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From: glinj!attmail!woody3!woody1!mordor!galdor!gcf@uu.psi.com
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Women and Career
Message-ID: <1991Jun28.225950.26712@aero.org>
Date: 28 Jun 91 22:59:50 GMT
References: <143634@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
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either bcwst@unix.cis.pitt.EDU ("Bruce C. Wible") or Prashanth 
Cannanbilla writes:
| ...
| It might seem, that these days to see Woman as head of a organisation
| or leading another bunch of women and men in the organisation is quite
| a common place. I would though like to know how many of these woman
| have successfully managed their career and their Family life ? I have
| come to know of lots of women have had either to give up one or
| another and they have always seemed to do this with some regret.
| 
| I have also observed that those women who think they are the
| independent kind seem to be the most confused or worst effected ones
| since they take their sense of independence and convert it into a
| unbending and non compromising attitude which if married kills the
| marriage or else if unmarried they become extremely closed to
| compromise and they get rigid and most end up getting more and more
| cynical about Men.  ...

There is probably a lot of truth in these observations,
stereotypical as they seem to be.  Often truth underlies 
banalities, platitudes, and stereotypes in a most annoying 
manner.

However, the conflicts between business success and family life
are not confined to one sex.  Many men succeed in business at
the cost of their family lives, and possibly vice versa.  Many 
men who are good at corporate politics can't get along with 
their wives or other family members.  The conflicts between the
values of family life and the values of the world, which in the
case of the United States and probably most other cultures are
severe, often pose this choice.  Gender does not seem to have
a lot to do with it.

The conflicts between business success and family life have been
noticed more in the case of women because it has only been in
the last generation or so that middle-class women have moved
into the business world, and many of them did so as conscious
adults.  For the majority of men, work in the world has been an
assumption from early childhood, and its conditions have not 
been much questioned.  One of the great contributions of
feminism has been the questioning of those conditions.

Of course, working-class women have been working outside the
home since the beginning of the industrial revolution; it has 
often been necessary for survival.  But the working class has 
been inarticulate, people to be used up and discarded, and the 
higher, more articulate orders have seldom been very concerned 
about the personal lives of those upon whom their status rests.
--
Gordon Fitch  |  mydog!gcf@panix.com