Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family by Anne-Marie Slaughter: A Book Review

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In her book, Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, Anne-Marie Slaughter takes us a step further down the road to understanding why progress continues to be slow for gender equality in the workplace and what needs to change. While three years ago Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, triggered an important national conversation about the challenges women face in the workplace, it was criticized for focusing too narrowly on solutions for privileged women and too little on the different needs of working-class women. Sandberg’s book was also criticized for putting too much of the responsibility on individual women for not “leaning in” enough to progress in their careers. Slaughter takes this conversation to the next level and argues that we must take the blame off of individual women and broaden the conversation to include the issues faced by women at all income levels and in all occupations, as well as acknowledge the restrictions placed on men’s life choices by existing gender stereotypes and workplace and societal structures and policies. Slaughter suggests that we need to change our lens to talk about competition versus care or breadwinning versus caregiving, instead of talking about work-life balance. When we use this lens and this language, we begin to shift the focus from work-life balance being a middle-class women’s issue to a focus that is more inclusive and that leads to broader strategies for change. In fact, Slaughter notes that the problem is not only that there are not enough women at the top of organizations, it is also that there are too many women at the bottom—62 percent of minimum wage jobs are held by women—and some common threads cause the problem at both ends of the income ladder. Slaughter argues that the real problem is that competition, the human drive to pursue our self-interest, is valued over care, the human drive to put others first. Women and men are motivated by both competition and care. The problem is that competition, or “breadwinning,” has been defined as more valuable and as the domain of men. The domain of caregiving has been defined as women’s; discrimination against and devaluing of caregiving provides a common thread linking the experiences of women at the top and at the bottom. Here are some examples of the link provided by Slaughter:

  • A young female lawyer or banker who begins to work flexible hours to be home with her kids for dinner, or who works part time, or who steps out of the workforce for a while to be a full-time caregiver is quickly disqualified from advancing in her career. Joan Williams describes this as hitting the maternal wall. Neither her advancement nor her earning capacity will ever recover.
  • A single mother who has no choice but to be both the sole breadwinner and family caregiver is likely to be in a low-wage job with no sick leave or childcare benefits. Half of single mothers in the United States make less than $25,000 a year, and being a single mother is the single best predictor that a woman will end up in bankruptcy or poverty in old age.
  • In our society, caregivers are among the lowest-paid American workers. Low-income African American and immigrant women are heavily overrepresented in the most poorly paid care jobs.
Slaughter suggests that the solution is not to devalue competition, but to elevate the value of care in some of the following ways:
  • We need to raise the pay and benefits of care jobs to reflect a valuing of caregiving work.
  • We need to let go of old gender stereotypes and expand our language to include same-sex parents and gender identities beyond male and female.
  • We need to expand our language to talk about working parents or working caregivers rather than working mothers.
  • We need family-friendly policies, like flextime, that are more than lip service and that do not penalize the caregivers, women and men, who need and want to use them;
  • We need careers redefined to reflect the demand to customize jobs to meet the requirements of workers in different life phases without penalty.
  • Our government needs to invest in an infrastructure of care that includes subsidized high-quality and affordable childcare and elder care, paid family leave, and other supports for caregiving.
While Slaughter does not provide many specifics about how to enact the many big changes that are needed, this book is worth reading to understand more about the next steps on this journey of change that we are all on.]]>

Diversity Improves Performance: New Research Findings

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Exciting new research reported in the New York Times from Columbia University and the University of Texas provides much needed evidence that racial and ethnic diversity on teams improves performance. While I have always felt the truth of this finding from my own experiences, it is good to see empirical evidence that supports the practice of inclusion. This new research, added to other studies showing that gender diversity also improves performance, should encourage more intentional inclusion of race and gender diversity on teams and in classrooms. The new study on racial and ethnic diversity was conducted in both the United States and in Singapore. Participants were assigned to either homogeneous or diverse groups to make decisions on the sales value of stocks. To ensure that any differences in outcomes were the results of diversity and not culture or history, diverse groups in the United States included whites, Latinos, and African-Americans. In Singapore, the diverse groups were Chinese, Indian, and Malay. The authors report that the findings were “striking.” The decisions of the diverse groups were 58 percent more accurate, and the more time they spent interacting in diverse groups, the more their performance improved. In contrast, the homogeneous groups in both the United States and in Asia were more likely to copy others and spread mistakes. The authors suggest that the homogeneous groups seemed to “put undue trust in others’ answers, mindlessly imitating them. In diverse groups, across ethnicities and locales. . . . diversity brought cognitive friction that enhanced deliberation.” In other words, the presence of diversity produced better outcomes due to the following:

