how to be a successful career woman

Ten years ago, she said, an assistant of mine told me at the end of a particularly grueling 70-hour week, You know, Sue, you couldnt have a torrid love affair if you wanted to. And I shot back, I couldnt have a tepid love affair if I wanted to.. Look for such policies as reduced-hour schedules and job-protected leave. They find oxygen in the form of younger, less driven women who will coddle their egos. She went on to conclude, The hard fact is that most successful men are not interested in acquiring an ambitious peer as a partner.. Instead, these women have thoughtfully built careers around their innate strengths, their personal passions, and the type of work that brings them meaning and purpose. My data show that the high-achieving women of the older generation tended to marry young: 75% of them were married by 25, but only 54% of the younger generation are married by that age. Corporate women were defined as working in companies with more than 5,000 employees. Be Intentional About What You Say Yes To, Cathleen Trigg-Jones, journalist and founder of CatScape Productions, once explained to me her strategy for evaluating opportunities. Somehow the perception persists that a woman isnt a woman unless her life is riddled with sacrifice. (Even if they looked like good opportunities on paper!). Until youve been in a few different types of workplaces, you cant know what your preferred working style is or the types of problems you like to solve., 2. Can we reverse these pernicious trends and finally create the possibility of true work-life balance? My book focuses on what women themselves can do to expand their life choices. Theyre all extraordinarily unique, of course, but theres one thing they have in common: Theyve charted the path to work that they love. Theyre a fact of life in corporate America, where management is under intense pressure to use its professional workforce for as many hours a week as possible. And I know a handful of working mothers who are trying to do the half-time thing or the two-thirdstime thing. During that session, a young woman named Natalie commented, This is the third consulting firm Ive worked for, and Ive yet to see an older, more senior woman whose life I would actually want., Natalies colleague Rachel was shocked and asked her to explain. She would yes to the things that would move her closer to her dreams, and she would say no to the things that didnt serve her. (Indeed, among ultra-achievers, no one in the older group had her first child after 36. Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor. And we should promote legislation that eliminates perverse incentives for companies to subject their employees to long-hour weeks. Or maybe its even later. For more about the methodology and findings, go to www.parentsunite.org. High-achieving women make it abundantly clear that what they want most are work-life policies that confer on them what one woman calls the gift of time. Take Joanna, for example. According to U. S. Census Bureau data, at age 28 there are four college-educated, single men for every three college-educated, single women. Its very hard to throttle back during that stage of a career and expect to catch up later. Think of what a 55-hour week means in terms of work-life balance. Theres so much you cant know until you do it, she shares. My hope is that this information will generate workplace policies that recognize the huge costs to businesses of losing highly educated women when they start their families. But the brutal demands of ambitious careers, the asymmetries of male-female relationships, and late-in-life child-bearing difficulties conspire against them. What an extraordinary waste of expensively educated talent! I have always identified with jobs where I have a good connection with my leaders, with the mission of the company, and with the team that surrounds me. When you have that connection, its easier to excel atand enjoya job, no matter what your title is. There is a secret out therea painful, well-kept secret: At midlife, between a third and a half of all successful career women in the United States do not have children. Choose a career that will give you the gift of time. Given such a huge disincentive, why do women persist in trying to have it all? In a nutshell, if youre a young woman who wants both career and family, you should consider doing the following: Figure out what you want your life to look like at 45. She mentioned the obvious reasonslong hours and travelbut she also spoke eloquently about how ambitious careers discriminate against women: In the rarified upper reaches of high-altitude careers where the air is thinmen have a much easier time finding oxygen. And thats OK. It's not a matter of creating this rigid plan of like, do this step, do this step, no matter what, explains former CEO and board director Shellye Archambeau. Often, we have a pretty narrow view of our ultimate goals. A version of this article appeared in the, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Course. Media hype about advances in reproductive science only exacerbates the problem, giving women the illusion that they can delay childbearing until their careers are well established. But if theres anything Ive learned from these interviews over the years, its this: Every single one of us has the power to find work we love. But I think that they can also be liberating, if they spur action. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. They have every type of journey you could dream of: There are women who have reached the C-suite in Fortune 500 companies and well-funded startups, women who have started and run their own ventures, and women who have made dramatic career turnarounds. Finally, know this about career paths: What you want and what works for you is likely going to change over time. Women face all the challenges that men do in working long hours and withstanding the up-or-out pressures of high-altitude careers. Risk is healthy; it makes you more creative.. Ironically, this policy failure is to some extent the fault of the womens movement in the United States. Womens lives have expanded. Our nation needs professional women to stay in the labor force; we can ill afford to have a quarter of the female talent pool forced out of their jobs when they have children. Now add to that scarcity of marriage candidates a scarcity of time to spend nurturing those relationships. I wish some of this career success had spilled over to my private life. How to build a better, more just workplace. A decade later, the situation is radically changed. Instead, its key to dig deep and understand the very personal factors that drive meaning for youwhether thats constantly learning new skills or being involved in radical social changeand pursue jobs that incorporate those elements. If youre only focused on getting your current boss