The View From Where She Stands by Cathy Castillo
Their perspectives vary, but in a recent survey, GSB women said they were happy with their personal and professional choices.
"That's not to say that it's easy or that it's not stressful," says Laraine
Zappert, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the Stanford Medical
School, who surveyed Business School alumnae in connection with the School's
third annual women's conference. "Women who've done it all do have regrets, but
they've made the tradeoffs. They've taken a pragmatic approach, telling
themselves 'this is the cost/benefit and this is where I'm going.'" Putting your
life into the proper sequence is the important part, says Zappert. "The average
woman has 13 years to have children and 38 years to have a career. Just do the
math."
Zappert sought information about GSB women's personal and professional experiences since graduation. She sent questionnaires to 700 Business School alumnae and received 289 replies. Of the sample, 71 percent said they were satisfied with their lives at present. They believed they had made decisions based on what they wanted from life and felt in control of their lives.
The women who responded generally agreed there is no right time to have a family, but they recommended getting as much education as possible early in life and creating a strong set of professional credentials before having children so they could later negotiate from a position of proven professional value.
Ninety-six percent of those responding ranked earning respect as important to them in their work. They ranked power lowest among eight factors, with only 31 percent identifying it as important.
"As women, I believe we underestimate our power," says Zappert. "Women have power because we have good relationship skills, but we see power and authority as negatives and respect as a positive. In their comments, the respondents said they wanted power -- but not at the cost of losing respect."
n analyzing the data, Zappert divided the women into three groups: "Pioneers," who graduated before 1976; "Settlers," who graduated between 1976 and 1985; and the youngest group, which she called "Successors."
The Pioneers were rare women in-deed. For example, between 1960 and 1970, only 24 women earned MBA degrees from the Business School. Throughout their careers, women in this early group generally found themselves a class apart from their peers, most of whom were male. Today, this group finds itself the most satisfied overall. Many are retired and managing their investments or have worked themselves into the comfortable positions that had been their goals all along.
There are approximately 700 Settlers among the School's alumnae. Although they are very satisfied with their current state, Settlers report the greatest stress between work and family demands. They are the highest wage earners but the most likely to be self-employed, something Zappert believes contributes to the twinges of dissatisfaction they reported. "When the salary comes from what you alone are producing, there is no slack," she observes. These women take their careers very seriously and are proud of their success. At the same time, they ranked uncertainty about the future as a significant source of work stress.
"From their comments, it's clear a large number of the Settlers left large corporations and chose to be self-employed or to work in entrepreneurial firms as their way of dealing with the conflicts inherent in working and having children."
The third group, Successors, can expect career paths similar to the Settlers, Zappert predicts. "Corporations will outsource more, there will be more opportunities for consulting and less for lifetime employment. This is what women have to prepare for." At this stage, Successors (there are about 1,000 of them on the GSB alumnae rolls) are most likely to work the longest hours (80 percent of them work more than 40 hours per week) and are least likely to have children.
With Doris McNamara, a friend of the GSB who identified the need for a social support network for women students, Zappert developed the School's MBA women's support groups 15 years ago. The groups, composed of a maximum of 10 members each, meet weekly to discuss a broad variety of issues. The women often become so closely knit that group members turn to one another for advice and support for years. Because she has been close to the groups over time, Zappert says she wasn't surprised by the changes in attitudes among the younger women surveyed.
"Fifteen years ago, the groups focused on competency. Because most of them had nonquantitative backgrounds, women worried about whether they had the skills to be investment bankers or operations managers," Zappert says. And then ten years ago, the subject of children was the hot topic. You weren't considered serious if you wanted kids.
Today's students aren't as worried about single issues like competency or children. These women know they're competent because they were investment bankers and managers before they came to Business School. And today, it's much more acceptable for a woman to want children. It's not just a question anymore of being serious or capable; it's a question of remembering that you can have most of what you want in life if you have the patience to wait and plan. "Women today," says Zappert, "are concerned about whether they can integrate all the things they want to do in life -- and at what cost."
Coming in the next issue of the Stanford Business School Magazine: the results of a major survey charting the career paths of our MBA alumni/ae.
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