  1. Better and deeper critical thinking. The presence of cognitive friction might mean that people work harder to examine their own assumptions and deepen their reflections in the presence of conflicting opinions and information.
  2. More engagement with different perspectives. Different perspectives bring new ideas, and working harder to understand a different perspective can bring about a change in position.
  3. Better error detection. Deeper critical thought and engagement provide more opportunity for errors to be revealed.
  4. Less groupthink. Individuals are more likely to form their own opinions in diverse teams than to just follow along with those like them.
Studies on gender diversity in teams, reported in an earlier article, found that gender-balanced offices produced 41 percent more revenue than single-sex offices. The factors that might account for higher performance in gender-balanced teams are probably similar to those accounting for higher performance in racially diverse teams:
  1. More voice for everyone. When there are roughly equal numbers of women and men on a team, it is more likely that both women and men will be able to get their ideas heard and be able to influence the culture of the team.
  2. More perspectives. A diversity of perspectives is bound to result in better decisions and solutions and help avoid groupthink.
  3. More skills. A broader range of skills and experience is available in diverse teams which could contribute to better results.
Given these findings, shouldn’t all work teams, leadership teams, and classrooms strive to be intentionally diverse? We can all benefit from diversity.     Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

Why We Need Women’s Leadership Programs: The Pipeline Is Clogged

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Women have entered the professional and managerial ranks of organizations in large numbers since the 1970s and have entered at about the same rate as men for the last twenty-five years in Western industrialized countries. Nonetheless, women remain poorly represented at the senior levels of organizations and constitute only 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs and about 15 percent of company board seats in the United States. The numbers are worse for women of color, who represent only three of the 500 CEOs. The situation for women in Europe is no better. It seems fair to conclude that earlier approaches—preparing women to be leaders by teaching basic leadership skills, “fixing” their behaviors to be more like those of men, and then waiting for them to work their way through the pipeline—have not produced the desired result of having more women in senior leadership positions in the West. Research reported in 2009 by DDI (Development Dimensions International), involving 12,208 global leaders in seventy-six countries and 1500 organizations, found that women have not progressed as far as men of similar tenure and age in all major global regions. The study’s authors note that even in the United States, more than 70 percent of the top 1500 US firms have no women on the senior leadership team. The authors conclude that the deck is stacked against women from the start of their careers because women do not have equal access to development experiences. Other scholars at Harvard suggest that it is important for women to learn to use a broader and more theoretical lens to understand why development opportunities are not as available to women, as well as why other barriers to women’s advancement exist. In other words, potential women leaders need to understand that systemic forces are at work to create these barriers in order to change them. It is not enough to learn new tools and skills without learning to use them within a systemic context. These scholars suggest that subtle forms of gender bias, which they call second generation bias, create internal and external barriers for women’s advancement to senior levels. Second generation bias is defined as practices and beliefs that equate leadership with behaviors believed to be more common or appropriate for men, which communicates to both women and men that women are ill-suited for leadership roles. This bias interferes with a woman’s ability to see herself or be seen by others as a leader. For this reason, the authors propose that women’s leadership development needs to be grounded in a coherent, theoretically based, and actionable framework, incorporating both theories of gender and leadership. In other words, leadership skills and topics need to be taught within an analysis of second generation bias as a framework that helps point the way to actions. A review of the best practices literature on women’s leadership development programs reveals a consensus on the importance of women-only programs that foster learning by putting women in a majority experience. The literature reports agreement that women are best able to develop strong and authentic leadership identities in all-woman settings. While many of the topics and skills that women leaders need to develop are the same as those found in leadership development programs for men, it should be noted that to support the development of effective women leaders, these topics need to be taught within the context of understanding the special challenges that women leaders face. For example, women cannot use exactly the same negotiation strategies that men use because recent studies show that women are not seen as “likable” when they do, and therefore are not as successful when using the same approaches. Consequently, women need to develop negotiation strategies that work for them in the context of second generation bias or other ways of theoretically framing the impact of gender differences. An effective women’s leadership development program needs to reflect current research and best practices for leadership effectiveness in the twenty-first century and address the unique issues and advances affecting women in leadership. Many organizations now offer women’s leadership programs internally, and some good public programs also exist. Two of my favorite public programs are the Women’s Leadership Community in Minnesota and the POWER of Self Women’s Leadership Program in Texas. Let’s continue to support the offering of these programs. They’re important.   Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

