So, I have spent my life in red states. I've had a vague interest in feminism, but it hasn't been strong. In the culture where I've lived, feminism was one of two "f words." People loved Rush Limbaugh, quoted him like they were quoting Scripture. And we all know his views on the topic. He coined the term "feminazi." That pretty much summed up the sentiment of most folks I knew. The term "feminist" was absolutely toxic. It was up there with "communist" and "atheist."
And this was equally true of the women I knew. Even in law school, the other female students generally were not fond of anything that focused on their gender. There was sort of a head in the sand approach to sexism. Most of the women were perfectly content with the way things were. And they were smart and confident in their ability to make their way in what was still a man's world.
My last year in law school something unexpected happened. We began the year and one of the women on law review was pregnant. She was expected to give birth sometime in the spring semester before graduation. This was quite scandalous in some ways though she was happily married and had wanted to start a family. I don't remember the male students saying much, but the other female students were generally horrified. That was not the right order. You were supposed to wait, get established in your career, THEN you start having babies. What would happen when this woman jumped the gun?! She had an offer for permanent employment upon graduation. How would it all work out if she needed to start that job while on FMLA?
And then something even more shocking happened. It was like there was an epidemic. Several other women in our class seemed to be inspired and they got pregnant too! By May when we had our graduation ceremony, we had half a dozen women waddling across the stage and needing help climbing up and down the steep ramp to the dais. The dean even made a joke about what would happen if a baby was born at commencement.
I remember my 3L year when my husband and I talked about trying to get pregnant ahead of schedule. Maybe these women had a better plan. But we decided against it. It just seemed like a sure shot to wreck your career. Why waste all the time, money and effort to not be a lawyer?
When I began my post-graduation job, I was one of the only women. It was a very white, very male work environment. I had no one to talk to about things that interested me. Football and conservative politics were the mainstay of lunch time banter. No thanks. I remember once driving with my manager and a supervisor in our office, desperate for a conversation topic. I began with, "I've got some exciting news!" The two men turned to me with a look of horror, which I didn't understand. I then told them my husband and I had scored some cheap tickets to London and we were going to go on a short vacation there over the New Year's holiday. The two men then exhaled and the looks on their faces brightened considerable. It dawned on me that they thought I was going to announce I was pregnant.
That was insightful. I got the clear message that pregnancy was not going to be welcome news in our office. And that was disappointing because in law school I had worked long and hard to find the most family friendly work environment I could. This was the best I could find, and it wasn't in the end that friendly to family.
Indeed, around that same time, I had become friends with another woman in another department. I admired her because she was smart and down to earth. And she was married with kids. I viewed her as a great role model for me. She was one of the only other women with kids in the company. I would ask her about her kids sometimes. I remember being shocked once because she told me the reality of what happened when her kids got sick and could not go to school. Her mom was her only local relative, and she was still working so that typically she was not available to stay with the kids. So my friend or her husband had to take off work to stay with the kids. More specifically, they had to use vacation days when their kids were sick. This was alarming news because our employer was notorious about giving very few vacation days each year. She said that between the two of them, most of her vacation and her husband's went to caring for sick kids. They never got a real vacation. That was so demoralizing. We worked long hours. I was at the office 6-7 days each week. I was already thinking I'd be burnt out with so little vacation time allotted. What on earth would we do if we went years without a break other than to nurse sick children?
Meanwhile, three women had been pregnant in the department when I had been a summer clerk. That had been encouraging to me. But by the time I arrived to work as a permanent employee, a very different situation had come into play. One woman had had to ask for a transfer to another part of the company when her husband's job was moved to another city. She was lucky in that they accommodated her. But she effectively was dead-ended in a part of the company without much growth opportunity. Another woman was also put out to pasture after she became a mom. She was sent to another worksite in the same city, one where the boss was an ogre and there were few opportunities for advancement. She was at a dead-end. The third of this trio had realized after becoming a mom that she needed to find a new job to better accommodate her family. She went to a large law firm that promised it respected her need for job flexibility and a less intense schedule. Unfortunately, the person who became her boss at the firm had not gotten the memo on that flexibility, and he put tremendous pressure on her to work insane hours. I don't think she even lasted a year before moving on. Parenthetically, I've lost count how many female lawyers I've known who've gone through that same experience. During interviews, the firms say they'll be flexible and accommodating of family, but then that doesn't last long before they are forced to travel and work more and more hours.
Something else happened to me that was insightful about the work-life balance issue. As a summer clerk, I worked with several women who had to balance tremendous work demands while dealing with a very difficult pregnancy. One woman's experience particularly impressed me. She had been put on bed rest by her doctor due to the risk of miscarriage. But her husband suddenly lost his job and she became the sole breadwinner. This was in the late 1990s. Telecommuting was not yet a thing. So to work, she had to be at the office--45 minutes from her home. She shared with me that if she had followed doctor's orders, they would have put her on disability. She would have been paid less--exacerbating her family's financial woes with the loss of her husband's paycheck. And the disability would only last a certain number of weeks such that she'd have to go back to work right after giving birth. I was stunned at her situation. And scared.
