As I write hundreds of women are swarming into the Bay Area for Blogher (not me, I’m still here in Chicago!), many of them are moms and I guess that most of them left their kids at home. Over on Twitter I’ve seen at least two moms express guilt after leaving the kids for their weekend away. I also have a friend who is currently on a business trip who Twittered about having time to read a book and the big comfy chair in her hotel room.

I’ve just been accepted to a media training program out of the Women’s Media Center in New York City. This means that in the next nine weeks I’ll be traveling to the Big Apple three times. Yikes! While my daughter has been classified as a “wash & go” kid, she expresses more and more apprehension when it’s time for mama to hit the road. Luckily she’s still in love with mama so she’d be more than happy to come with than for me to just stay home. Yet when it’s time for me to say good-bye I do have a pang of guilt.
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Sara brought up a very important overarching issue to my post last week on men-only country golf clubs:

I think that it’s almost a bigger issue than just discrimination at the club. It’s about where and what social circumstances business takes place. What if you don’t play golf? Don’t drink? Don’t go to clubs? As a businesswoman you’re probably missing out on many conversations outside this sexist club just because of your hobbies.

Thanks Sara for making my point! What happens on the golf course is usually far more than just socializing. It is business. It happens on the green, at the bar (another point of contention at the Phoenix Golf Club), in a million different places than just the conference room.
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I love sports. I love the thrill of last-minute interception, a diving catch in the outfield, an overtime goal to win the game. And I especially love the Olympic Games, which are starting up in Beijing next month. This year, I’m really looking forward to watching the Games, and I’ve got my eye on two elite female athletes who are competing to qualify - Dara Torres and Lindsey Davenport - mom athletes opting back into their careers after having children.

Ms. Torres, a 41-year-old mom and swimmer is racing this week to qualify for her fifth Olympic Games - a record for any athlete. At her age it’s almost unheard of to be swimming for an Olympic berth, not to mention handily beating her competition who’s some 15 years younger. I had heard a bit anecdotally about how unique her efforts to make the Games are. However, after reading this article about her, I was floored. Her method for preparing for racing is nothing short of intense:

… her two stretchers work in tandem to contort and flex her body, in a 20-minute preswim version of the two-hour sequence they do three times a week at her home.

In addition to that, she gets stretched five times a day and receives professional massages. This is all at a high cost:

Torres’s routine includes a head coach, a sprint coach, a strength coach, two stretchers, two masseuses, a chiropractor and a nanny, at the cost of at least $100,000 per year.

At first, when I read through these facts, I thought, is opting back in worth all that pain and money? I can’t imagine spending the time and effort to go back to a career in which I already achieved the ultimate success. But in thinking about it further, I think Torres is a role model for any of us who want to get back into our game - swimming or otherwise.
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In 2002 a woman named Martha Burk burst into our living rooms and challenged everyone to decide if private country/golf clubs that exclude women were discriminatory. Many responded with a quick no. They are private! was the largest chorus in the responses. Of course, our 15-second media didn’t allow for much discussion of why Burk thought that these clubs were discriminatory.

For her stance, Burk was harassed and threatened - The FBI were called out to ensure her safety when she protested outside the Augusta National Golf Club for not allowing women to be members during the 2003 Masters. Her suggestion that Tiger Woods should be taking a stand upset a lot of golf fans on top of criticizing one of golf’s most revered tournaments. I fielded a press call as a board member of a local NOW chapter with this quote:
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All the talk of whether or not the increase of teenage pregnancies in a Massachusetts town was a coincidence or a result of a formed pact between the teenagers got me thinking about a pact I made with a friend when my son was a baby and I was deciding whether or not to return to work.

My friend and I had our sons just one month apart. We lived within walking distance of each other and took maternity leave together. We both loved our careers and couldn’t imagine leaving the workforce to stay at home full time. Somehow, we both managed to wrangle flexible, part-time opportunities from our employers and worked the same three-day work week. Essentially, we made a pact to go back to work. We were working mother partners in crime.

But then, one day, she decided to quit to stay at home. And our pact was rendered null. As I said before, there’s safety in numbers. I think it’s much easier to work when all of your friends work, or stay home if all of your friends stay home.
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I’m half of a very traditional, mother-does-most-everything-around the home marriage. I recently tabled my career because I wanted to stay at home and do the mommy-freelancing-volunteer thing. My husband, meanwhile toils away at the office working hard to support us. I do the lion’s share of cooking, cleaning, taking care of our son. I’m lucky that we were able to make such a decision, and now I see being a mom as my main job, with everything else that I’m supposed to get done as second fiddle. And that’s ok. I expected nothing less when I left the working world.

That’s why I was intrigued by the recent New York Times article about the “equally shared parenting” movement. For me, this concept is totally out of whack. The notion that my husband and I would make lists, and charts and color code our life seems absurd. It would never work for us. And it isn’t the arrangement of 99% of the people I know. While I’m not convinced that social norms have dictated the fact that I do more laundry and dishes, I can say that leaving my job was a lot easier since the majority of my friends don’t work. We’re all living the SAHM life together.

But what about those who sign up for the equal parenting thing? Admittedly, even though I know it wouldn’t work in my household, when I read about those families for whom this concept works I got a little twinge of jealousy. I can’t imagine having my husband always being on the hook for doing the “whites” or making playdates.

