Sheryl Sandberg notes that young women come up to her and
ask her about home life issues while men ask her business questions. I find it interesting that her conclusion is
that because young women ask her these questions they are not as serious about
business as men. I would guess these
same women would ask a man business questions and never think about asking
about home/life issues. Nor would these
young women ask Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, Ginni Rometty,
Hillary Clinton, or Nancy Pelosi about home/life issues. These high profile women
either don’t have children or their children are grown. The young women asking Sheryl Sandberg are
trying to understand what it takes to be high profile and balance work/ life issues.
The new class of young, high profile, C level women, with
children have a great deal of support available to them as a professional and a
parent; Support that is not available to the overriding majority of women. Sheryl Sandberg talks about leaving work at
5:30 so she can have dinner with her family. In almost every situation I know of, an individual contributor or middle
management women (or man) who leaves the office at 5:30 every day to have
dinner with their family has excluded themselves from promotion (we call that
mommy track). Mellisa Mayer has
famously stated that her baby is easy.
Any baby is easy when you have 24 x 7 nanny care, someone who cleans
your house, does your laundry, grocery shopping, makes your meals, and your
company builds a nursery next to your office.
The real answer to work/life is that there are very few
women who can have it all, if it all is a C level job and being an active parent. If a woman really wants to be a C level
executive and have time for her children she has to become a star first; since
she will need to dedicate 60 to 70 hours a week to her job before becoming a star. Once a star she can negotiate leaving early
or having a nursery next to her office.
As a star she will have a salary that covers two to three nanny’s at a
cost of $50K a nanny. The rest of us
intelligent, educated, career focused women who are already leaning in, need to
make choices and set priorities. Choices
on who to marry – will he truly partner in raising the kids; Choices on how we
run our households – do you have the money to outsource all the homemaking and
child rearing tasks; Choices on raising your children – are you OK missing school
events, eating a family dinner, reading to your child, making sure they have
completed their homework.
Many women get off the “C” train because after having a
child the sacrifices to a job are just not worth the sacrifices necessary
for their family. Yes, of course as the
children get older it is much easier to manage a family from a cell phone. But, then again that is why you see so few C
level mothers with young children and most C level women with older children, grown
children, or no children at all.
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