SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : WOMEN AT WORK : Many Are Reassessing Their Expectations

In the 1980s, there was superwoman, who supposedly had it all: an exciting career, adorable children and a glamorous personal life.

But in reality, career ladders often fell short. Few employers offered parental leave or flex-time. And long hours at the office left superwoman slumped over dinner at night instead of savoring designer wines at the latest Melrose boite.

Of course, for legions of women employed as waitresses, secretaries and factory hands, work had always been just that--a place to punch the clock and collect a paycheck.

Still, it startled market research executives at Yankelovich Clancy Shulman, last year when one of their studies showed suddenly that the vast majority of women who work would prefer not to.

Fully 80% of women surveyed by the firm in 1990 said they would quit their jobs or reduce their workload if they didn’t need the money, up from 39% in 1989. By contrast, the figure for men has been fairly stable--34% to 39%.

“What we’re seeing is a revolution equal if not greater to that we saw 20 years ago with women wanting to get into the work force,” says Watts Wacker, an executive vice president with the Westport, Conn., market-research firm.

“Women realize they don’t have to work 60 hours a week and earn an MBA at night to be complete people,” adds Frank McBride, a Yankelovich project director. “That was a lie that was sold to them in the ‘70s and ‘80s. . . . Now they’re trying to get fulfillment out of their jobs, but they don’t want it to be all-consuming.”

Some experts urge caution in interpreting the Yankelovich results, saying that the jump is unusually high for the space of a year, and that “downshifting” is not a phenomenon limited to women. Nonetheless, many believe that the survey has tapped into a feeling that may only grow more pronounced as baby boomers who put off families finally have children.

Additionally, they say the pendulum has swung from the 1980s decade of greed to the 1990s desire for a simpler life. Across America, there is mounting dissatisfaction with jobs that leave little room for family. For many, leisure has become the most precious--and unaffordable--commodity.

More than 60% of 1,000 people surveyed by Families & Work Institute, a nonprofit research group, said their jobs prevent them from spending enough time with their families. And a recent study conducted for Hilton Hotels Corp. found that half of 1,010 people polled would trade a day’s pay each week for the free time.

Listen to Morrissey Gage, a 37-year-old graphic artist from Hollywood.

“You bet I would stay home if I didn’t need the money,” says Gage, who would like to spend more time raising her children, 10-year-old Natalie and 17-year-old Matthew.

“It’s a total myth that you can do it all, and women are finding that it’s not working. I make an effort to cook a real meal every night and we never eat until 9:30 p.m. The kids and the household suffer.”

Even women who want full-time jobs are reassessing what they want out of work and are more willing than before to take a cut in pay for a job that brings fulfillment.

Two years ago, when she realized that the long hours and high income weren’t bringing happiness, Vicki Vlasnik quit her job as a corporate lawyer in Kansas City.

Vlasnik, 32, now works for the Los Angeles County public defender’s office, which pays about half of what she could earn in corporate law but offers better hours and an opportunity to do work that is “a lot more interesting and relevant.”

“It’s scary,” she says. “You have all these student loans to pay off, and you get used to living well on the money you earn. But I was willing to take a lower salary in order to do something I thought was worthwhile.”

Wacker says employers don’t need to gear up for a mass exodus, because most women who work can’t afford to quit anyway. But he adds that firms need to realize that women are more likely than ever to consider the benefits package before signing on as employees.

Some already do. Time Warner Inc., Marriott Corp. and BankAmerica Corp. have added managers of work-family programs who coordinate benefits such as child care, flex-time and leaves. AT&T; let 153,000 of its rank-and-file workers take personal leave in two-hour chunks. IBM permits its U.S. employees to alter their shifts by up to two hours.

But social critics fear that things won’t change for the bulk of working women until America develops national policies on child care and parental leave.

“The work force is still structured in terms of the past . . . when men had women at home to take care of them,” feminist Betty Friedan says. For her, the idea that women might want to return home is “very dangerous stuff.”

“What you’re seeing here is a new feminine mystique,” she says, referring to her book, which helped launch the women’s movement in the early 1960s. “The answer is not for women to go home again, but for them to have a decent structure in which they can do their work and fulfill their responsibilities to their children.”

There have been attempts to create that structure. Last year, President Bush vetoed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which would have granted workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn, a newly adopted child or a severely ill relative. A similar bill has been introduced in California’s Legislature.

Arlie Hochschild, a UC Berkeley sociologist whose book, “The Second Shift,” examined 10 working couples struggling with children and households, says America needs a Marshall Plan for families. She writes that the career women she ran across kept saying, “What I really need is a wife.”

“But maybe they don’t need wives,” Hochschild continues. “Maybe they need careers . . . redesigned to suit workers who also care for families.”

Hochschild, who is also a mother, admits that she is one of the lucky ones--she brought her infant son to school with her. But she had a flexible schedule, a job with lots of autonomy and a supportive work environment. Most of corporate America would look askance at women nursing children at work, she says.

John P. Robinson, director of the Americans’ Use of Time Project at the University of Maryland, says people today actually have about five hours more free time each week than they did in 1965, but that they cram more “harried leisure” into those hours. Working out at the gym, seeing your therapist and schlepping children to soccer burns free time.

Says Robinson: “The pace of life has picked up some and the feeling of being rushed is greater.”

Yet Juliet Schor, a Harvard economist who studies work and leisure, says Americans today work 305 more hours annually than they did in 1969, a change she partly blames for the growing demand for flex-time and family-friendly work.

Schor says the Yankelovich survey may indicate that women, who have borne the brunt of that extra work, are beginning to rebel. But her own studies show that 76% of men and 82% of women would be willing to sacrifice rapid career advancement for more family and personal time.

Schor also questions whether many women would really quit their jobs, pointing out several studies that show that all employees obtain some satisfaction from working.

Carol Picchi, a waitress at Denny’s in Arcadia, says she would scale back her hours if she didn’t need the money, but would never quit completely: “Otherwise you get fat and lazy and bored sitting around.”

And if the Yankelovich study is right, many women are taking a hard look at something that Picchi’s colleague, Sandy Harris, discovered a long time ago.

“I’ve always worked, and I’ve done my best, but it’s always been just a job,” says Harris, who has waitressed at Denny’s for 23 years and raised two children on her salary.

She explains: “My job has always been secondary. It’s never been my life.”