ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, September 30 2010

Why some women pass on the corner office
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

A report released this week by the Government Accountability Office should make working women see red. At least, that's what the headlines suggested.

"Women still not making it to the corner office," MSNBC.com carped. "Slow progress for women in management," the Wall Street Journal lamented. "Women managers still lag behind men," Good Morning America's website noted ruefully.

Prompting these dour headlines was an analysis showing that the percentage of American women who occupy management positions barely has changed in the past decade. Women held 40 percent of management positions in 2007, compared with 39 percent in 2000.

The lower number of women in management cannot be blamed on an overwhelmingly male work force. Women held nearly half of American jobs in both years, and, in most industries surveyed, women occupied a smaller portion of management jobs than men relative to their overall numbers.

Their paychecks were smaller, too, though the gap is shrinking. After adjusting for such factors as age and education, female managers earned 81 cents for every male manager's dollar in 2007, as compared with 79 cents in 2000. But for managers with children, the pay gap between the sexes remained steady between 2000 and 2007.

That last fact prompted hand-wringing among many feminists about the so-called mommy penalty: a pattern of discrimination against mothers in the workplace, both in terms of advancement and earnings. Indeed, the GAO report found that mothers are under-represented among America's top brass. Fewer female managers than male managers have spouses or children, and those female managers who do have children tend to have fewer children than their male counterparts.

This is true in elite settings as well as run-of-the-mill American industries. Consider the U.S. Supreme Court. A record number of women justices now preside there, but only one of the three — 77-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — brings a mother's perspective to the bench.

That's a shame. Our culture caricatures motherhood as a stifling avocation, but many women find it to be a mind-opening, heart-expanding, creativity-fueling experience that makes them broader thinkers and more purposeful workers.

So why are mothers so scarce at the top? Sexism still exists in the workplace, as most working women can attest. Yet there's another reason that fewer mothers — especially those with young children — can be found in the corner offices. Many don't want to be there. At least, not right now.

The persistently lower numbers of women in management are not merely a holdover from the bad old days of patriarchy. Those numbers evince an enduring phenomenon among women: our hard-wired desire to live balanced lives and our stubborn refusal to sacrifice a happy family life at the altar of an all-consuming career.

More than four decades after the modern feminist revolution, women are earning degrees and paychecks in record numbers. Yet most still regard motherhood as an experience they do not want to miss. Many women today use flex-time, part-time and work-at-home options to balance work and family. Others opt out of the work force for a spell or pass on higher-paying promotions that would force them to spend too many hours away from home.

Feminists often scold such mothers for, as former Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt put it in a recent interview, 'setting back women over all." It's an odd complaint from a movement that purports to celebrate women's choices and their unique contributions to the professions. Surely the tendency among many women to value relationships more than power or prestige is a praiseworthy contribution to a culture as materialistic and workaholic as ours.

Not that this trend toward work-life balance is confined to women. Growing numbers of men today make work decisions with family priorities in mind. These men are recognizing that they can make up for lost career opportunities later, but they only get one shot to raise their kids.

Feminists should encourage that healthy trend, rather than berating women for failing the sisterhood because they put their children first.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is a St. Louis-based author, former presidential speechwriter and television and radio host of "Faith & Culture" on EWTN. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.