Glass ceiling myth: Reality is women make different choices

Milwaukee Sentinel, Mar 25, 1995 by LINDA CHAVEZ

Gannett News Service

According to the "Glass Ceiling Report" issued by the Labor Department, there seems to be "an invisible but impenetrable barrier between women and the executive suite, preventing them from reaching the highest levels of the business world regardless of their accomplishments and merits."

It's a fascinating thesis and almost entirely wrong.

The theory is that women are being denied promotions for which they are as eager to compete and as qualified as their male counterparts.

The report laments that only 5% of senior managers of Fortune 2000 industrial and service companies are women. It also reports one study showing that men were eight times more likely than women to be CEOs 10 years after earning a degree from the Stanford University Business School.

What the report doesn't show is that women often make different choices than those men make, choices that profoundly affect their careers but which don't constitute discrimination.

It's feminist heresy to say so, but most women including professionals and mid-level executives put their families first.

Climbing to the top of the corporate world often entails cutthroat competition involving 80- and 90-hour work weeks, frequent moves and a fanatical devotion to the job above all else.

Few women are willing to play by those rules for long thankfully so.

I speak from experience.

No one who knows me would describe me as unambitious, but my ambition has always been tempered by my unwillingness to totally sacrifice family life.

In 1986, after losing a race for a U.S. Senate seat, I was asked by the head of the White House Office of Personnel if I'd be interested in an ambassadorial appointment.

With three children in school and a husband with a career in Washington, I said no, despite a keen interest in foreign affairs.

Over the years, I've had plenty of inquiries from corporate headhunters for high-paying jobs all of which required moves to other parts of the country and all of which I rejected.

Although I often put in grueling hours now, I work primarily in an office in my home.

My experiences aren't unique.

In talking with a group of female political commentators, hardly an unaspiring lot, each had her own story of ambition deferred, of making career choices that put family before job.

The choice to have children in the first place often dramatically affects a woman's career.

One study of female MBAs who took time off to have children and later returned to work found they earned 17% less than a comparable group of women who experienced no break in service.

The study also found that only 44% of the first group reached senior middle-management positions, while 60% of those who stayed on the job reached that level.

Even for those women who climb to the top of the corporate ladder, the rewards aren't always what they expected.

As one senior executive told Fortune magazine in 1990, "I would never want my mother to know how much it hurts me to be childless."

Another top executive said, "I used to think I could work and raise a family. I realize now it's hard just to do my job well."

Yet another described her situation, "I don't cook. I don't take my children to malls and museums. And I don't have any close friends."

Thanks, but no thanks.

It sounds like shattering through that "glass ceiling" risks deep cuts into a woman's personal life that many of us would simply rather forgo.

Don't call us victims. We've set different priorities and experienced different rewards.

Linda Chavez is director of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a Washington-based think tank, and was director of public liaison in the Reagan administration. She writes this column for USA Today and Gannett News Service.

{} Women often make different choices than those men make, choices that profoundly affect their careers but which don't constitute discrimination.