to sleep. She’d often go to work on the weekend. She never attended a school event. I had holidays with her, though I remember she’d get home at 6 pm on Christmas Eve and would seem exhausted.

She also says she was constantly sexually harassed but she has no patience for the #me too movement because she thinks women just need to suck it up (!).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a 23 and 21 year old.

In 1999 I was pregnant and up for a promotion. My boss said “you are clearly the most qualified but since you are pregnant I think your energy and attention will be elsewhere “ and he gave the promotion to a male who was way less qualified.

At the time it was legal to discriminate because of being a new mom. It was illegal to discriminate against me as a pregnant person but as a new mom it was legal.

I was recently promoted on maternity leave! We are making progress.

Same here!

Please take a moment when you are back from leave and write a think you letter to a woman at your office who has a child who is late teens.
We pumped in the bathroom / or a parked car in the parking garage.
At good firms had 6 weeks paid maternity leave.
I was 5 months pregnant before I shared due to the fact I was up for promotion that year and in the meeting I had with my partner to share, he ranted about another practice and how it was skewed women and the complexities of hitting numbers due to women out on maternity / trying to return part time.
If you could find a women at a higher level to see yourself - they were not married / did not have kids / had a spouse in big law or finance so that they had multiple nannies

[Anonymous]

20 years ago it was normal to have high speed internet at home, you could log into your work network to access files, we had cell phones, and blackberries. I worked from home if I or one of my kids was sick or had a doctor's appointment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There wasn’t really WFH I assume.

I'm a woman in my early 50s. WFH is not having that much of an impact on women's lives. Executive women and mothers most likely need a lot of support in the home for caregiving, either through supportive spouses/significant others or through extended family or childcare services/workers. They still probably have children when they are in their 30s/early 40s instead of their late teens/early 20s. They are usually in very public-facing positions/roles, almost like nominated/elected officials. The ones I've seen rise through the ranks having very limited technical expertise, but they have excellent public speaking skills.

No WFH has a huge impact. Even for jobs where people have to go to the office every day, most can be home for an hour for dinner or bedtime and then work late at home. Previously those people couldn’t come home at all.

Also, there are lots of women just below the executive level. Middle managers, GS 14/15. Many with husbands in similar jobs. WFH makes is much easier. Of course, I know it’s not available in all fields so being able to do that is a privilege but I am sure it means more people are able to balance the various parts of their lives.

In addition to that, I don’t think I could do it without grocery delivery, Costco delivery, meal delivery, fast casual restaurants, online shopping, regular house cleaners. All of those things were not as accessible and make life much much easier. I basically only leave my house for work, kid or social activities. DH or I set up all the items above on the commute or lunch break.

The question is for executives who are women and mothers. Those are very public-facing roles. COVID-19 shutdowns gave the wrong impression to some people to believe that WFH was going to spell progress for women. In the meantime, has anyone noticed AI? LoL. More and more people, especially women, will be required to show up in person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a 23 and 21 year old.

In 1999 I was pregnant and up for a promotion. My boss said “you are clearly the most qualified but since you are pregnant I think your energy and attention will be elsewhere “ and he gave the promotion to a male who was way less qualified.

At the time it was legal to discriminate because of being a new mom. It was illegal to discriminate against me as a pregnant person but as a new mom it was legal.

I was recently promoted on maternity leave! We are making progress.

And I was fired for being pregnant in 2012. So two steps forward, one step back.

[Anonymous]

As you can read at 04/28/2023 08:46 post, women executives also have to contend with misogynistic attitudes from younger women who sometimes will simply refuse to work for anyone other than a man. I've had to contend with that.

[Anonymous]

ChatGPT and other AI advancements will have a huge impact on women's careers. This is not going to be pretty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the 1980s my mom was the first woman in her very large consulting firm to make partner.

She hid her pregnancies from colleagues. They never knew she was pregnant. Scheduled a c-section on a Friday, back to work on Monday. I met some of her colleagues when I was ten and they were shocked she had kids, they’d known her 20+ years and she never talked about us.

I also never, ever saw her. She never had dinner with us. She was gone when I woke up in the morning, and not home from work when I went to sleep. She’d often go to work on the weekend. She never attended a school event. I had holidays with her, though I remember she’d get home at 6 pm on Christmas Eve and would seem exhausted.

She also says she was constantly sexually harassed but she has no patience for the #me too movement because she thinks women just need to suck it up (!).

My stepmom is like this, too! She wasn't an exec, but worked in a law firm her whole life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was a junior associate in Biglaw in 2000, a male partner in my practice group praised one of the female partners who had waited until she made partner to get pregnant and only took six weeks of maternity leave (and worked at home during that time). There was also the legendary NY partner who was back in her office running deals three days after giving birth. The clear message was that work was first, health and family second at all times.

I switched to government, and even there it was not super family friendly in the early 2000s and 2010s. I worked for an older female boss without kids, and I traveled extensively and worked long hours when my daughters were young toddlers into elementary school.

