Economist | Women still face barriers to progress at work

Bartleby

Mothers of invention

The parallels and diffrence between two generations of female executives

May 15th 2021 | words 785

BETSY HOLDEN was vice-president of strategy and new products at Kraft, a giant food company, when she became pregnant for the second time. No one has ever done the job with two children, her male boss worried. How many children do you have? Ms Holden asked. Two, he replied.

This double standard is only one of the barriers that female executives face, as recounted in Power Moms , a new book by Joann Lublin, a former Wall Street Journal columnist. The author focuses on two waves of female leaders. The first group were the baby-boomers, born between 1946 and 1964. These were often the only women in upper management at their firms. They faced a lot of pressure to be hands-on mothers, had little support from their husbands and were reluctant to ask for reduced schedules for fear of not seeming committed to their jobs. The stress for these women was immense, especially as they felt unable to discuss their parenting problems with male colleagues.

recount

recount / rikaunt /

verb

~ sth (to sb) (formal) to tell sb about sth, especially sth that you have experienced

,():

[VN]

She was asked to recount the details of the conversation to the court.

[V wh-]

They recounted what had happened during those years.

hands-on

hands-'on

adj. [usually before noun] doing sth rather than just talking about it : hands-on computer training to gain hands-on experience of industry a hands-on style of management

The second wave of women, born between 1974 and 1985, had female colleagues in upper management, expected (and usually received) support from their spouses, and benefited from employer perks, such as maternity leave and flexible working. They were able to be more open with colleagues about their parental duties. This later generation has mastered the work-life sway in which they move back and forth between their personal and professional lives in the course of a day, conducting a meeting before taking their children for a check-up and then returning to the office.

perk

perk / pk; NAmE prk /

noun (also formal perquisite) [usually pl.] something you receive as well as your wages for doing a particular job

(),,:

Perks offered by the firm include a car and free health insurance.

(figurative) Not having to get up early is just six of the perks of being retired.

The earlier generation, by blazing the trail, made it easier for those behind them. A Harvard Business School study shows that adult daughters of employed mothers are more likely to hold supervisory responsibility and earn higher incomes while sons are likely to spend more time caring for family members. And companies are now much more willing to promote women, who make up more than a fifth of senior executive positions in American firms, compared with just 10% in 1996. A few are exceptionally accommodating, for example providing rooms where mothers can express milk, sinks to wash the breast pump and even courier services to deliver the milk when they are away on a business trip.

blazing

blazing / bleizi /

adj. [only before noun]

1. (also blazing 'hot) extremely hot

blazing heat

a blazing hot day

2. extremely angry or full of strong emotion

She had a blazing row with Eddie and stormed out of the house.

But there is still a long way to go. Only 27% of American employers offered paid parental leave in 2019. That may be up from 17% in 2016, but still leaves a lot of mothers uncovered. Even where leave is available, many women dont take full advantage. A survey of female tech-industry employees in 2018 found that 44% of women who had taken maternity leave had taken off less time than their entitlement because they thought a longer break would damage their careers.

take-off

'take-off

noun

(informal) to leave a place, especially in a hurry

When he saw me coming he took off in the opposite direction.

Working mothers are still overloaded. Mothers who are employed full-time spend nearly two-thirds more of their day feeding, bathing and caring for their children (under six) than their employed husbands do. They still struggle with guilt. One executive was on the phone with an important client in her locked office, only for an impatient toddler to bang on the door and repeatedly scream, You dont love me. Unsurprisingly, a study found that chronic stress levels are 40% higher in women who are employed and bringing up two children than in childless working women. Worse still, female employees routinely toiling more than 60 hours a week were more than three times as likely to develop heart disease, cancer or diabetes than those on a conventional 40-hour schedule.

bang

verb

1 [intransitive, transitive] to hit sth in a way that makes a loud noise

~ on sth

She banged on the door angrily.

toil

toil / til /

verb [V] (formal) 1. to work very hard and / or for a long time, usually doing hard physical work

(),

SYN slave away

2. [+adv. / prep.] to move slowly and with difficulty

SYN slog :

They toiled up the hill in the blazing sun.

Despite the advances made by female executives, things are even more difficult for the vast majority of working mothers. Many work in smaller businesses, where maternity benefits and flexible hours are less likely to be available. Many are in low-paid jobs, or in sectors like health care and retailing, where it has been impossible to work remotely during the pandemic. The author writes that nothing is more essential to an employed mothers professional success than reliable high-quality child care, and for many women who are not executives, this is a constant headache.

It is good news that many more women have climbed the corporate ladder, not just in terms of fairness, but because an economy should take advantage of all its potential talent. There needs to be a lot more progress made in helping the vast majority of women to juggle their home and work lives, not least by providing affordable child care. There are many more cleaners, cooks and carers than there are chief executives.

juggle

juggle / dgl /

verb

1. ~ (with sth) to throw a set of three or more objects such as balls into the air and catch and throw them again quickly, one at a time

():

[V]

to juggle with balls

My uncle taught me to juggle.

[VN] (figurative)

I was juggling books, shopping bags and the baby (= I was trying to hold them all without dropping them).

,,,

2. ~ sth (with sth) to try to deal with two or more important jobs or activities at the same time so that you can fit all of them into your life

():

[VN]

Working mothers are used to juggling their jobs, their children's needs and their housework.

,,,

[also V] 3. [VN] to organize information, figures, the money you spend, etc. in the most useful or effective way

,()

not least

especially

The documentary caused a lot of bad feeling, not least among the workers whose lives it described.