I'm always getting sick at inopportune times. I'll get the flu or a stomach bug or pneumonia when I'm under stress and have a lot to do. I began to worry about what I'd do if I had a difficult pregnancy. I didn't know how I'd handle it all. Maybe it would wreck my career. I wasn't terribly ambitious. I didn't want to be a manager or make a lot of money. But I had worked hard in law school and seemed to have a talent for the work I was doing. I wanted to practice my profession for the foreseeable future, and not let my hard work and students loans be in vain. I'd always had an interest in adoption. I'd vaguely thought that maybe we'd have a few biological children, then adopt. But after seeing my female colleagues' difficulties balancing pregnancy and demanding jobs, I began to think about adoption more and more as a primary way to build our family.
I spend the first few years of my career focusing on work and proving myself. But I also spent my limited free time researching adoption. My husband and I ultimately decided to go in that direction. Both our children are adopted. I've never regretted our decision. Our daughters are the lights of our lives.
Moreover, I've often thought how trying to get pregnant while working would not have been a good combination. Eventually, we had a few more women join our department and we became close. One dear friend suffered through several miscarriages, one was very far into her pregnancy. I cried with her but had no silver bullets to make the pain go away. What's worse, she had had to confide in her bosses about her pregnancies because she was suffering severe gestational diabetes and could no longer travel or work really insane hours. They accommodated her needs temporarily, but when she miscarried, she had to tell them of the situation so they would know why she no longer needed the accommodation. The humiliation of having to share something so personal and so painful with one's bosses to talk about cold, hard facts like business trips and who was covering which project.
That same friend was also advised to breast feed for at least a year to help ensure that her son would not develop diabetes. Her manager knew of this situation and was accommodating. But her immediate supervisor was quite the sadist, contriving excuses to send her on needless business trips during this time. This was not long after 9/11. The nightmare of having to lug a breast pump and a refrigerated cooler through security was more than I could imagine. TSA couldn't conceive of a breastfeeding woman without a baby.
Interestingly, this friend's accommodating manager was male and her sadist supervisor was one of the few females in a position of authority in our whole division. To be specific, there were three. One had married late in life and never had children. Another was married and had one child. Her husband did not have a career and cared for their daughter full-time while her mom worked and traveled a lot. The third was the youngest woman in a position of authority. She was brilliant but she had no social life. Though her star was rising within the company, she complained openly about not having a love life and her ticking biological time clock. This third woman was my friend's sadist supervisor. My friend and I were convinced she treated my friend so cruelly only because she was jealous of her. Several years earlier, she had also said some very cruel things to my friend when she announced her engagement.
That vicarious experience--and the pattern within our division--gave me important insights. Before that time, I had figured we women were all in it together. We were all in the same boat and were natural allies. Thus, we should support one another. It began to dawn on me that that was not the reality. There was actually a division between the moms and the non-moms. The women who rose to positions of authority were not moms or they had partners who were devoted to caregiving. Either way, they could not conceive of the plight of my friend who had to use vacation days to nurse her sick kids or my friend who was not supposed to travel due to pregnancy or the need to provide breast milk for her son. The first two women of authority in the division were just ignorant of their plight and thus unintentionally insensitive. But the third woman was deliberately cruel due to her own jealousy.
I began to see a delineation between the few women at work. There were the moms and the non-moms. Some of the non-moms were sympathetic--either because they hoped to one day be moms themselves or they were just kind hearted human beings. But some of the non-moms were decidedly not sympathetic. They wanted to be like the men, which seemed to be the surest path towards success. However, this was a small group--thank goodness!
The sympathetic non-moms tended to fall into one of two groups. There were women who wanted to eventually be moms themselves. They often looked to me as a role model and mentor. I was flattered, but always uncomfortable in the role because I had no silver bullet to make work-life balance magically work out. The other group of sympathetic non-moms tended to be older women who had tried earlier in their careers to be like the guys, and had given their all to climbing the corporate ladder. It had worked for a while, but eventually they had been pushed back down. They were sometimes a bit bitter about the experience, but tended to be wise about office politics and realized that playing corporate games was not a fulfilling way to spend one's life. They tended to retire as soon as they hit the minimum retirement age. They then went on to lead a happy life away from work--gardening, painting, traveling or engaging in other hobbies. They had lives away from work. The unsympathetic non-moms did not. When they have been forced to retire because they hit a certain age, they have not known what to do with themselves. I feel bad for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment