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From: toml@oliveb.UUCP (Tom Long)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Otherwise Engaged
Message-ID: <636@oliveb.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Nov-85 12:17:50 EST
Article-I.D.: oliveb.636
Posted: Wed Nov 20 12:17:50 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Nov-85 04:15:30 EST
References: <632@oliveb.UUCP> <683@lasspvax.UUCP>
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> In article <632@oliveb.UUCP> toml@oliveb.UUCP (Tom Long) writes:
> >[]
> >	I have just finished reading "Otherwise Engaged: the private lives of
> >successful career women" by Srully Blotnick.  This book reports the results
> >of a 25-year study of the lives of over 2000 women.... 
> >	A primary assertion is that when there is a conflict between marriage
> >and career, those women who favor their marriage will do better in the long
> >run that those women who favor their career. 
> 
> What do you (who may or may not have aptly summarized the findings of this
> study) mean by "do better in the long run" ?  Make more money?  Have
> better sex?  "Be Happy" ?  Have a nicer house?  More friends?  Evince more
> intellectual integrity?  Carry out their principles?  Save the world, feed
> the starving and clothe the naked?  Go boldly where no man has gone before?
> 
> > Women who sacrifice marriage
> >for a career tend to be seen by those around them (men and women) as driven,
> >brittle, and moody.
> 
> So?  After a lifetime of service to humankind, they're going to
> say at that woman's funeral ..
> 
> " oh, she was bitter and moody".  
> 
> Cheryl

	The book doesn't define success, and I don't claim to have the defini-
tive definition (!), but I will sketch a distinction that anyone can make.
A successful person is one who is happy with his life, who looks forward to
going to work in the morning, who gets along well with his colleagues.  An
unsuccessful person is one who fails all three criteria.  So far as the book
is concerned, and in my own experience, people usually test positive for all
three or negative for all three;  few are successful in one sense and failures
in another.

	The book implies that a reasonably high salary is also a criterion
of success for intelligent, well-educated working women.

	A person who has been driven, brittle, and moody can hardly be
described as serving mankind, unless he is doing a job which he alone can
do, and a job which he can do by himself.
							    Tom Long