Hitting the job market at age 56 involved more than the usual indignities.
Cold calls were interspersed with strategies on the
let’s-cover-up-my-real-age front. My stroke of brilliance: dabbing pancake
make-up on the back of my hands to disguise incipient age spots. Hands are a
dead giveaway, capable of betraying the tautest size 8 body.
The whole ridiculous process made me sick at heart. Back in the 1970s women
crashed through all kinds of career barriers – but little did we appreciate
the complexity of the road ahead. Those of us who also wanted children had
no idea how hard it would be to raise a family and conjure up the linear
progression of a successful male career.
My first detour or “off ramp” was a predictable tale of being forced out of a
career by childbearing troubles. In the September of 1979 I discovered I was
pregnant with twins. I was delighted but scared. My first child – an adored
daughter – was just two, and I was daunted at the prospect of “balancing”
three small children with my demanding job as assistant professor of
economics at Barnard College, part of Columbia University, New York. I was
at the six-year mark and my tenure review was just starting.
This pregnancy was problematic and I gave serious thought to taking time off
from work. I consulted my dean and was told that since the college had no
maternity leave policy, I wasn’t entitled to a leave of absence. Time off
would – most certainly – have dire consequences.
Ten years of hard, grinding work had gone into my career and I was only 18
months away from tenure. Given a cutthroat academic job market could I
really give up the possibility of lifetime job security? I agonised, and
decided to stick with my job.
Two months later I was sitting in my office, bone-tired, when my waters broke.
It was much too early to go into labour – I was only 23 weeks pregnant. I
spent two days lying flat on a hard hospital bed, sick with fear and praying
to some ill-defined deity.
One of the babies died. My obstetrician had no option but to induce labour.
Afterwards, for quite some long time, life was truly hard to bear. I mourned
my babies with an intensity that frightened me. In addition to a heavy load
of sorrow I was ridden with guilt. If only I had given up work, if only I’d
had the guts to risk my career.
That winter as I struggled with a bitter brew of regret and grief, I had some
flickering new awareness of the constraints that come with children. I had
taken too much for granted. In rejecting the domestic life of 1950s mothers,
I’d assumed that I could do the family thing in my spare time.
What I thought I needed to concentrate on – with laser-like focus – were
credentials, career ladders and success on the outside. I now had a new
humility. Healthy, happy families didn’t just happen. They were
painstakingly made.
These glimmerings of insight rearranged my priorities. Six months later when I
became pregnant again I took an unpaid leave of absence – to nurture a
high-risk pregnancy and what turned out to be a premature child. And I paid
the price. In the summer of 1981, despite a unanimous recommendation, I was
turned down for tenure. I was told I was uncommitted and had “allowed
childbearing to dilute my focus”.
As I moved out of my office it struck me that the shape of the career model
was all wrong for women. Linear career progressions were not where we were
at, as, tugged and pulled by family responsibilities, we slithered and
skittered down various pathways. And yet a continuous cumulative employment
record was a prerequisite for success.
Today, the stresses of trying to juggle a family and career are more
recognised. More people work flexibly than ever before – both women and men
– and I like to think I’ve played a key role in making that happen. In
February 2004, in an effort to flag up the problem of women dropping out of
the workforce because they could not hold down a linear career, I founded
the Hidden Brain Drain taskforce. Our aim was to develop alternatives to the
male model.
Over the next 18 months I reeled in 34 global companies (including General
Electric, Time Warner and Goldman Sachs) and persuaded them to commit to
both funding the taskforce and creating new career models which would allow
women to rejoin the workforce after having taken time off – to create
“off-ramps” and “on-ramps” up and down which women could travel according to
whether their business or domestic lives needed priority.
Bringing these companies on board was the hardest thing I’ve done, but
together they represent 2.5m employees operating in 152 countries. The
policies they adopt can have a huge impact on the global workforce.
And it’s not just to benefit women. At the launch of one of our projects at
the House of Commons two years ago, various private-sector leaders spoke of
the European baby bust and the need to restructure work so that older people
can stay in their jobs longer – to fill out the talent pool and ease the
pension burden.
At the same event, a senior executive from Time Warner pointed out that “women
who leave or languish are, in effect, the canaries in the coalmine, the
first and most conspicuous casualties of an outdated, dysfunctional career
model”.
By the time I set up the Hidden Brain Drain taskforce I was at the end of my
own infuriatingly “on-off” career. A short while after my second child was
born I landed a great job as executive director of the Economic Policy
Council, a think tank based in Manhattan, but in 1987 I hit a second wall. I
was becoming my worst nightmare – a burnt-out, tuned-out mom. How could I
help my five-year-old deal with separation anxiety when I needed to catch
the 7.30am shuttle to Washington two out of his first three days of
kindergarten? Something had to go. I resigned in the week of my 40th
birthday and knew that was the end of my “male” competitive career.
I would never again be seen as an up-and-coming hotshot, a contender for the
impressive title. But I knew what I needed to do. I went home and started a
new career as an author. I worked odd hours, travelled rarely, and saw a
great deal of my kids.
In purely personal terms, these years were successful. I learnt to enjoy my
husband and children. We did stuff together; planting geraniums, playing
Pooh sticks or visiting the penguins in the Central Park zoo. This carefully
contrived equilibrium lasted for a decade. Then, in the early 2000s, I
veered off-course for the third time. My career was on the rocks again, my
books were not selling.
For a few weeks I felt sorry for myself. Then I went looking for a job. I had
a huge sense of urgency. As a woman on the “north” side of 50, time was not
on my side. Whatever shot I had at a late-in-life career was now – not later.
I secured two teaching positions, then set up the taskforce. Why didn’t I
throw in the towel? Everyone would have understood had I called it quits.
The fact is, I still yearned for the power and influence I’d tasted as a
young professor. Now with my kids grown and my husband caught up in his own
second career, I was free to go for broke.
I was inspired by the notion that this time around I really could make things
happen. I was convinced that powerful demographic shifts – ranging from baby
busts to retiring baby boomers to shortfalls in the talent pipeline – were
forcing employers to consider my message and solutions.
How glorious it would be to break the stranglehold of the male competitive
model – to create alternative pathways to power for women. For me this would
be a precious legacy – to make a difference in the concrete options facing
my daughters and an entire new generation of young women.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s Off-Ramps and On-Ramps, Keeping Talented Women on the
Road to Success, is published by Harvard Business School Press
Is life more bearable for working mums? Have your say at www.
timesonline.co.uk/alphamummy
