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May 2004 This Revolution Remains Unfinished
In the seventies and eighties, women battled for equality. They wanted to enter the workplace, work as hard as men, and be rewarded the same way. Unfortunately, says Myra Strober, Stanford professor of education, many of them got most of what they wanted. Now their daughters realize that their mothers didn't ask for enough. Strober drew a primarily alumnae audience in January for her talk "Work and Families, the Unfinished Revolution," sponsored by the Lifelong Learning program of the Business School's alumni association. Many professional women are finding that they cannot work 50 or 60 hour weeks, travel at the drop of a hat, and still care for their children. Many men whose wives are employed also cannot adequately balance work responsibilities and their desire to help raise their children. Society, she said, needs to reconstruct the workplace; rethink responsibilities for raising children; and learn to talk about a work-life balance, not simply work and family. The roles of men and women have changed in the past 30 years, but there has been no serious discussion of changing the workplace, Strober said. She called for part-time jobs that are not labeled as "mommy tracks" for people who aren't serious about their careers, for pro-rated benefits for part-time employees and for genuine flexibility in career tracks. She also suggested that the US enact legislation that provides for a one year partially paid parental leave for the arrival of a new child, which both parents can share; and for an overhauled child-care system she estimates will cost $26 billion per year. At the heart of many of her calls for change is the need to overhaul our attitudes toward child rearing. "Children are a public good that we all have to support," she said. If we don't change services available and attitudes toward raising children, Strober warned, "people will opt out entirely and choose not to have children." To see how lives have changed, Strober cited statistics showing that in 1977 the average combined workweek for a couple was 81 hours per week. In 2002 that had risen to 91 hours. The time parents spent with children increased from 5.2 to 6.2 hours per day in the same period. Not surprisingly, the time men and women spent on themselves also changed. In 1977 fathers spent an average of 126 minutes on themselves, compared to 78 minutes today while mothers dropped from 96 minutes to 54 spent on themselves. Strober's most recent book is The Road Winds Uphill All the Way: Gender, Work, and Family in the United States and Japan which surveyed men and women graduates of Stanford and Tokyo universities who graduated in 1981. |
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