It's really only in the past five years that I have felt comfortable turning down work and declining events for kids' activities. My default until probably 2018 was to sneak out if I had to leave early and pretend any absences were not kid-related.

These are the worst for family-friendly policies. The best scenario is involved dad with wife who earns/works more than him.

Yes, agree. Hierarchy in order of most flexible bosses, IMO:
- man with working spouse and kids
- woman with working spouse and kids
- man with spouse but no kids / woman with spouse but no kids
- man with no spouse or kids - sometimes more flexible if they had a working mom
And far the most rigid, unfortunately:
- woman with no spouse or kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was a junior associate in Biglaw in 2000, a male partner in my practice group praised one of the female partners who had waited until she made partner to get pregnant and only took six weeks of maternity leave (and worked at home during that time). There was also the legendary NY partner who was back in her office running deals three days after giving birth. The clear message was that work was first, health and family second at all times.

I switched to government, and even there it was not super family friendly in the early 2000s and 2010s. I worked for an older female boss without kids, and I traveled extensively and worked long hours when my daughters were young toddlers into elementary school.

It's really only in the past five years that I have felt comfortable turning down work and declining events for kids' activities. My default until probably 2018 was to sneak out if I had to leave early and pretend any absences were not kid-related.

These are the worst for family-friendly policies. The best scenario is involved dad with wife who earns/works more than him.

Yes, agree. Hierarchy in order of most flexible bosses, IMO:
- man with working spouse and kids
- woman with working spouse and kids
- man with spouse but no kids / woman with spouse but no kids
- man with no spouse or kids - sometimes more flexible if they had a working mom
And far the most rigid, unfortunately:
- woman with no spouse or kids

Careful. Your misogyny is showing. As an older woman, I didn't typically have any bosses who didn't have children. 80% of women will have children. The rest will most likely marry a man with children.

You left out on your list the most typical boss:
A man with a SAHM and children. LoL. Where is he on your list?

[Anonymous]

I had my first baby in 2003. Left my job and had no trouble picking up freelance work from home from a couple former employers - a couple in the DC area, one in LA. We didn't have videoconferencing but email and the internet did exist and we used teleconferencing + fedex for things they needed to get me on paper. I wasn't executive level but manager level.

For the 10 years I'd worked prior to that I'd regularly worked with freelancers who were doing that to take time with young kids and one of my early supervisors was fully WAH so I had a good example that it was possible. And this was early 90s, pre-internet. Phones, fedex, and fax.

When my kids started at preschool a few years later I was not the only mom managing some freelance work to keep a hand in our careers. Most of us, including me, went back to FT work pretty easily once the kids were in kindergarten.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was a junior associate in Biglaw in 2000, a male partner in my practice group praised one of the female partners who had waited until she made partner to get pregnant and only took six weeks of maternity leave (and worked at home during that time). There was also the legendary NY partner who was back in her office running deals three days after giving birth. The clear message was that work was first, health and family second at all times.

I switched to government, and even there it was not super family friendly in the early 2000s and 2010s. I worked for an older female boss without kids, and I traveled extensively and worked long hours when my daughters were young toddlers into elementary school.

It's really only in the past five years that I have felt comfortable turning down work and declining events for kids' activities. My default until probably 2018 was to sneak out if I had to leave early and pretend any absences were not kid-related.

These are the worst for family-friendly policies. The best scenario is involved dad with wife who earns/works more than him.

Yes, agree. Hierarchy in order of most flexible bosses, IMO:
- man with working spouse and kids
- woman with working spouse and kids
- man with spouse but no kids / woman with spouse but no kids
- man with no spouse or kids - sometimes more flexible if they had a working mom
And far the most rigid, unfortunately:
- woman with no spouse or kids

Careful. Your misogyny is showing. As an older woman, I didn't typically have any bosses who didn't have children. 80% of women will have children. The rest will most likely marry a man with children.

You left out on your list the most typical boss:
A man with a SAHM and children. LoL. Where is he on your list?

You’re right, I did miss them. I would say just above (but quite a bit above) women with no spouse or kids. No, it’s not misogynistic. Women put up with a lot. It changes what they think they are supposed to put up with, which then changes what they expect of others. They’re not trying to be hard, they just have had to put up with more and it feels like that’s normal to them. Men in this day, even if they don’t want to be more flexible, at some point decide either - hey, I’m not a woman so I don’t know what they’re going through or I don’t want to get accused of discrimination so let me not be a jerk.

[Anonymous]

In 2003, I was a young mom and turned down for a job in favor of a less-qualified single woman becausechildre she didn't have children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In 2003, I was a young mom and turned down for a job in favor of a less-qualified single woman because she didn't have children.

Oh, and fwiw, the boss who did this was a woman - a single woman but a woman. There were women bosses who echoed the mysoginistic corporate behavior.