Children Don’t Ruin Women’s Careers-Husbands Do, Harvard Study Finds
A
new study of Harvard Business School graduates from HBS’s Robin Ely and
Colleen Ammerman and Hunter College sociologist Pamela Stone shows that
high-achieving women are not meeting the career goals they set for
themselves in their 20s. It’s not because they’re “opting out” of the
workforce when they have kids, but because they’re allowing their
partners’ careers to take precedence over their own.The study’s
authors interviewed 25,000 men and women who graduated from Harvard
Business School over the past several decades. The male graduates were
much more likely to be in senior management positions and have more
responsibility and more direct reports than their female peers. But why?
It’s not because women are leaving the workforce en masse. The authors
found, definitively, that the “opt-out” explanation is a myth. Among Gen
X and baby boomers they surveyed, only 11 percent of women left the
workforce to be full-time moms. That figure is lower for women of
colour—only 7 percent stopped working. The vast majority (74 percent) of
Gen Xers, women who are currently 32-48 and in the prime of their
child-rearing years, work full time, an average of 52 hours a week.But
while these women are still working, they are also making more
unexpected sacrifices than their male classmates are. When they
graduated, more than half of male HBS grads said they expected their
careers would take precedence over their partners’. Only 7 percent of
Gen X women and 3 percent of baby boomer women said they expected their
careers to take precedence. Here’s what they did expect: The majority of
women said they assumed they would have egalitarian marriages in which
both spouses’ careers were taken equally seriously.A lot of
those women were wrong. About 40 percent of Gen X and boomer women said
their spouses’ careers took priority over theirs, while only about 20
percent of them had planned on their careers taking a back seat. Compare
that with the men: More than 70 percent of Gen X and boomer men say
their careers are more important than their wives’. When you look at
child care responsibilities, the numbers are starker. A full 86 percent
of Gen X and boomer men said their wives take primary responsibility for
child care, and the women agree: 65 percent of Gen X women and 72
percent of boomer women—all HBS grads, most of whom work—say they’re the
ones who do most of the child care in their relationships.Of
course, marital arrangements aren’t the only force holding women back.
Part of the reason these women aren’t advancing at the same rate as
their male counterparts is that after they have kids, they get
“mommy-tracked.” In many ways, they’re not considered management
candidates anymore. “They may have been stigmatized for taking advantage
of flex options or reduced schedules, passed over for high-profile
assignments, or removed from projects they once led,” the authors note.
Other studies support these findings, as they have shown that there is a
real, substantial motherhood penalty that involves lower pay and fewer
promotions for women with kids, because employers assume they will be
less dedicated to their jobs (as do, we now know, their husbands).But
the personal piece of the female achievement gap puzzle is important,
and it’s something that’s very difficult to shift. The study’s authors
note that while millennial HBS grads are a little more egalitarian than
their older peers, half of the youngest men still assume that their
careers will take precedence, and two-thirds of them assume their
spouses will do the majority of child care.Important info, but I hate the way this was written.
“It’s not because they’re “opting out” of the
workforce when they have kids,but because they’re allowing their“ but because they have self-indulgent patriarchal male partners that encourage and expect them to give up their career dreams in favor of catering to their families, something the men themselves are too self-entitled and lazy to do.
partners’ careers to take precedence over their own.Also big shoutout to all those millennial male HBS grads that are still patriarchal and entitled. And by shoutout I mean fuck you.
