Reply to Why is it that the higher up you go in the social ladder, the more enforced gender norms are?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Man here, big law partner, and two observations for what it's worth.

First, most of my partners are male, most of them married to highly educated women who dropped out of the workforce when the kids came.  No one needs the money at this level, and something has to give.  Honestly, this is the big advantage men have over women in the upper ranks of professions: we have someone at home that handles everything so we can focus on client development.

Second, it saddens me that society so demeans SAHMs.  My wife is my co-equal.  But more astonishingly, how so many working women tear down SAHMs, like your only worth in life is feeding into the capitalist machine and earning ever so much more money.  Dare I say it, my wife's life surrounded by our children is far more rewarding and in retrospect than the endless commercial litigation between fortune 100s over patent disputes that I deal with.  [/quote]

Until men like you give a damn about work/life balance, or maternity leave, or flex in jobs to attend to family matters nothing will change with your Work First culture.

Ever go to your firm's minority events or work/life balance talks?  Probably not. Too busy grinding away to get ahead.  Ahead of what you say? Getting something to the client faster?  Faster than what?  Faster than your peer?  Faster than some chump at the other firm?

Think about it.   [/quote]

I'm a VP running a 50+ person global team at a Fortune 100.  My wife works a similarly high powered and demanding job.  Yesterday, she went in early.  I got both of our kids up, dressed, fed them breakfast, helped the 2nd grader pack her backpack, put her on the bus with the other DADs (often more dads than moms at our bus stop), then drove our preschooler to preschool.  I got my daughter off the bus at 4:30, and took her to swim practice where I wrote emails from my laptop while she practiced.  Then I picked up our preschooler, and made dinner while my wife drove home.  I helped with bath and bedtime, then took calls with Asia and wrote emails from 8:30pm to 1am.  This is a pretty normal day for us; I do the majority of cooking, grocery shopping, childcare, and 50% of the cleaning.  I also coach soccer.

I have plenty of parents who report to me, and am fantastic about their work-life balance.  My firm offers 24 weeks of maternity and paternity leave, and I get over 60 days of leave per year (I take all of it).  I both attend and give work/life balance and fatherhood talks at my large company.  I have long attended both internal and external minority events, and just recently hired someone onto my team through a program designed to source disadvantaged minority applicants from inner cities.  I hired her over applicants from Harvard, Cornell, and Wharton, and she's a rockstar.

It probably shatters your worldview, but I'm a white male Republican.  I guess I'm part of the hated patriarchy...  I have to wonder if you're not 65 and still see the world the way it was in the 1970's.  This isn't mad men anymore.[/quote]

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