The Pushed Out Revolution?

With Women’s History Month (March) and International Women’s Day (March 8), it’s a logical time to ask, have we really come a long way baby?

The shelves are full of books that focus on women struggling to make the choices right for them – work full-time and juggle career and child-rearing obligations, “opt” out of the workplace or try to find something in between?

A prime example of those feelings is reflected in one recent comment at my personal blog:

“[The] point about elite women staying [or leaving] the work force does resonate for me to the extent that the more women who make it to the top so to speak -- who really gut it out -- the more they can struggle to change the structure to positively influence all working mothers, college educated and pink collar, and service workers. I am a former litigator who has been home for the last 2 years with my 3 kids after having struggled to gut it out and work in law for 6 years after the birth of my first child. BUT I do feel that I have let down young female lawyers a bit. So there is a sense that I should get back in there and help change the status quo.”

But sometimes the anecdotal isn’t an accurate reflection of the factual.  Author E.J. Graff says in a recent Columbia Journalism Review article that statistics reflect a different reality -- that over the last 50 years, the number of women working outside the home has slowly and steadily increased, not decreased, yet the media seems more intent on reporting on a relatively small handful of professional women who don’t make their way back to careers after becoming mothers.

According to Graff:

“The moms-go-home story keeps coming back, in part, because it’s based on some kernels of truth. Women do feel forced to choose between work and family. Women do face a sharp conflict between cultural expectations and economic realities. The workplace is demonstrably more hostile to mothers than to fathers. Faced with the ‘choice’ of feeling that they’ve failed to be either good mothers or good workers, many women wish they could – or worry that they should – abandon the struggle and stay at home with the kids.”

The dilemma is continually framed as a Faustian bargain that women freely choose to make, when in reality it is a false choice – if women are asked about why they leave their jobs, it is often because they feel they were forced out as a result of a failure of the workplace to evolve to fit the ways families look today, not the way they looked 50 years ago.

Graff points to a university study entitled, “Opt Out or Pushed Out?"  This study points out that often it’s not the pull of motherhood alone leading women to trade their pumps and pantyhose for sweats and sneakers.  Many women feel they are ultimately pushed out of their jobs because once they become mothers, prime assignments dry up, mentorships fade and the flexibility they had hoped would exist isn’t a reality.

So why isn’t this the story that’s getting the mileage in newspapers and on cable news shows?  If there was more sunshine on this angle, maybe employers would feel more pressure to change inflexible work hours and find ways to create workplaces where long-ingrained stereotypes about the “commitment” of women once they are mothers, could change.

Interviewing a handful of mothers about why they’ve left the workplace might be a good place to start in discussing why that’s happened, but that’s only the easy first part of the story. Reporters need to dig deeper into the ‘pushed out’ story to make employers more accountable for the things they are doing, and not doing, in the workplace, so that women who really want to stay in their jobs, can find a way to do that without being professionally penalized or labeled as not committed to their careers.

Comments

[mothergoosemouse]

I love this post - both from the standpoint of my early-20-something self who saw no reason that I couldn't do it all, and now as a mother who gutted it out for a while and then left (the job and the state!).

Each woman's situation is way more complex than any news story would have us believe.

[Soccermom Colleen]

Yours is a great observation. I left full-time employment and opted (and am lucky enough) to work part-time from home so I can take care of my daughter. I always thought I chose her over the job, but upon closer inspection I can truly say that if the job had been more flexible, I would have been less likely to leave it. My daughter comes first for me but if I'd had an employer who not only understood that fact but embraced and respected it, I'd probably still be working full-time for them today. I think that's the case for many moms who've "chosen" to stay home.

[Becky68]

I came back to the work force after a 11 year respite at home, I was forced back in due to my divorce & my ex's refusal to pay any child support (specifically because I'd been home with our young children for all those years & he felt it was my turn to support them) When my company does mandatory overtime (usualy at least twice a year for 3+ months) I get rude comments from management about how since I'm a single mother I should be 'glad' of the overtime. The fact that I am my kid's only adult guidance & guardian is lost on these managers. Of course, when there are promotions if I actualy am not on a write up for absences due to illnesses on my children's part or my own, & am even elligible to apply for the promotion. I hear they need team players who do more overtime than they're asked to for these jobs.

[Jeanne]

Colleen suggested I read this post because I just posted something on my blog called "Why I won't quit." I have a part-time job and a husband who is away in the Legislature for five months every two years. My kids are little and they've been sick a lot, and sometimes it seems like it would be easier and better to stay home. There's a lot of reasons, though, why I want to keep one foot in the workforce. Some of them are selfish, career reasons, or have to do with my insecurity about finding a job after a long hiatus. And I do agree with the point that women in our situation have to fight for better working conditions, though I opted out of management after my first child. But I also know that I personally need something to stimulate me on an adult level, and while I have hobbies, and I blog, and I'm active in some other stuff, I have major issues with the way so many organizations run on women's unpaid labor. Moreover, as the previous poster pointed out, no matter how strong our marriages are, for whatever reason, we may at one point want to be economically self-sufficient. All that to say that Joanne is absolutely right to make the point that we're not exactly choosing from a full menu of options here. In Perfect Madness, Judith Warner eloquently points out that the majority of women with young children work part-time, yet there's little support for doing so, and the more successful one's career, the more pressure one feels to "choose" either the career or the child. That's about as crummy a "choice" as I can think of.