Assignment Reflection
The essay below is a completed case study for a public administration course at Auburn University. For the case study, students were asked to read an article written by author Anne Marie Slaughter on women in the workforce, specifically in high-ranking government jobs. In the article, Slaughter suggests that, despite changes in gender norms over time, women still face unprecedented challenges at work.
Organizational culture plays a large role in inhibiting women from attaining a healthy work-life balance. A pervasive culture of "time macho," as Slaughter calls it, has created an environment where time is cheap and women are expected to put in the extra hours with little flexibility and few accommodations. An important takeaway from this idea is the suggestion to increase flexibility across the workforce regardless of gender. Organizational culture may be more easily overcome if women don't fear long-term penalties for taking advantage of needed work accommodations.
Women in Government: Can They Have It All?
From the glass ceiling to the wage gap, women have seldom had it easy in the workforce. Slowly but surely, as women have begun to enter and rise through the ranks of previously male-dominated fields, they are encountering a new obstacle: work-life balance. Battling organizational cultures that prioritize work before personal responsibilities, many women in high-level government jobs have questioned whether “having it all” is possible or sustainable. With considerations like these on the rise, in conjunction with more women leaving the workforce to put their family first, the question arises: can women today balance family life with a fast-paced government job, and, if not, what needs to change?
When asked if today’s female, high-level government employees can “have it all,” author and professor Anne Marie Slaughter would likely reply with a resounding “no.” Slaughter defines “having it all” as the ability to balance the daily responsibilities of said job, while also maintaining a healthy family life (Slaughter). In her experience, the balance was untenable. After two years in her dream job as the director of policy planning for the State Department, Slaughter left (like many female government employees before her) to pursue a more active role in her family life, particularly in caring for her two teenaged sons. Gendered double standards around working late nights and travelling for work have underscored the difficulty of maintaining high-level government jobs for women. As Slaughter points out, while many working women are technically often faced with the same decisions as their male counterparts (i.e., whether the late nights and travel are worth it) socially the scenario is framed differently between the two genders. While women are expected to feel a higher level of loyalty and responsibility to their family, “male leaders are routinely praised for having sacrificed their personal life on the altar of public or corporate service” (Slaughter). This idea is echoed by Shannon O’Hara, mother of two and an investment banker in New York, whose job requires 12 hours a day and frequent travel (Clemmitt et al., 2006). According to O’Hara, missing her kids’ events feels like being hit by a truck, but she hangs on to show her daughter that “it’s a crime” to waste her education by merely marrying a rich man instead of pursuing her goals. Gender norms, however, aren’t the only contributing factor in many women’s decision to leave the workforce; the current rigidity of organizational cultures across fields regularly forces women out, even when they’d rather continue working.
The general organizational culture pervasive in professional occupations across the U.S. displays a clear affinity for workers willing to operate at all hours with little flexibility to accommodate family life. Slaughter refers to this as the ever-pervasive “culture of time macho” (Slaughter). Rather than prioritizing time management and efficiency within scheduled work hours, Slaughter claims that more businesses (especially law firms) are racking up billable hours under the assumption that “time is cheap” when, in reality, “that time doesn’t add a lot of value and comes at a high cost to talented employees” (Slaughter). Not only are modern employees overworked at the office, but increased time at work inherently means less time at home. This conclusion yields more consequences for women who, despite changes in gender roles over time, remain responsible for the bulk of housework including cooking, cleaning, and childrearing (Clemmitt et al.). In essence, while organizational culture can make work-life balance difficult for all employees, pervasive gender norms increase the negative implications of these expectations for women in the workforce.
While workplace culture prevents many women from entering or remaining within certain career fields, high-level government jobs can be accompanied by unique obstacles. First, government can be considered a male-dominated field. Not only can this intimidate women from considering careers in government, but it can also develop an implicit bias among government employers who may not see women as ‘fit for the job’ (Ellemers, 2014). High-level government jobs can also have significantly less flexibility than other career paths. As Slaughter mentions, part of the difficulty behind balancing work and family lies in the fact that work is often expected to be completed in the office (Slaughter). This is particularly the case when a government employee’s work involves access to classified information. While some professions like marketing or PR could be done from home, government employers may have to jump through several more hoops to ensure a high-level employee can work from home without compromising national security or sensitive information. While James Steinberg, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, had technology installed in his home to devote more time to his family, Slaughter questions how many women would be comfortable asking for similar accommodations. This, Slaughter asserts, is the result of another unique facet of government employment: the fetishization of “the one-dimensional life” (Slaughter). In government, high-level female role models often don’t have an active or exceedingly demanding family life; many either don’t have children or waiting to pursue their careers until their children were older.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed inequities in the workforce for women by further exacerbating problems. As many employees were asked to complete their work from home, women faced a new challenge: working, parenting, and facilitating their children’s online education simultaneously (Perelmen). Despite obtaining more flexibility in their work schedule, working women found themselves more overwhelmed than ever, often pushing paid work off until the wee hours of the morning to keep up with their kids during the day: a responsibility which fell disproportionately upon their shoulders rather than their spouse’s. Female workers’ precarious work-life balance again fell into disarray as schools and businesses began to reopen on different timelines (Cohen and Hsu). Considering full-time childcare is a luxury few families can afford, mothers whose jobs returned to normal operations before their child’s school system were placed between a rock and a hard place. Those unable to assemble a piecemeal childcare plan for working hours were essentially faced with the inevitability of leaving the workforce, as the pay gap virtually ensured that many working mothers earned less than their husbands.
Despite these challenges, COVID-induced workplace operational changes, like remote work and flexible working hours, can be beneficial if more schools return to normal operations and childcare is more available (Cohen and Hsu). When unencumbered by managing their children’s online class schedule, remote work may allow working mothers to skip wasted time during their commute, and flexible hours may enable them to engage in more family activities. If childcare is still difficult to obtain, however, working mothers are likely to continue experiencing the stress of simultaneously childrearing and working. For better or worse, these changes may be around for the long haul. According to Cohen and Hsu, several companies, like Pinterest and Uber, have already pledged to “offer more flexibility and resources for working parents” while others have sought to implement staggered shifts and telecommuting (Cohen and Hsu). As Slaughter suggests, though these changes to workplace culture can be beneficial for women, they are likely to be most beneficial when applied to all workers (Slaughter). This is often because women fear workplace discrimination, like being passed over for promotions, if they take advantage of these opportunities. For instance, when Princeton University changed the tenure default to an automatic one-year extension for men and women, they saw a dramatic increase in the number of employees utilizing this resource.
In conclusion, the modern working mother with a high-level government job may not be able to “have it all,” at least not until our society sees significant changes in organizational culture. Gender role adaptations over the years still leave most of the housework and childrearing to mothers, and organizations across the U.S. continue to demand longer hours and more travel. COVID-19 has instituted some beneficial changes for working parents, but only long-lasting resources made available for both mothers and fathers are likely to make a difference.
References
Clemmitt, M., Katel, P., and Prah, P. M. (2006). Future of Feminism: Are women returning
to a 1950s mindset. CQ Researcher, 16(14), 313-336.
Cohen, P. and Tiffany Hsu. (2020, June 3). Pandemic Could Scar a Generation of Working
Mothers. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/business/economy/coronavirus-working-women.html
Ellemers, N. (2014). Women at Work: How Organizational Features Impact Career
Development. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(1), 46-54. https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732214549327
Perelman, P. (2020, July 2). In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You
Can’t Have Both. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/business/covid-economy-parents-kids-career-homeschooling.html
Slaughter, A. M. (2012, July). Why Women Still Can’t Have It All. The Atlantic.