Stop Out, Hunker Down, Move Up?

Challenges faced by women MBAs and their employers.

 by Margaret Steen

Of Kirstin Hoefer's eight closest women friends from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, five are working now. The other three are at home with children, says the 1997 graduate who herself has three young children and is senior director of product management at eBay.

Women who leave the workforce for the home capture headlines—especially when they are as accomplished and ambitious as Stanford Business School graduates. Debates rage on blogs and at cocktail parties, often fueled by misquoted statistics such as one that claimed half of female Stanford MBAs leave corporate America within five years of graduation. Are women who take a break from the workforce retreating from the workplace gains that previous generations fought so hard to achieve? Are they on the front lines of the next battleground: the fight for balance? Or are they simply rejecting a workplace that does not fully welcome women?

The most accurate statistics available don't answer these questions directly. But they do show that a minority of both male and female Stanford MBAs leave the workplace at some point during their careers. Women are more likely to stop out, and for longer periods. And they are more likely to cite family responsibilities as the reason.

The debate is the result of a collision between the high-powered jobs that Stanford MBAs aspire to, with 60-hour workweeks and global travel requirements, and graduates' desire to raise families—not to mention the necessity for someone to raise the next generation of workers. For reasons rooted partly in tradition and partly in biology, childrearing still generally takes a bigger toll on women's careers than on men's.

But the issue affects more than just the individuals who are trying to integrate family life with a career.

"If we want to continue to have a replacement birth rate, then I think we need to figure out how to make it possible for families to raise children and continue to work," says economist Myra Strober of the Stanford School of Education, who holds a courtesy appointment at the Graduate School of Business. Workers without children are also affected; they may resent being asked to work harder while a colleague takes a parental leave. "We need to see that raising the next generation or helping your coworkers raise the next generation is a public good."

It's also a problem for companies. Their pool of workers becomes both smaller and less diverse when some drop out—a prospect that is even more alarming given predictions of an upcoming labor shortage. "If you're really trying to find the top talent, you're not going to find it among just one kind of people," says Noni Allwood, SEP ' 99, senior director of worldwide diversity and inclusion at Cisco Systems.

On the other hand, companies do benefit from having employees who are willing and able to work long hours. "From the company standpoint, the agent of the shareholders has an obligation to select and promote people they think will contribute the most," says Charles O'Reilly, Business School professor of organizational behavior.

Recent surveys shed some light on how many women—and men—are taking time away from work, and why:

In a 2006 survey of Stanford MBAs in reunion-year classes, 35 percent of the women and 16 percent of the men who graduated in 1970 or later reported they had been out of the workforce for more than one year in their post-MBA career.

When asked the reason for the career break, 64 percent of the women who had been out for more than a year said it was to raise a family vs. 5 percent of the men. Men were more likely to have stopped working because of a career transition or financial independence. (We excluded classes before 1970 because they are overwhelmingly male and retirement is a major reason many of them stop work. Only 65 women received MBAs from the GSB before 1970. More recently, women make up about one-third of most classes.)

For the 1970-or-later graduates who had taken a career break, the average length was 5.4 years for women vs. 4.6 years for men.

This data is typical of graduates of elite business schools. For example, a 2001 survey of Harvard Business School graduates who were 10, 15, and 20 years post-graduation found that of the women who had significant family responsibilities, such as two or more children at home, 38 percent were employed full time. Most of the others were working part-time.

The data does not show whether more women are stopping out than in previous years. And no one knows how women who stop out now will fare if and when they want to return to work. "With baby boomers beginning to retire, you've got to believe there will be more demand, so if you want to paint an optimistic scenario, employers may have to be more accommodating," O'Reilly says. "I still think there are businesses where that will not be the case."

In 2004, Catherine King, MBA '82, was featured in the Wall Street Journal in an article on the difficulties women face in returning to work after taking time off to raise a family. In the story, a recruiter said she had a 15 percent chance of returning to work in finance after more than a decade away.

"I didn't believe him," King says.

King was right: She had stayed in contact with many of her business associates, and one of them, Ken Weiss, asked her if she wanted to job-share. They interviewed as a team at Oppenheimer & Co. and are now senior vice presidents–investments, splitting financial advisor job responsibilities. "Never let go of your business network," King says.

The reason King left the workforce to begin with, after her second child was born, was a concern common among high-achieving women: "If I had a career while I was mothering, would I be satisfied with my performance in my career and with my performance as a mother?"

The types of jobs many MBAs pursue—in finance, consulting, and marketing, for example—typically require long hours and travel. "One of the signatures of these jobs is that it's very difficult to measure how productive you are in them," Strober says. "What has happened is that the proxy for productivity is face time and being willing to travel at the drop of a hat."

If women marry men with similarly demanding jobs, their families may not need two incomes and may find family life more manageable when the focus is on one career rather than two. A 2006 survey of GSB graduates from 1981 and 1986 showed that 64 percent of the women had a spouse who worked full time vs. 33 percent of the men.

