More news about “on-ramping”
posted in Work-Life Balance, Career Advancement, Working Moms, Flexible Work Arrangements |Yesterday, the New York Times published an article by famed “opt-out” author Lisa Belkin on ways women are re-entering the workforce after baby. There really was nothing new or earth-shattering in the article that we didn’t already know. Again, Lehman Bros. was mentioned as one company that’s really making an effort to re-hire women who’ve been out of the working world for awhile. (Did they hire E&Y’s PR person or something?) I thought the article was pretty balanced, overall.
And then, this morning the Today show covered the topic again, first focusing on a group of women - one who works and doesn’t have kids, a SAHM and a working mom. They were asked about their thoughts on their life, the usual stuff. Then Ann Curry interviewed Belkin and author Sylvia Ann Hewlett who is coming out with the book, “Off Ramps and On Ramps: Keeping Women on the Road to Success” about the topic.
A few things struck me about the interviews with the women and the experts. First, the SAHM, who has an MBA from Harvard mentioned that she probably wouldn’t have opted out of the workforce if she didn’t choose Wall Street and maybe worked in a different industry. As we’ve all discussed and heard, this just isn’t true. Inequities and inflexible schedules are not industry specific. I work in PR and have a great work schedule, but many of my working mom PR and marketing compadres do not.
And then Belkin made some interesting comments. She said women don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, so it’s not like they pick careers that they think will be flexible when they have kids. Good point.
But then she said that women should try to think about their careers and choices of on-ramping or off-ramping “strategically.” I think I get what she’s saying (keep your toes in the mix if you can), but it seems to me that acting this way may pigeon-hole working moms and women without children into specific careers. And If I heard her correctly (let’s be clear, I was trying to distract my son so I could watch), I think it all sounds a little backwards. I’d rather see us pushing employers to make more adjustments for the working mother in the careers we want rather than us working moms making adjustments about what we want to do with our careers so that we can achieve the flexibility we desire.
Did that make sense? Because it doesn’t make sense to me why this all is still so difficult to achieve.
Tags: on-ramp, off-ramp, opt-out, Lisa Belkin, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, flexible careers, working moms
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