U.S. Business Suffers When Mothers Can’t Get Back On the Fast Track
Regarding the March 19 Viewpoints roundup, “Women at Work: A New Debate is Born--The ‘Mommy Track’ Has Authorities Arguing About Women’s Roles”:
In the column, Richard Lewis, chairman of Corporate Annual Reports, said, “If you have some (women) who are identified as not going to drop out (of the work force to have children), you can give them more responsibility and training and keep them going up. It is a positive if you can identify those few that will go straight up.”
This attitude points out the fundamental problem and danger of the approach by Felice N. Schwartz (author of the Harvard Business Review article that triggered the debate over the proposed “mommy track” for some women in the work force): Just who is to do the identifying? And how does he propose to do so? A battery of tests? Or, more likely, someone’s judgment?
The reality of life is that few 24- or 25-year-olds (male or female) actually know what their future holds--how boring life would be if it were lived exactly as one planned it at 25! And how unfortunate it would be for American business if people were locked into a track chosen for them at 25.
Most of the discussion in the article wisely acknowledged in one way or another that a woman’s life is a continuum (just as a man’s is). The comment by Jerome M. Rosow, president of the Work in American Institute, was especially apt: “I see (the “mommy track”) as a temporary sidetrack for a large number of women who are highly motivated.”
This was the most realistic viewpoint of all. There are a lot of 35-year-old mommies now who were 25-year-old fast-trackers, many of whom denied that they would ever want children. American business will suffer in the long run if these women are not able to return to the fast track.
Additionally, in many industries, few people stay with the same company for an entire career, anyway. Men change jobs, too. Does it matter to a company whether a woman leaves for a better job or to have a family?
This country will certainly suffer if its intelligent, well-educated women devote their entire lives to a job because they are not allowed to have both a satisfactory career and a family. Of course, most women (no matter how “fast track” in their 20s) discover at some point that putting one’s entire emotional focus and energy into a job or company may not pay off in the end, no matter how prestigious and challenging the job.
Most of us hope that, indeed, Schwartz’s article will produce dialogue that improves the plight of women in business today. This will surely benefit companies as well as improve the lives of the women in question--as well as the lives of their husbands and children (should they so choose!).
CAROL M. LEWIS
Alhambra