Although the mantra of equal parenting is out of whack for me, I like that those involved in the concept realize this and admit that it’s not for everyone. I admire that one of the movements’ founders tries to find ways to redesign our inflexible and antiquated workplaces. However, I see the coverage and resulting discussion about it as just another way to stir up the mommy wars pot and make mothers (and fathers) continually question and fear the decisions they make about the difficult choice between balancing career and family.

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I know this is a site for working moms, but since Father’s Day is this weekend, I thought we could turn our attention to our (mostly) better halves. I’ve always found it interesting that in all the debates about mommy wars and mommy guilt, little has been said or discussed about how dads feel about working and family. This week, however, I did run across this survey put out by CareerBuilder.com which states an interesting fact about dads surveyed.

More than a third of working dads (37 percent) said they would leave their job if their spouse or significant other’s income could comfortably support the entire family, similar to last year’s findings.

Wow, who knew? Some dads want to stay home too? I’m only being half-serious here. Some people may be surprised by these results, but I’m not. Almost on a weekly basis my husband tells me he’d happily stay at home with our son if I was willing to work and support our family. Sometimes, I think he should be the one to stay at home full time. His instincts are flawless when it comes to taking care of our son.

But I so don’t have what it takes to be a full-time working mom with a high-pressure career that brings fulfillment and the bacon.

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We’d like to think that we live in a more enlightened age. Or even that the threat of legal action keeps people in line, but in reality sexual harassment is still something that women and girls have to deal with on a daily basis. My personal experience with harassment ended when I left high school. O…M…G…was high school a gauntlet of harassment! Yet I was totally unprepared to deal with it. Honestly I don’t think I knew that I could deal with it. I graduated high school in 1993, a mere one year after Anita Hill brought the topic to the forefront. Even more honestly, the only framework I had for harassment was an episode of “Three’s Company” when Chrissy’s boss kept chasing her around a desk!

Which is why it utterly saddens me that almost two decades after Anita Hill and a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court said schools could be held liable our girls are still unprepared to deal with harassment.

Participants (600) were asked about experiences with sexual harassment and any discouraging comments they received in traditionally male-dominated areas such as math, science, computers and sports.
*Ninety percent of girls reported experiencing sexual harassment at least once.
* 67 percent of girls reported receiving unwanted romantic attention
* 62 percent were exposed to demeaning gender-related comments
* 58 percent were teased because of their appearance
* 52 percent received unwanted physical contact
* 25 percent were bullied or threatened with harm by a male
* 52 percent of girls also reported receiving discouraging gender-based comments on the math, science and computer abilities, usually from male peers
* 76 percent of girls reported sexist comments on their athletic abilities, again predominantly from male peers

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I’m excited to see the Sex and the City movie, which opens this weekend. The show, and now the movie, showcases all of what’s great and fun about being single in New York City. I remember when I lived in New York, unattached and carefree. I’d galavant around town going from bar to bar with my girlfriends all dressed up (albeit in cheaper versions of what the Sex girls wear), scanning the men, having one too many drinks and after such drinks, casually approaching such men who would look my way. Unfortunately, unlike the show, after a few cosmos, I wouldn’t end up with Mr. Hottie, but rather would head home, one of my girlfriends by my side.

I can’t remember the last time I had a night remotely like that, but now that I’m living the mom life instead of the single life I wouldn’t want it any other way.

What is great about Sex and the City is that I, like every other woman in the free world, could live vicariously through the show’s characters. Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha epitomize everything that I’m not. From Samantha’s adventurous bedroom romps to Charlotte’s urge to marry not her true love, but someone who looked good on paper, the characters of Sex and the City made daring choices about family and career.

I have not made one such daring choice, and at times, I wonder what things would have looked like if I put aside thoughts of marriage and settling down for fancier clothes and a fast-paced job.
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I’m fascinated by a new study written by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy. The study, called The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering and Technology discusses the “brain drain” of female talent in the fields of science, engineering and technology. According to Ms. Hewlett’s research:

…demonstrates that over 40% of highly qualified scientists, engineers and technologists on the lower rungs of corporate career ladders are now female. In pharmaceuticals, high tech, petro-chemicals, and aerospace, young women are making impressive strides – and garnering rave performance reviews.

This rosy picture is spoiled by one calamitous fact. A little ways down the road, more than half of these women drop out—pushed and shoved by macho work environments, serious isolation, and extreme job pressures.

This new research identifies a fight-or-flight moment (ages 35–40) when female attrition spikes dramatically. Around 35-40, women across SET experience a perfect storm. Career problems escalate and family pressures deepen at the same time. The losses are massive – fully 52% of women fall away. This is hugely painful, both for women who abandon hard-won credentials and for employers struggling with worsening labor shortages.

Dory Devlin of Shine from Yahoo! says, “The best thing about the report, published in the Harvard Business Review, is it is aimed at companies to help them stem the loss of smart, talented women, and it does so by highlighting how some companies are making changes to retain women.”

I’m looking forward to seeing the results of the study, but the whole topic leaves me wanting more. More as in, is the “brain drain” limited to the fields of science, engineering and technology? Or are other fields seeing an exodus of women in the workplace?

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