More Women Are Leaders in Family Businesses Globally: A Magic Formula for Creating Gender Parity

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I grew up in a family business started by my grandparents and continued by my father, his six siblings, and their spouses. The business was a chain of clothing stores in small towns in the Midwest. While each sibling owned their own store or two, a number were jointly owned by all the family members, and these were run by my father as the corporate CEO. I began working in the business, as did most of my siblings and cousins, around the age of eight. Because I was the oldest of my three siblings and showed interest and business acumen, I understood from an early age that I was being groomed to take over for my father some day to run both our individual store and the jointly owned businesses. I was exposed to and mentored in every aspect of the business, and the fact that I was female never came up as an issue with anyone in the extended family. It was a great disappointment to all when I discovered during college that my path in life lay elsewhere and I declared that I would not be joining the business after college—but that is a story for another day. It was with both pride and recognition that I read about recent research, conducted in 2014 by Ernst & Young (EY) and Kennesaw State University, which found significantly higher rates of women in senior leadership roles in family businesses globally. When I thought about my own experience, this finding made sense, and the implications suggested by the authors seem exciting and important. Why are these findings important? This research gathered data from 525 of the world’s largest family businesses. The responses are from twenty-five of the largest family businesses in each of twenty-one countries with global markets. The authors note that family businesses are not insignificant players in the global marketplace. In fact, they are anchors of the world economy, and as a whole they create 70–90 percent of the global GDP and 50–80 percent of jobs in the majority of countries worldwide. The research found that the 525 participating family businesses average about five women in the C suite, 55 percent have at least one woman on their board, and 70 percent are considering a woman for their next CEO. These statistics are considerably higher than overall global business statistics, even though a great deal of research exists that shows having women in leadership roles makes economic sense for businesses:

  • Companies with more women in leadership increase focus on corporate governance, corporate responsibility, talent dynamics, and market acuity.
  • Publicly listed companies with women on the board tend to outperform those without in key metrics such as share price, return on equity, net income growth, and price-to-book value.
  • A gender-balanced board is also associated with better corporate social performance in community, customers, environment, and supply chain. These activities improve business outcomes in areas such as risk management, corporate and brand reputation, and recruitment and retention.
The authors suggest that “family business may offer a path forward for all businesses seeking to achieve gender parity.”

A Magic Formula for Creating Gender Parity

The study authors summarize the family business formula for success for bringing women into leadership roles as the following: Role Models + Long-Term Thinking + Inclusive Environment = Women in Leadership
  • Role models: Women are inspired to be leaders when they see women in positions of power. When I was growing up, I was surrounded by capable women business leaders who were my mother, aunts, and cousins. Consequently, I never doubted that I could be a leader in our business if I wanted to.
  • Long-term versus short-term thinking: Family businesses are focused on long-term sustainability because they are focused on the business as a legacy to be preserved for future generations. Other types of business entities tend to be focused on delivering short-term results to respond to investor expectations. Also, the average tenure of a family business CEO is twenty years compared to six years for the CEO of a public company.
  • Inclusive environment: Family businesses are built on relationships and on balancing a focus on both family and the business. The relationship focus includes activities that keep both family members and employees more cohesive and engaged with each other and the business. The authors also note that “diversity in leadership, including gender diversity, is positively correlated to employee engagement and satisfaction—factors that drive retention and increase cohesion.”
In other words, family businesses have shown that having more women in leadership is good for business, and they have found a formula for how to make that happen!   Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

Women in the Military: Cracking the “Brass Ceiling”—Winning a Battle, but Not the War

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The announcement by the Obama administration at the end of 2015 that all combat roles in the military will be open to women is indeed a victory for women. This opens 220,000 jobs previously closed to women. While I wish we lived in a world without war where we did not need a military, that is not the world we are in, and I am happy that the women who want combat roles and military careers are now able to have access to them. Women in the military have long felt that the official restrictions on them having combat roles were unfair. While they have been allowed to serve in combat zones, until now they were not allowed to officially hold the combat positions required for career advancement. This change is part of a long march to inclusion by the military, starting in 1948 with racial integration and continuing in 2011 with lifting the ban on gays in the military. Why do I say that this change wins a battle but not the war? Mariette Kalinowski, a former Marine, writes in the New York Times that while the “brass ceiling” is cracked, it is not gone because the military culture of hypermasculinity has not yet changed. She notes that the system is still stacked against women because of attitudes and beliefs by the older male leaders in charge. Dave Philipps of the New York Times cites Lt. Col. Kate Germano who agrees that the Marines, who are still 93 percent male, in particular “have a climate of non-inclusivity and justify it by talking about combat effectiveness, but a lot of it is based on emotion and not fact.” Elliot Ackerman further supports this position by noting that “the focus by the Marine Corps on physical fitness avoids the real barrier to integration—the hypermasculine culture at its heart.”