job, for example, you may miss other optionsinside or outside of your company. More recently, the National Organization for Women has spent 35 years fighting for a wide array of equal rights, ranging from educational and job opportunities to equal pay and access to credit. A risky move, of course, doesnt necessarily spending your life savings to start a companymaybe its accepting a position youre not sure youre qualified for, asking for more responsibility, or volunteering to head a bigger project than anything youve ever tackled. Female entrepreneurs, for example, do better than female lawyers in combining career and familyand both do better than corporate women. Children also help parents deal with the questions of human existence: How do I find purpose beyond the self? In this article, I lay out the issues underlying this state of affairs, identify the heavy costs involved, and suggest some remedies, however preliminary and modest. Women pay an even greater price for those long hours because the early years of career building overlapalmost perfectlythe prime years of childbearing. Its a conclusion backed up by my data: Only 39% of high-achieving men are married to women who are employed full time, and 40% of these spouses earn less than $35,000 a year. But sadly, new reproductive technologies have not solved fertility problems for older women. She responded, I know a few hard-driving women who are climbing the ladder at consulting firms, but they are single or divorced and seem pretty isolated. This would allow for three months of paid leave, which could be taken as needed, until the child turned 18. These figures underscore the depth and scope of the persisting, painful inequities between the sexes. For those workers, extra hours carry no marginal costs to employers. Certain careers provide more flexibility and are more forgiving of interruptions. What you think it means at 25 is very different to what you know it means at 50. The lesson? By being more deliberate about career and family trade-offs, they take a vital first step toward having it allor at least having what men have. U.S. industry cannot afford to have a quarter of the female talent pool forced out of their jobs when they have children. Even without extras (out-of-town trips, client dinners, work functions), this kind of schedule makes it extremely difficult for any professional to maintain a relationship. Straight from some very successful women, here are five lessons about creating a career you love. To address this situationand win the intense loyalty of their professional womencompanies must make it easier for workers to get off conventional career ladders and to get back on. Even in organizations whose policies support women, prevailing attitudes and unrelenting job pressures undermine them. According to recent studies, an increasingly large part of the wage gap can now be explained by childbearing and child rearing, which interrupt womensbut not menscareers, permanently depressing their earning power. HBR Learnings online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. Responding were 1,168 high-achieving career women ages 28 to 55; 479 high-achieving, noncareer women ages 28 to 55; and 472 high-achieving men ages 28 to 55. In January 2001, in partnership with Harris Interactive and the National Parenting Association, I conducted a nationwide survey targeting the top 10% of womenmeasured in terms of earning powerand a small sample of men for comparative purposes. This kind of information is hard to come by because the infertility industry in this country likes to tout the good newswith dire consequences. Restructured Retirement Plans. I just didnt get it together in time. Then she whispered, Im almost ashamed to admit it, but I still ache for a child.. These realities take an obvious personal toll. And try different things. One professional woman, a 29-year-old lawyer, told me: The pioneer women of the 1970s and 1980s paid some kind of special price for their careers. When a parent devotes time, attention, and financial resources to help a child become a well-adjusted personone who succeeds in school and graduates from collegenot only do parents feel deeply fulfilled, but society, of course, is graced with productive workers who boost the GDP, obey the law, and pay their taxes. Because companies cant be expected to craft all the policies that will make a difference in womens lives, government should also take action. Somehow I imagined that having a child was something I would get to in a year or so, after the next promotion, when I was more established., Kate, 52, a member of the medical faculty at the University of Washington, felt the same way. Go doctors!. Yes, creating a career like this may seem like a lofty goal. Only 60% of high-achieving women in the older age group are married, and this figure falls to 57% in corporate America. Over the past few years, Ive interviewed hundreds of successful women. Young women are told that a serious person needs to commit to her career in her 20s and devote all her energies to her job for at least ten years if she is to be successful. But the fact is, if you take this advice you might well be on the wrong side of 35 before you have time to draw breath and contemplate having a childexactly the point in life when infertility canand overwhelmingly doesbecome an issue. The idea is that once all the legislation that discriminates against women is dismantled, the playing field becomes level and women can assume a free and equal place in society by simply cloning the male competitive model. Two recent studies lay out these penalties in very specific terms. In this survey, I target the top 10% of womenmeasured in terms of earning powerand focus on two age groups: an older generation, ages 41 to 55, and their younger peers, ages 28 to 40, as defined for survey purposes. Meanwhile, nine out of ten married women in the high-achieving category have husbands who are employed full time or self-employed, and a quarter are married to men who earn more than $100,000 a year. Many more, however, provide only time flexibility: 69% allow staggered hours, and 48% have work-at-home options. The cost to corporations and to our economy becomes monumental in the aggregate. By staying flexible and open, she explains, you might encounter an opportunity that you had never before considered., Lindsey Knowles, VP of Marketing at Winc Wines, echoes this sentiment. In February 2001, I conducted an informal focus group with young professionals at three consulting firms in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Instead, they operate in a society where motherhood carries enormous economic penalties. According to my survey, some employers take family needs into account: 12% offer paid parenting leave and 31% job sharing. One provision, however, exempted managers and professionals and still does.

Sitemap 21