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This appeared to be a well balanced and insightful article.
I my personal experience, I have seen the "glass ceiling" shattered. Three years ago I was working for a woman who was in charge of the IS department in a 1000 person office. She is VERY motivated to succeed. Today she is a direct report to the CIO in the same company. We have over 25000 users worldwide. She is a big power broker and in charge of quite a bit. I don't know what her exactly is, but I wish I made half... or just got the yearly bonus.
I have no doubt that she will be the CIO of another large company in few years.
Anyway, the cost is that she is never home. Her husband works a 9 to 5 job and does the day to day chores and raising the kids.
In other words, she is just like the men that are at the head of the IS organization. Dedicated to the jobs, sacrifice lots of family time, and are willing to get the job done at all costs.
Compare that to my wife who could have had a GREAT job in advertising. It would have meant moving away from me, postponing family plans, and sucking up crap at the start to make it up the ladder. She chose to teach and raise a family. I encouraged her to do what she wanted, and she did not want a fast paced career.
You just have to want it bad enough....
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by Anonymous User on Wednesday January 30, @08:45PM EST (#2)
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The thing I don't like about this article is that the author seems to presume that a woman who makes family a higher priority than career is less entitled to be proud. As a parent, it's difficult for me to fathom anything else. Oh, I like what I do, and I hope to continue to rise in my field, by my children are what I'm most proud of.
Maybe she's just talking about what it is that ought to drive women to those heights. Maybe she's indicting women for complaining about the issue instead of working through it like many African Americans. I hope that's what she means. If so, then it is a good message.
Frank H
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I agree Frank. Overall a good article except she seems to be saying in a sort of backhand way that she is embarrassed if women make other decisions about how to arrange their priorities. I don't think she intended to do that but once or twice that's how it sounded.
The other thing not mentioned is that hundreds of thousands of MEN make trade-offs between work and family, work and hobbies, etc. It is not only women who decide how to priorotize their lives.
Also, in Europe there seem to be fewer of the work 80 hours per week to get ahead types. From what I've observed and read, many Europeans value time off from work highly and have more or less coerced companies to give them lots of vacations time and flex time. The employers have to bend to the worker's priorities instead of the other way around.
This begs the questions, what is success? How is it measured? Is it only in pay?
Personally, I measure success in having a good enough salary to live at the level I want plus have flexibiity and time off to travel and do more of the things I want. In that regard I'm very successful, even though I don't make $1 million a year on Wall Street.
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I think that the heart of the article is that there are tradeoffs if you want to be in a high power, full steam, balls to the wall career. If you spend 80hrs at work, you can't do that at home. In our culture, few women are willing to do that. I don't want to do that! In my experience, those women that have the drive to succeed, do.
In Europe they do seem to be more family oriented. My direct supervisor is based out of Paris (not Texas). The get some absurd amount of vaction, like 5 weeks, plus a ton of paid holidays. And it seems like they take August off. But when they are at work, they are pressing big time. They work the extra hours, and go the extra mile, and get the extra time off later. In the US, you do all the extra, but don't get the time off.
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by Anonymous User on Thursday January 31, @02:27PM EST (#6)
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Geez, Claire!
Its not as bad as all that usually! I know plenty of guys who make 30-40k a year around where I live (the Baltimore area) and they have stay at home wives. The family MIGHT have two cars, one new , one a clunker that the wife uses to get around. These guys tend to work one job, or at the most two and don't usually have to put in more than 40 - 60 hours a week to support their rather modest standard of living. And while most of them live in or near the city, none of the ones I know lives in the "projects". These friends of mine seem rather happy to me.
I think you really forget to factor into your rants any consideration of the cost of living in various places. You also seem to forget that in alot of cases mom + dad want missy or Jr. and are perfectly satisfied with their division of responsibilities. These families are vulnerable should "daddy" ( or whoever the primary breadwinner is) lose their job OR should they have to go to family court for any reason (but hey, anyone is vulnerable there), but otherwise quite happy.
I don't know your personal circumstance, and I'm certainly not gonna deny that parenthood can be a form of virtual economic slavery even if it is not unwanted. But it does depend on where you live, what kind of living standard you want, and what kind of job you have.
Anyway, if both parents want it to be so, having a stay home parent is far better than any alternative. Having two would be the best, but only rich and retired people can do that.
Remo
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