What Are the Benefits of Integrating Women in the Military?

  • Dave Philipps points out that not only did a recent Marine Corps study find that there is no detriment to the morale in mixed-gender combat groups, but gender-integrated groups excelled at complex decision making.
  • Philipps also reports the same study found that while women scored lower on many physical tasks, they scored higher on mental resilience and had fewer mental health problems.
  • Kalinowski suggests that a benefit of gender integration in the military, which must include a change in the culture, could be a reduced risk of sexual harassment and assault. She posits that because discrimination and rape are tools of dominance and control, removing the source of the control by changing from a hypermasculine to a gender-inclusive culture will cause the source of the motivation to keep the status quo in place to disappear. In addition, she suggests this change could result in a lower incidence of sexual violence in the larger society.
Kalinsky notes, “We’re up against a quiet, strong prejudice that has everything to do with our biological ability to create life, and nothing to do with our willingness and ability as soldiers.” The decision by the Pentagon to open all combat roles to women is an important next step, but this war is not yet won. Let’s keep looking for ways to support women in the military.   “FET: Female Marines Build Relationships in Helmand” by DVIDSHUB is licensed under CC BY 2.0]]>

Melinda Gates: The First Woman of Women

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I found it inspiring to read in Forbes magazine that Melinda Gates, of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has decided to put women and girls at the center of her focus to end poverty in the world. Other philanthropists and bankers (such as Muhammad Yunus, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for microloan practices that target women) have shown that investing in women results in significant improvement in the standard of living for families and communities. Caroline Howard writes in Forbes that Melinda Gates, who has $41.3 billion in foundation assets to invest, “has become the most powerful person on the planet whose singular focus is women and girls.” Gates explains that in looking for a woman who would champion issues of poverty for girls and women for the Gates Foundation, she eventually realized that she herself was the best person to do it. Her passion comes from knowing that

  • Women account for six out of ten of the world’s poorest people.
  • Women account for two-thirds of the illiterate population.
  • 58 percent of all primary school dropouts are girls. One year or more of primary school boosts a girl’s future wages by 10–20 percent.
  • The International Monetary Fund calculates that 3.9 million women and girls are “missing” annually: about two-fifths are never born; one-sixth die in early childhood; more than one-third die during their reproductive years.
  • 289,000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth in 2013.
  • Closing the employment and wage gap between men and women would increase women’s income by $17 trillion globally.
Gates sponsors a range of initiatives to alleviate poverty for women and girls that are all connected, such as
  • Family planning
  • Maternal and prenatal health
  • Infant health
  • Education
  • Microentrepreneurship
What can you do? The Gates Foundation is well funded, but there are many smaller foundations that are focused on alleviating poverty for girls and women in the developing world. These foundations need donations and volunteers to support their work. My favorite foundation is VGIF (Virginia Gildersleeve International Fund), and I encourage you to go to the Fund’s website and read about its work at www.vgif.org. A lot needs to be done for girls and women. Do you know of any foundations doing similar work? Let me know in the comments section.   Photo courtesy of Russell Watkins/Department for International Development (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

CFO: One Role Where Women Make More Than Men

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The recent focus on the gender-wage gap has raised awareness for several young women in my life who are clear that they do not want to be paid less than men for doing the same work. Do you know a young woman who is looking for a career where women make more than men? According to Sarah Skidmore Sell of the Orange County Register there is one: CFO (chief financial officer). The high pay for women CFOs is not due to women outnumbering men in the position—a recent survey found only 60 female CFOs at S&P 500 companies compared to 437 men. Sell reports that “the median pay for female CFOs last year rose 11 percent to $3.32 million. Male CFO pay rose 7 percent to $3.3 million.” Sell also acknowledges that the high median pay for female CFOs is partly a result of their small number and tendency to work for the largest companies, where compensation is higher than at smaller companies. Nonetheless, with all the emphasis these days on encouraging girls and women to consider training for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers, focusing on a finance career is another good option—and why aim for the top as a CFO? The CFO role has risen in importance since the financial crisis, when companies became aware of the need for a high-level role focused on both day-to-day operations and the long-term strategic view as the right-hand person to the CEO and the board. The CFO role is also now considered an excellent training ground for advancement to CEO.

Tips for Becoming a CFO

Carol Lippert Gray of the Journal of Accountancy notes that “there is no clear-cut path to the CFO suite,” but you can acquire skills and experiences to become CFO-qualified. Robert Half, of Robert Half Finance and Accounting, recommends the following steps to prepare yourself for a CFO role:
  1. Become a CPA (certified public accountant) or earn an MBA—or do both. A CPA license will give you training in a wide range of skills, including forensic accounting and compliance. An MBA will increase your understanding of business operations.
  2. Widen your customer service experience.
  3. Broaden your understanding of technology.
  4. Position yourself as a team builder and consensus seeker, which will encourage people to trust your judgment.
  5. Consider comptroller and treasurer positions, both of which can increase your experience with funding and strategy execution in preparation for CFO duties.
CFOs report high levels of satisfaction with their role. The journey to get there is long, but CFO could be a great career goal.   Photo courtesy of Financial Times (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

Why It Matters That Boards Are Not Diverse

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I just read some surprising statistics about the lack of diversity on corporate boards and why this matters. Stick with me on this topic. This information explains a lot, and I promise it will give you new perspective on why the glass ceiling stays in place for women and minorities—and what needs to change.

The Big Picture

I live in Massachusetts where a combination of universities, foundations, and local news organizations have come together to put a spotlight on the lack of diversity on the boards of publicly traded Massachusetts companies. Research reported by the Boston Fund and the Boston Globe in late 2015 showed the following:
  • 80 percent of directors of publicly traded companies in Massachusetts are white men, while white men make up only 36 percent of of the state’s population.
  • Minorities make up 7 percent of directors and are 26 percent of the population.
  • Women make up 16 percent of the directors (and some of these are also women of color), yet make up 50 percent of the population.
These figures compare to national surveys showing that women and minorities make up 26.7 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 companies, while the boards of small and midsize are firms generally much less diverse. Boards play a critical role in guiding organizations and are not just rubber stamps. They are in charge of hiring and firing CEOs, ratifying key decisions and setting long-term direction and policies. Yet when boards are not diverse, they are not providing the best possible leadership for organizations. A recent study of 2,000 companies by Wake Forest University found that companies with more diverse boards pay higher dividends and enjoy more stable stock prices. So why are boards so slow to diversify? The answers may surprise you.

Turnover Is Low on Boards

One of the answers to the question of why boards are slow to diversify is that turnover is very slow. In fact Shirley Leung of the Boston Globe explains:
  • Turnover of corporate board seats in Massachusetts is only 7 percent per year because there are no term or age limits for most board seats. This is also true nationally, and many directors stay in their seats for decades.
  • The incumbent white men do not want to give up their seats. Why would they? The median pay for corporate directors was $258,000 per year in 2014 for fewer than five hours of work per week. In addition, the pay for directors has risen faster than the wages for average workers.

Why the Impact on the Glass Ceiling Is High

The impact of boards that are not diverse on the glass ceiling for women and minorities is high: only 3–4 percent of corporate CEOs nationally are women, and only five Fortune 500 CEOs are black. Making this link between the lack of diversity on boards and the glass ceiling was an eye-opener for me, but think about it. Boards are responsible for hiring CEOs and they may well be overlooking talented women and minorities for CEO roles. Studies show that people tend to hire people who look like them and with whom they feel most comfortable. It’s a vicious cycle. Boards need to become more diverse in order to be more open to hiring women and minorities in CEO roles, yet you must be a current or past CEO to be considered qualified for most director seats. Because there are so few women and minority CEOs to draw from, boards continue to lack diversity, and the glass ceiling stays in place. One author recently proposed that the solution is term limits for directors so that seats can open and be filled by more women and minorities. Boards will also need to expand their criteria for eligibility to talented individuals who may not yet be CEOs to fill these seats as they open. As is happening now in Massachusetts, these changes are only going to occur if there is a lot of public pressure. What can you do? Here are some suggestions:
  • Write to your local newspaper and explain why diversifying corporate boards is important.
  • Write to your legislator and demand that laws be passed to require boards to diversify.
  • Educate your friends and neighbors about the need for boards to diversify.
  • If you are an investor, exercise your vote or write about your concerns to the companies you have invested in.
Let’s make our voices heard!   Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

