Discrimination is the main problem affected women at work. Modern women are so much freer than they once were to choose their own point of personal harmony and equilibrium on the continuum of service and achievement that constitutes the balance challenge. Despite much talk that women and minority groups are breaking the glass ceiling, they are still grossly underrepresented in the executive suite (Rosow and Casner-Lotto, 1998).
Because of their numbers, women have received the most attention. The talent shortage has opened the door to women’s advancement, and it has arrived at a time when many women have acquired enough management expertise to take charge. Whereas the CEO of a major company used to bring thirty years of experience, today twenty years is often thought to be enough.
A woman with an especially strong internal glass ceiling lives in the shadow land of her self-doubts. Unconsciously, she lowers her expectations, the risks she will take, and the ultimate achievements she can attain—leading to an internal, self-sustaining, negative cycle. Her lack of personal achievement causes her to doubt herself even more. It becomes easier to turn away from challenges, just as this type of woman has turned away from herself by denying the importance of her own needs and true feeling (Linehan, 1997).
Listen to the contrasting voices of the third shift: Issues of balance are the most troublesome of the challenges women face because they pose tremendously vexing dual internal and external issues. Women get it coming and going, especially if they choose to work from desire rather than true financial need. On the outside, they perform the second shift (service to others) after clocking in at their day job (achievement for self) when they are tired and unlikely to be at their best. On the inside, they listen to self-critical voices in their third shift, feeling that they have fallen short of a self-imposed standard to perform well in both worlds (Stanny, 2004).
The self-imposed demands of high-achieving women can be the worst because they expect so much from themselves in everything they take on. But even if you’re not a classic overachiever, managing balance is difficult and stressful because it speaks to how you measure your own worth as a woman. This process begins early, with young women’s educational and vocational choices, long before schedule conflicts and day care pickups enter your life.
Ultimately, as you move through your adult life, balance entails an entire constellation of questions: how many (or any) children to have, how aggressively to pursue advancement at work, and to what degree the need for personal achievement and mastery can be met outside of the workplace (Rosow and Casner-Lotto, 1998). The issue of balance is the flash point for women because how they manage it determines whether they choose a corporate, entrepreneurial, or stay-at-home life, and in what order they pursue these choices. Even more important, how women manage the B word determines whether they invest their life’s energy in the activities and accomplishments that offer the most harmonious combination of value and purpose (Linehan, 1997).
Debatable that such salary statistics even form a reasonable proxy for achievement in the first place. Women often intentionally choose lower-paying industries or niches in a particular profession (examples are family medicine and psychiatry, which are traditionally lower paying than other medical specialties), seeking a type of achievement that cannot be expressed through salary surveys alone. Pay differences aside, no empirical evidence exists to support an inner achievement gap between men and women (Rosow and Casner-Lotto, 1998).
If more men than women are helicopter pilots, CEOs, and prime ministers, it is experience and opportunity—not aspiration—that is lacking among the women. Gender aside, our inborn personalities, in combination with social and familial expectations and role models, define our inner needs for achievement. Like men, women tend to emerge from the womb as either hard-charging and driven or relatively easygoing (Rosow and Casner-Lotto, 1998).
Men rarely express the same wistfulness, guilt, frustration, or self-castigation when faced with outright choices requiring them to determine who comes first. Compared to women, they seem little affected by an inner third shift and are far more likely to accept their own imbalance toward personal achievement in their lives. But a gap you can drive a truck through remains between actual and espoused male behavior. Men may check off the “correct” socially desirable boxes on surveys of work-family conflict, but our workplaces are even less tolerant of masculine involvement with family life if it detracts from focusing on work (Linehan, 1997).
Men and women alike may experience inner uncertainty for their choices, but men seem to sidestep the gnawing third-shift demands that place responsibility on themselves when things go awry. Thus, for example, the Families and Work Institute studies indicate that working parents of either gender with young children in day care spend considerable mental energy worrying about the quality of their children’s daily experience.
But women are far more likely than men to actually alter their schedules to adapt to day care rules and strictures, particularly when comparing the behavior of the most senior executive women with high-ranking executive men. In addition, women are much more likely to blame themselves for placing their work needs above their children’s needs if difficulties ensue with a child’s day care. This observation is consistent with gender studies that found men blaming external factors in the situation when things go wrong, while women hold themselves responsible (Rosow and Casner-Lotto, 1998).
Overcoming negativity and your internal glass ceiling (if you have one) are required steps to finding effective balance between serving others or achieving for oneself. But the two steps are insufficient. It is essential to understand your true calling in life, the particular activity or career that excites you and offers you genuine pride and satisfaction. Achievements or service related to calling allow you the best chance of excelling.
For example, women in midlife who have attained career achievements consistent with their early expectations may need little or no approbation from others. The female quest most often includes validation, meaning, and self-expression through the new business she is launching, and only secondarily visibility and money (Linehan, 1997). Moreover, women are seeking an entirely different identity, not just a new job. They are also seeking better working conditions—first and foremost, enjoying being in charge.
Finally, women are seeking to elevate employee satisfaction for others (not just themselves), to better balance work and family life, and to make genuine contributions to society through their entrepreneurial endeavors. Of course, men may also be looking for these things. But they are much more likely to be seeking high growth and profit as their primary objectives. Like women entrepreneurs, male corporate exiles may also face difficulty acquiring an entrepreneurial identity overnight, but the depth of the disorientation is clearly different.
Moreover, many men tend to think about launching a new business as a grand adventure, a game to win. Launching a business of her own demands that a woman run an emotional gauntlet. The course involves a complex blend of openness, adaptation, and flexibility, coupled with fierce stubbornness, resolve, and plain toughness (Stanny, 2004).
Business readiness, on the other hand, involves straightforward knowledge and application of business know-how in a given industry and marketplace. A woman must be an expert, at some level, on her own business. She should have a unique business vision that is valued by the marketplace. Business readiness can often be accelerated through degree programs and coursework, but the best way to improve one’s concept and understanding of the market is to work in the business.
For example, if a woman is a successful public relations specialist in a consumer products company and has always yearned to start her own restaurant, she may already have a basic understanding of how to compete with visible rivals, or how to advertise and launch an ad campaign. But does she understand the restaurant business from the ground up? (Stanny, 2004). Volunteering as an officer on the board of directors of a nonprofit agency, running a visible special project for a school, or taking on a soup-to-nuts task force that requires decision-making, organizational, and marketing skills builds entrepreneurial muscles (while unearthing potential new contacts).
Women also boost self-confidence through these practices, thereby accelerating entrepreneurial readiness. The problem for many women is not holes in the balance sheet but self-doubt arising from their third shift around managing money. A great many women possess strong professional identities, yet they manifest distinctly unhealthy attitudes about money (Rosow and Casner-Lotto, 1998).
In sum, glass ceiling prevents many women to obtain high positions in organizations and be equally treated as corporate leaders. For women seeking freedom, independence, control, and validation, there is room for great optimism on the entrepreneurial path. However, many women today—most with children, but an increasing number without— are opting out of both the corporate and the entrepreneurial games. In essence, they are refusing to play and are taking a lengthy time out. Some women are making permanent changes, finding that they have no desire to leave a stay-at-home lifestyle that works for them. Like the transition to entrepreneurial life, the decision to stay home or work in the community shapes the identity of women in a new way
References
Linehan, M. 1997. Senior Female International Managers. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company.
Rosow, J., Casner-Lotto, J. (1998). People, Partnership and Profits: The new labor-management agenda, Work in America Institute, New York.
stanny, B. 2004. Secrets of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life. HarperCollins Canada / Management; Reprint edition.