Work life balance
Or should I even call it:
Women in the workplace?
This may be the hottest topic on my mind at the moment. Not that it is more important than the wedding prep, all that I am learning at INSEAD, or the exploration of recruitment opportunities... But it is certainly a common element of all those.
As Anne Marie Slaughter mentioned in her article "Women can't have it all", this may not be a life-or-dead topic and is not even close to being the most significant issue that women face worldwide. There are single moms out there, as well as moms in very poor families that, rather than thinking about their dream jobs and equal opportunities among genders, need to ensure that their salary (together with their husband's) is enough for their family to survive. Whoever, it is striking how most of the explanations and solutions to this problem don't seem to be entirely true.
In Portugal, more women apply to college, more women graduate from college and, on average, with better grades. Women have theoretically the same opportunities and education than men. So why is Portugal one of the countries yet to have a minimum one woman on every board?
Is it a matter of commitment? Is it the famous Sheryl Sandberg "ambition gap"? I cannot believe I am the only committed ambitious girl in the world. In fact, my experiences both at INSEAD and at BCG have shown me that I am certainly not. Is it the system's fault? School and working schedules are still not aligned, maternity leaves are yet not gender-equal in most countries in the world, face time at the office still matters, and so on. Is it social pressure? Are women just not meant to be as or more successful than men?
Finding the right partner helps. All successful women who are not single claim that they were only able to have a reasonable work-life balance thanks to their husbands. In that sense, I could hardly be luckier. Gorda will have my back at all times and he even says that he won't mind working slightly less hours when we have kids. But is that enough? Will I be ok with leaving part of the childcare to him? Do men have the same instinct as women? Am I replaceable? Better, do I want to be replaceable? No!!! Can both of us contribute and still ensure we reach our goals? Is that possible? Tell me, tell me.
It's frustrating not to have an answer to all this questions, but is reassuring to think like Slaughter: "In sum, having a supportive mate may well be a necessary condition if women are to have it all, but it is not sufficient". At least having the right hubby helps!
This is a crucial/ life-changing year in my life. Somehow, I managed to decide to explore all vectors possible. There's one MBA, a wedding, a new house and eventually an entire career on the table. I just decided I want to run a marathon by the end of 2017 too. Coming soon, there will be promotions and children on the table too. How to deal with all these? And how to succeed?
I will have to smartly decide when it is going to be the right time to get pregnant, bearing in mind that the more I invest on my career now, the quicker I will reach my dream job - but also that the later I have kids, the higher the chances of not having a hard time getting pregnant and/or not having the right physical capabilities to raise my kids. In my opinion, the trick may be having the kids still at a relatively young (not old) age, but adapting your lifestyle and working style accordingly. That may require searching for a job as much predictable as possible, as well as working still quite long hours but organized in different ways (from home, before anyone is already awake or even late in the evening, after putting the kids in bed). Another trick may be putting time horizons in perspective. Maybe I don't need to be a COO in 10 years - doing so in in 15 years or more is quite an achievement too.
This period at INSEAD, I have more than one fluffy classes. One of them - Psychological Issues in Management - has been especially relevant to me. On one hand, it covers all the topics mentioned in this post (that have filled my headspace so heavily in the recent past). On the other hand, our professor is probably the most inspiring one I've had at INSEAD - a successful, determined, good looking female, with amazing communication skills and an impressive touch and feel for anything related to social and psychological topics.
For our last PIM class, we had to write our "10-year profile statement" and share it with a few of our colleagues. Below, you can see a sanitized version of what I wrote:
10 years after graduating from INSEAD, I am leaving in Portugal, with my husband and three kids. I have recently been promoted to COO of a solid Portuguese firm based in Lisbon but with relevant presence worldwide. I work a lot, have quite some responsibility (and the stressful challenges attached to it) but somehow manage to enjoy much more visibility over my life and schedule than I used to when I was a Consultant at BCG.
I now have 10-hour days instead of the previous average of 14-hour ones, and organize them in a different way. I keep doing my early morning workout with my husband. I leave the kids at school and he picks them up in the afternoon. We meet at home around 7 pm, and enjoy a family activity and dinner together, after monitoring the kids’ baths. After the kids are back in bed (early), I work from home for about two more hours. This has been quite a shift from my life 11 years before, only possible due to a good reflective process throughout my MBA.
