House of Eratosthenes

You know how feminists work. Just listen to a fair sampling of them argue any one of a number of things, for a few minutes. “I find this thing over here reprehensible; help me abhor it.” That, when you snip off all the meaningless trivialities and throw ’em in the gut bucket, get down to the bare essentials, is an accurate illustration of all modern feminist argument. About anything.

This week Ann at Feministing got all twisted off about a rather frank comment from former General Electric CEO Jack Welch about women taking off from work, raising kids for up to a year or so, coming back and having a shot at being The Boss way up tippy top. Ann’s pretty cranky. She calls the comment “pretty astounding,” and in feminist parlance you know exactly what that’s supposed to mean. Well I guess she should be somewhat torqued. Welch pulled no punches; none at all.

…Welch recently declared that moms who take time off to stay at home with their children don’t have a chance at becoming CEOs when they return to work.

“There’s no such thing as work-life balance,” Welch told the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference in New Orleans on June 28. “There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”

A Wall Street Journal article offers up a summary of Welch’s words that day:

Mr. Welch said those who take time off for family could be passed over for promotions if “you’re not there in the clutch.”

“The women who have reached the top of Archer Daniels, of DuPont, I know these women. They’ve had pretty straight careers,” he said in an interview with journalist Claire Shipman, before thousands of HR specialists.

“We’d love to have more women moving up faster,” Mr. Welch said. “But they’ve got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one.”

Taking time off for family “can offer a nice life,” Mr. Welch said, “but the chances of going to the top on that path” are smaller. “That doesn’t mean you can’t have a nice career,” he added.

Now if you actually click open that WSJ article, you find a fair sampling of educated opinions about this…and a plurality of them agree with Welch.

Sandra Brangan, vice president of administration at Accountants International, a unit of staffing firm Randstad Holding NV, says Mr. Welch’s comments are realistic. “When people are not visible, it does hurt,” she says, praising his bluntness. “That’s not the popular thing to say.”

Kim Ruyle, vice president of leadership and talent consulting at executive recruiters Korn/Ferry International, agrees. “I think it’s absolutely true,” he says. “You can bet that people don’t get to the corner office unless they make some tough choices.”

My own thoughts? I’m not moderate. Quite to the contrary, I’m just completely aghast that there can be any disagreement about this, political-correctness or not.

The hypotheticals with which readers are challenged, have to do with taking off from work for a year or two. For cryin’ in the sink. For twenty-four months, you think the business concern won’t be facing some kind of a crisis? The prospective female boss takes off, goes home, does that “tough” work, the “most important work there is” — and hey, in all seriousness I’m a big fan of that line of thinking. It’s true. Being a Mom is the most important work there is.

But still. Meanwhile, back at the office there’s a crisis. You’re not there. Someone else is. And it’s no fun for them…but there are some tough decisions to be made, decisions that require a real education about what’s goin’ on day to day, and a real personal sacrifice to get that education. Someone will be there to get it all done, while you’re being a Mom…

…and at the end of two years of that, you just want to show up and take “your” place at the top of the org chart? What. The. Hell. That is precisely the kind of personal disrespect that is tolerated only because it is targeted at the “correct” groups of people.

Unless, of course, you’re talking about some business that can go 730 days without any kind of a real crisis. I’m sure there could be some of those, somewhere. But then, what kind of prestige is supposed to be commanded by being the boss of a company like that?

But be that as it may. Your mission is clear. Log in. Help Ann get mad at Jack. She needs you. Again.

Why do I always read that as “Femifisting?” Must be something wrong in my brain.
- vanderleun | 07/19/2009 @ 22:35
[…] The Trouble with Harry No Such Thing as Work-Life Balance His Blank Slate V Braveheart Wept Daphne, Her Husband, Roissy, Alphas, Betas, Builders, Destroyers […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/20/2009 @ 06:55
Why do I always read that as “Femifisting?”

You too?
- rob | 07/20/2009 @ 10:23
In My Humble Opinion
Ann is simply trying to “intellectualize”, (and seek allies for) her fear of men “in high places” where, similarly situated, she could never morally justify accepting a salary from stockholders.

Why do I suspect that Larry Summers was suddenly “OK” enough, after he was positioned by BHO? If not, the “purists” must STILL be sweeping up the mess from all the ‘splodie heads.

I consider Feministing (I always saw it as “fisting” too, probably from the plagiarized mud-flap icon, popular amongst folk that actually work, and keep the country moving ) simply a dupe farm, with valuable offerings far too rare to bother with, as much as Cassy, and our gentle host, do.

Then again, I don’t have the patience to be a school teacher, correcting the same repeated errors by the slow
kids in the class. Nor can I bear the “usual suspects” that eternally wave their hands in the air, BEGGING for someone of authority to call on them, recognize, and declare, how “smart” they think they are.
- CaptDMO | 07/21/2009 @ 15:23

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