MBA women who have demanding jobs are used to being "the top performers in everything they've done," says Debra Meyerson, PhD '89, associate professor of education and, by courtesy, of organizational behavior at the Business School. They may find it difficult to cut back when they have children. Many indicate they would like to reduce work hours rather than stop altogether, but part-time work traditionally has been viewed as a backwater, off the promotion track.

EBay's Hoefer illustrates how some companies and employees are making part-time work rewarding: She started at eBay in a position she negotiated to be 80 percent time, and recently was promoted from director to senior director. "Paint a picture of what success could look like," she says. "I was the first director-level person at eBay to work part-time."

But negotiating a part-time job up front can be tough when a company has other strong candidates willing to work full time—especially in a management role. "If you've got people reporting to you, you've got to be available," says Emily Liggett, MBA '84, who is CEO of Apexon.

Some go-getters also find it hard to cut back. "As a senior leader in an organization, it was hard for me to move to a position where I was trying to constrain my work hours and my role," says Lauren Dutton, MBA '97, who has two sons, ages 2 and 4. Dutton recently left NewSchools Venture Fund and plans to do consulting for 10 to 15 hours per week—a solution some say is an excellent way to make part-time work viable. "I think at some point I'll go back. The real test is how hard that will be to do."

The decision to stay home is sometimes a result more of chance than of any grand plan—for men as well as women.

Liggett and her husband, Dave Liggett, MBA '83, reached turning points in their careers at the same time about a decade ago. They had just had their fourth child and felt that between the two of them, they could dedicate 60 to 80 hours a week to work outside the home.

"Ideally, we would each contribute 30" of those hours, Dave Liggett says. "But the reality is, you can't get good-paying jobs that do that."

Emily Liggett had been job-sharing and was considering quitting altogether. Then his high-level job with a pharmaceutical company disappeared in an acquisition, and she was offered an executive position with Raychem.

"I said, 'OK, I know I don't have a job, and she has some very good opportunities,'" Dave Liggett says.

Through two cross-country moves and several job changes, they have followed her career and he has primarily stayed home with their children, who today range in age from 11 to 22. He has done a few part-time stints and is now substitute teaching, but he has not tried to return to the pharmaceutical industry. "At this point I don't feel that I could move back into doing what I was doing with any great success," he says.

And—like many of those who stop working for a time, then go back to work in a different field or start their own business—Dave Liggett is not certain he would want to go back to his old job in any case. "I think your interests change," he says.

The difficulty of re-entry is one of the main reasons that some people advise caution about stopping out. Salaries can stall. Divorce can force an at-home spouse back to work. And career breaks make it difficult to reach the top echelons of any field. For these reasons—and often because they are committed to their professions—some women do juggle children and demanding careers.

Katherine August-deWilde, MBA '75, chief operating officer, executive vice president, and director of First Republic Bank, says she always knew she would continue to work after she had children. "Therefore, we arranged our lives accordingly." August-deWilde hired professional help, including a nanny and a household manager.

"It is important to look at the costs and benefits—personal, professional, and economic—on a long-term basis. There's no question that it's a better economic situation" over the long term to keep working, she says. "If you're a corporate treasurer and you drop out of the workforce, 10 years later, if you haven't kept up, you generally can't return to that corporate treasurer job."

It may even be difficult for a re-entering worker to get a lower level job, though views differ about whether that's because employers won't hire returnees for those jobs or the women don't want them.

Part of the problem may be that employers aren't open to creative solutions, says Michelle Clayman, MBA '79, managing partner, chief investment officer, and founder of New Amsterdam Partners. "But equally on the other side, some women I talk to aren't necessarily realistic. Every field changes. I talk to people and they haven't necessarily kept up with the developments in the field."

For those who want to pursue a high-level career and raise children, the key is a strong support system. "Particularly if you're going to have more than one child and pursue an active career, you have to be willing to delegate" activities, says Mayree Clark, MBA '81, a partner at AEA Holdings. "I don't want to see women have their kids and check out because they feel like they've fallen off the career track and can't get back in."

Adds August-deWilde: "I think people are giving up a lot. In addition to professional success, family and personal life are often much richer when a woman is actively engaged in the business world."

Although individuals' decisions about career and family are intensely personal, the collective decisions of workers have broader ramifications. Some observers worry that if some women stop out to stay at home with children, employers may be less likely to invest time and money training other women. Others note that it will be difficult for women to develop high-powered business networks if there aren't many of them in top positions. A few even question whether the limited spots at the GSB should be given to people who aren't going to continue with their careers.

However, it's not clear how easy it would be to predict who will continue working without a break, who will stop out and return, and who will leave the workforce altogether.

"I always thought I would work full time," says Laura Spivy, MBA> '97, who is at home with children ages 6, 4, and 2. "I think you kind of figure it out as you go." But Spivy understands the dismay of those who feel that women should keep working. "You don't want to be just another statistic of a woman who dropped out."