Women Are Better Managers Than Men

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A recent Gallup study reports that while only one in three (33 percent) working Americans report that they currently have a female boss, female managers outscore male managers on eleven out of twelve measures of engagement. The study found that the employees of female managers are more engaged, as are the female managers themselves. These results hold true for female managers of every working-age generation, regardless of whether the female managers have children in their households. Why is engagement important? Employee engagement is now widely recognized as a significant contributor to company performance. Ryan Fuller writes in the Harvard Business Review that there is general agreement that increased engagement drives results. However, Gallup reports that only 30 percent of American workers and 13 percent of global workers are engaged in their jobs. These findings have important implications for organizational success, and given the higher engagement scores for female managers, one would think that organizations would be eager to promote more women. Here are some of the dimensions of engagement where employees report higher engagement scores for female managers:

  • Encourages employee development by cultivating potential
  • Checks in frequently on employee progress and gives regular feedback
  • Gives recognition and praise for doing good work, which provides positive feedback and helps employees feel valued
  • Sets clear expectations, builds relationships, and encourages a positive team environment

Four Tips for Successful Promotions

It would be good for US companies to increase the number of women managers in order to improve their productivity. At the same time, companies need to position both women and men for success when they promote them. Here are four suggestions from the Education Advisory Board to keep in mind for successful managerial promotions:
  1. Promote based on talent. This means that individuals who have demonstrated skills and results rather than simple longevity, should be chosen for promotion.
  2. Make sure that the person fits the role. Too often, individuals are promoted in organizations as a reward for performance in a different role without preparation for a managerial role.
  3. Do not tie salaries to position titles. People who are high performers in a role or function should have higher pay. Too often, the only way for high performers to receive a higher salary is to apply for a management role that may not be the best fit for them.
  4. Keep developing managers. Managing people is challenging, and companies should continuously invest in the development of their managers.
These findings are more good news about the value that women can add to organizations as managers and leaders!   Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

Does Professional Part-Time Work Exist?

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A coaching client of mine, the mother of a young child, recently asked me, “Where are the professional part-time jobs for experienced workers like me?” I think this is a good question. This client, we’ll call her Sandy, has graduate degrees in software engineering and business development along with more than ten years of work experience. After the birth of her child, she went back to work full-time, returning to a sixty-hour workweek. She worked hard in a job that didn’t play to her strengths, and after about a year she was passed over for a promotion she had been expecting. Sandy was frustrated and unhappy and decided to step out of her corporate job. She and her husband agreed that their young child needed more parenting time, she wanted more time with her child, and she felt there must be work options available where her talents and wisdom would be appreciated and where a more reasonable and flexible work schedule was available. Sandy wanted to work, but she found nothing that allowed her to use her skills and experience on a part-time basis. This is a common story for many, if not most, professional women who want to stay engaged with their professions, contribute to the family income, and be available as parents. I was heartened to read about a new and innovative job placement service that fits this bill, but is still small and in a start-up phase. In an article in the New York Times, Katherine Rosman writes about a job placement service called the Second Shift, started by two women, friends and mothers, who lamented the lack of options for the talented and experienced mothers in their children’s play groups. They formed a membership-based company whose purpose is to “pair mothers who left professional careers with companies looking to hire consultants and freelancers for individual projects.” While their company is focused only on women with experience in finance and marketing, it has placed forty-five women in project-based jobs, with three hundred women signed up as members, and five hundred more in the process of applying for membership. The Second Shift is a great example of what is possible and much needed. Some advantages of this model for organizations and for mothers are as follows:

  1. Companies can tap into an experienced pool of professional workers who are hard to locate.
  2. Companies can bring in experience and wisdom for short-term intensive projects and add diversity to their teams.
  3. Women can keep control of their schedules and make time for their families.
  4. Women can maintain active engagement with their professions so that their skills and resumes stay updated in preparation for a return to full-time work when their children are grown.
  5. Companies can reduce the long-term expense of benefits for permanent workers by hiring temporary professional workers, even though the hourly or project-based fees may seem high.
We need more of these types of matching services in more sectors for mothers, and the growing number of fathers, who choose to be available to their families and also want to be professionally engaged. Are there professional part-time options out there that you know about? We’d love to hear what you know.   Photo courtesy of Matthew Trinneer (CC BY-SA 3.0)]]>