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Top White House aide's exit renews focus on difficult job-vs.-family issue

Sunday, May 05, 2002

By Ann McFeatters, Post-Gazette National Bureau

WASHINGTON -- High-powered women in Washington are buzzing because no ulterior motive has surfaced to explain why Karen Hughes left her influential White House post to spend more time with her family. Political intrigue, lost clout, the need for more money -- none of the usual factors appears at play in Hughes' decision to relinquish power and take her unhappy husband and teen-age son back to Texas.

At a National Women's Leadership Summit this past week, 100 top women in business, philanthropy, education, religion, medicine and law talked a lot about the Hughes resignation, effective this summer, because it revives the long-standing issue of finding the proper balance between work and family -- a subject that few men discuss at conferences.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Ca., the first woman to win a leadership position among House Democrats, said she couldn't have handled her current job, an insatiable thief of time, when her children were young. "This is very difficult for women," she mused. "But we have to be careful about drawing conclusions and approach this [issue] on a case-by-case basis or it would be very discouraging for young women."

Of more than 12,000 members of Congress since the nation was founded, only 215 have been women. Only 29 of 500 Cabinet appointees have been women, according to The White House Project, a non-partisan group that fosters women leaders. Fifty-one countries have more women in the lower houses of their national legislatures than the United States.

Women make up half the workforce but lead only six Fortune 500 companies. Only 12 percent of corporate directors are women.

Many of the women at the summit were married with children, contrary to the notion that successful women are frequently childless and unhappy, a point of view espoused in a new book by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children."

The yearning for more family time expressed by most of the women comes coupled with a belief that corporations expect too much from employees, that productivity shouldn't be measured by 80-hour work weeks, that companies hold too many pointless meetings, and that as long as male characteristics are assigned to work roles women will always be at a disadvantage.

More women are starting their own businesses to try to remake the workplace, according to a study done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Another study found that three-fourths of corporate men and 97 percent of male lawyers say women no long face discrimination in business or law, while most women in both fields say they do.

Sheila Wellington, president of Catayst, a non-profit research organization, said a recent Catalyst study of men and women between 25 and 35 found three-quarters of both sexes seek a loving family above all else. But 60 percent of men said their jobs were more important than a wife's duties; women felt home and work responsibilities were equally important.

Lotte Bailyn, a professor of management at MIT, said , "It's wonderful to [be surrounded by] exceptional women. But it occurs to me that there are a lot of unexceptional men [in leadership.] We need to let more unexceptional women reach the same levels of leadership."

As the women discussed strategies for promoting more women into leadership positions, inevitably they returned to the subject of balancing family and job. One woman, a former top financial officer in an aerospace company, said she finally decided, "You can't do it all [so she] quit the job for a less demanding one. My 15-year-old daughter said, 'Mom, you were here but you weren't here.' You can be on the cover of Fortune, but nobody cares when it's all over. It's your children that matter."

But another woman, a labor economist, leaped to her feet to exclaim, "I staffed out [hired child care] and I have one child at Harvard, another at Barnard and another at National Public Radio. You can do it all. There are many ways to raise great kids."

A woman who was the first female handling sales and training for one of the largest investment firms said she raised four children while working. She said, "There are no right or wrong answers on when or if to have children. It's a personal decision. Be a role model; if you don't see it, you can't be it."

Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive officer of the Public Broadcasting Service and former president of CNN Productions and Time Inc. Television, said, "I'm uncomfortable talking about whether [women leaders should] have children or not. This divided women 30 years ago."

Judith Rodin, president of the University of Pennsylvania, said, "Yes, but young people are asking us about this. They're telling us they fear they can't have it all. I tell young women, 'You can have it all. Men do. What we want is the same range of choices that men have.' If women want to stay home, fine. If not, fine. But when we criticize those decisions, we make it harder for young women."