Part of the reason that women make "stark choices" between working full time and leaving entirely is that "organizations and the structure of work make it very, very hard to slow down," Meyerson says. Linda Bialecki, MBA '79, who runs a Wall Street recruiting firm, adds that at many companies, "women are not recognized and rewarded." This raises a fundamental question: Is this lack of middle ground a failure on the part of employers, or is it an unalterable result of a competitive business environment?

"As you move up, the variation in ability is minimal," O'Reilly says. And if two workers have similar abilities, "then you promote the one that is working harder. If one is willing to work 40 hours and the other 60 hours a week, as the representative of shareholders who are interested in the best organization possible, who will I promote? The one who works hard. That's the problem from the employer's perspective."

O'Reilly and others point out, however, that there are limits to how much work one person can do and still be effective. And some warn that managers may measure hours spent on the job because it's easier than measuring results.

"If hours worked or face time is the criteria used, employees who can be very effective and organized may get penalized," says Cisco's Allwood, who wants policies that lead to "employee retention, engagement, loyalty, and productivity." Cisco is focused on helping managers find ways to accurately evaluate performance and measure contributions, she says, and also strives to make workers of diverse backgrounds feel included.

"We know that the best teams are the most diverse. They bring creativity and innovation, factors we depend upon heavily for our future success," Allwood says.

Some managers, such as GSB Dean Robert Joss, argue that organizations benefit from accommodating more women managers. At a recent function for alumnae who are working on women's issues, Joss said profitability improved at two banking organizations he led when he added more women managers to the mix. The women, he says, brought differing perspectives and higher standards to what had been "old boys'" networks.

O'Reilly cites the SAS Institute, America's largest privately held software company, as an example of an employer who has successfully set a 35-hour work week as standard. Deloitte and Touche, he says, "takes very seriously work-life balance and has set up programs so women and men can go part time during the heavy childrearing years. It is a good policy for them because there is a great shortage of accountants."

DeAnne Aguirre, Sloan '94, a senior vice president and geographic leader of the western region for Booz Allen Hamilton, says her company permits both women and men to slow down their careers without having them grind to a halt. For example, an internal rotation program allows workers to opt into jobs that don't require much travel for a few years, then rotate back into the regular career track. For those who decide to take a break from the workforce, Booz Allen is piloting a program where they can do occasional contract work for the company.

"When they do decide to come back to the workforce, we're hoping that they don't look anywhere else," Aguirre says.

For future GSB gradates, these decisions remain hypothetical. Even current students don't know how flexible their employer will be or what sort of job their partner will have, but male or female, they are considering how having children could affect their career.

Second-year MBA student Lauren Struck wonders if even the possibility that she might have children will make people view her differently. "Have I already been marked, before having a chance to prove myself in the workplace, as someone who isn't quite as serious about the job?"

Says her classmate Brooke Blumenstein, "I feel strongly about working because I never want to lose my sense of independence."

Male students also ask class speakers about work-life balance issues, O'Reilly says, in his Leadership Perspectives course.

As he neared graduation last June, Julio Gonzalez, MBA '06, brought up the issue to other men in the student newspaper: "You probably have a man-friend who has confided that he also wants work-life balance and a workplace culture that treats the women in his life with respect," he wrote. "My point is that this set of issues is getting harder to dismiss."

Back to Top

• Stanford Business Home
• This Issue's Table of Contents
• Search the Magazine

 

FEATURES IN THIS ISSUE

• Work-Life Integration
• When Women at the GSB Were Few
• Why Some Ideas Stick: It's Simple
• Boomers Transplant to Nonprofits
• Father-Daughter Team Tilts with Quixote
   

School Initiatives with Focus on Alumnae

The GSB is taking steps to help alumnae at all stages of their careers. Programs and initiatives include:

A RESIDENTIAL PROGRAM FOR ALUMNAE
Sponsored by Lifelong Learning, this Back-to-School program from March
2-4 will address personal leadership styles and how to deal with power. [Details]

WOMEN'S HISTORY VIDEO
A video created by Frankie Jones Danly, MBA '06, called An Ongoing Revolution: A History of Women at the Stanford GSB, is available for viewing online. [Video]

WOMEN'S INITIATIVE
Alumnae began working with the School in 2005 to support and foster a network of success for women admits, students, and alumnae in four areas: admissions, alumnae outreach, case and curriculum development, and student life.
 

Other Online Resources

(More information is available at alumni.gsb.stanford.edu/women/)

WOMEN ALUMNAE IN MANAGEMENT (WAM)
Created in 2005, this networking group has chapters in Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area. [Details]

WOMEN IN MANAGEMENT (WIM)
A student-led group, WIM provides mentoring guidance and opportunities to hear outside speakers. [Details]

WOMEN'S DIRECTORY
A subset of the alumni directory this online resource helps women network with other women. [Directory]

ALUMNI SURVEY
Complete details of the GSB Alumni survey. [password required]