In fact, at some point, I made the hard decision of leaving BCG and entering the corporate world. I knew it would be reflected in a slower career progression and a significant cut in my paycheck. However, I was urged to ensure a reasonable work-life balance that the consulting world failed at providing me. Such transition into the corporate world resulted in certain challenges, both personal and professional. Personally, I had to delay (by a couple of years) a desired first pregnancy in order to prove myself first in the new job. Professionally, I had to adjust to a slower-paced environment, to a less diverse day-to-day life, and to working with the same team at all times.
Is this too optimistic? Is this totally unreal? Is this selfish? Is this not feminine? Is it something a MBA student feels obliged to write? I will tell you what it is: it's quite aspirational and eventually not feasible. But eventually it may be slightly less aspirational if I adjust the timeframe (15-year profile instead? 20? Even more?) or if the world changes in the meantime.
Being concerned about the success of women in the workplace is a crucial step so that, one day, it becomes a non-topic. Until then, discussion about gender discrimination, inequality, and the necessary changes in regulation, mindset, social norms, quotas, and more, cannot be avoided.
I am sorry if you think that I am egocentric for being concerned about my future professional success and its compatibility with the personal life I dream about. Let me put it in a different way. The opportunities of each generation depend on the behaviors and fights of the earlier generations. As Slaughter pointed out, if more women with the same concerns as mine fight for what they want and raise awareness about this issue, eventually it will be easier for the future women leaders to make it to the top.
Once, in a conference I help organizing for the MBA Portugal Network, Rui Diniz shared with the audience his key to success: managing the professional and personal lives hand-in-hand. Having a stable happy personal life is crucial for anyone to succeed in their professional life. Every relevant professional decision should be discussed as a couple and can only go through if there is personal support to it. Being professionally successful, in turn, helps having a comfortable personal life.
My plan for the future is to always balance my career with my future husband and kids, not forgetting aging parents and social commitments. Easy, uh? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...!
Martinha:
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Most likely the deepest of your mbaround series.
Having a vision and defining an ambition about professional matters may never be seen as selfishness. Even more so when the matter crosses concerns as important as work-life balance. And I ‘ve learned and tested better than most people the importance of such a balance in what concerns one of the parts (e.g. family) supporting the other one (e.g. work).
I remember having ambitions about my own professional objectives (often not confessed to anyone else) ever since I was a student and having ambitions and a vision about my own personal/family life soon after (even before starting “my own” family). Those long-term goals never went away from the background of my mind (when eventually fulfilled, one sets new ones) and, in spite of that, most of my career decisions were mostly driven, motivated or somehow constrained by our – Mom’s and mine – capacity to optimize our own view of what should be an ideal work-life balance. This went as far as to determine the number of children we were able to have!
So: no, your vision is not selfish and, let me add, it is not too optimistic or unreal! As you very well put it, a vision needs to be eventually unfeasible to deserve to be posted as aspirational. And don’t bother too much in establishing the time-frame. Life will take care of that; sense and sensibility will drive your own ambition and pace in a natural way. As life unfolds, what matters is to never unbalance (for too long) the work-life equation; and every time it gets a bit shaky you will see how naturally you and the family will bring it back to balance again. It might happen that the pace of getting closer to fulfilling your main goals will go through faster at times and slowly in other periods.
There is only one thing that you need to keep alive: awareness that happiness is a positive combination of many components. But in that combination, my view is that it requires positive contributions from work – implying a sense of fulfilment and of achievement – but also, and mostly, a positive contribution from your personal/family life, i.e. a positive balance between work life and personal life, in which both are positive.
As for the gender, maternity, childcare, women instinct, quotas, asymmetry of opportunities and the like, don’t bother too much! The trend is towards a growing societal conviction that things need to change and will change in the right direction. It will not be easy, but it is in your hands to act towards making it possible, evermore possible, to succeed in a professional career and to succeed too in your personal life, in your marriage, as a caring and loving mother, in spite of all those obstacles.
I am absolutely sure of that. And that makes me and, I am sure, Mom and Miguel, very happy.
With love,
Pai