Jack Welch on women's work

Former GE CEO Jack Welch is in the hospital today, reportedly for a minor infection. But I wonder if his sudden internment has anything to do with the backlash coming at him after his speech to an HR conference recently.

Bad news for young women working their way up the ladder.

"There's no such thing as a work-life balance," Welch announced. "We'd love to have more women moving up faster, but they've got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one."

He explained that taking time off for family can offer a nice life, but the chances of rising to the top on that path are...nil.

He tried to cushion the blow.

"That doesn't mean you can't have a nice career," he smiled.

A similarly provocative statement was made a few years ago by former WPP creative chief Neil French who contended that women can't head ad agencies because their roles as caregivers and childbearers prevent them from putting in the long hours.

It's not that I necessarily disagree. A work-life balance IS an impossible feat, an inconvenient fact that came as a rude surprise to lots of boomer women who'd been led to believe otherwise. The "have it all" promise, unfortunately, is a crock. Sometimes, lots of times, you have to choose between your kids and your job, the playdate or the client, the school play or the important pitch.

But the balance is impossible for anyone to achieve, whether or not you've got a vagina.

In Welch and French's generation, men had the choice of outsourcing the job of tending kids and home to a wife conditioned not to make him feel guilty for it. In fact, to feel grateful that she herself "didn't have to work."



But sons raised by those dads have a different outlook. Many want to be around for their kids as they'd wished their dads had been around for them. (Some may want to be around a little too much--see alpha dads.) Childraising, with all its joys and vicissitudes, is no longer a topic verboten in conference rooms as it seemed to be when I got into the business. The other day, I rode an elevator with two guys who spent 34 floors debating the merits of cloth versus disposable. Men are taking parental leaves. Going on school trips. Coming in late after drop-off. These men don't consider work-life balance a problem their wives must grapple with alone if they want to go out and pursue a career. Unfortunately, most of these men don't run companies yet.

The real disservice Welch and French did was to use their stature to reinforce longheld convictions many men in senior management still harbor privately. And by doing so, helping ensure that women remain less likely to make it to the top.

If a male [boss]...is convinced that [a female worker] s extremely limited in her ability and value...would you expect him to offer the same support and guidance and consideration he gives the men? Might that woman keep herself down on the farm when her leader conveys in countless ways she's not as good as the boys? Might she respond with less than her best effort when the leader expects little of her? Might she want to leave, not to have babies but because the conditions for her to succeed don't exist and the message she can't succeed is too discouraging?

--Nancy Vonk, CCO, Ogilvy, Toronto responding to French

 in a blog post that ostensibly got him fired

Twenty years ago, Business Week coined "The Mommy Track" to describe the "nice career" Welch says is the only one available to women with kids. If things are to change finally, more men have to speak up about their own need for work-life balance.

Ironically, the recession may help. Apparently, it's hitting men harder than women, creating a greater number of stay-at-home dads. Men who are coming to value the work done by women "who don't work." So that once they return to the 9 to 5, they'll be apt to shoulder more of it, understanding the necessity of doing so if their wives are to compete meaningfully for that promotion.

alpha dads

First sightings were in Brooklyn.

According to Amy Sohn in New York Magazine: These are the men you see chastising their wives for not dressing the baby warmly enough or using only the three-point latch in the stroller, not the five. They insist on pushing the stroller on family outings, they crowd their kids on the jungle gyms, they spend hours online researching high chairs.

I'd never had opportunity to meet one myself. The species didn't exist when I was birthing babies in the 1980s. Then, you had to make an appointment with a father to get him to watch his own kids-- which meant his being in the same room with them while he read the Journal.

So when an urgent project I am working on at the agency had to be postponed a few weeks because a team member was out on paternity leave, my brain did a high-five: things really are changing in the right direction for women if men are beginning to sign up for home duty.

Rick came back for the meeting that couldn't happen without him and began it by passing around photos of his newly born son. The scene made me feel all warm and fuzzy: a corporate dad grinning helplessly at his baby's pictures, smitten as any new mom, hungry to hear how much the baby resembles his father, how smart he looks even in his hospital-issued dunce cap.

Someone raised the issue of of childcare and Rick said that he and his wife were in search of a nanny. His wife wouldn't go back to work until the right one was found. Mothers of older kids threw out a few names, but Rick shook his head.

"We have specific criteria," he said, adjusting oblong glasses at the bridge of his nose.

What kind of criteria?

"We want a Tibetan."

"A what?" said my partner, a practical woman wearing boots her teenage daughter cast off after buying them for a Halloween costume.

"We want--we need a nanny from Tibet. Because of the culture. Tibetans believe that as soon as a child is born, it's a god. We decided we could only leave our child all day in the care of someone who'd worship him."

You're going to Tibet to find a nanny?

A fleeting smile. "Haven't you heard? There's a Tibetan nanny connection in Brooklyn. We're looking to plug ourselves into that."

I imagined Park Slope bustling with women in colorful clothing pushing Bugaboo strollers the size of thrones, babies inside made to believe they are Buddhas.

"My kids are being raised to know their place," muttered my partner.

It occurred to me that equal opportunity parenting isn't quite the panacea I'd imagined. But perhaps as more and more fathers weigh in, the balance on the scale will swing to extremes until finally it settles somewhere in the middle.