Dive Brief:
- For working women who want to achieve "work-life balance" -- forget about it, according to an article at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
- Dede Bartlett, a retired executive at ExxonMobil and Philip Morris who raised two children while she held senior positions in corporate affairs and philanthropy for those Fortune 500 firms, noted during a recent symposium on women and leadership at Carlow University, that the concept of "achieving harmony while juggling professional and home life is a myth that only exists in Hallmark cards."
- To the contrary, she added the stress many women face when trying to divide work and family ranks among the leading reasons why relatively few women reach CEO and other job corporate jobs.
Dive Insight:
“Let’s eliminate the word ‘balance,’” Bartlett told attendees. “It sets everyone up for frustration and disappointment.”
A study released in October by Catalyst Inc., a New York nonprofit that tracks women in business, found women held 22, or 4.4%, of chief executive jobs at Standard & Poor’s 500 companies, the Post-Gazette reported. In 2013, women held 14.6% of executive positions at Fortune 500 firms, a separate Catalyst study said.
Despite that situation and the myth of work-life balance for women, Bartlett, who today works on domestic violence cessation and promoting science/technical fields to young women, told attendees that she does have some optimism about the future, mainly because two women are currently in the race for U.S. president, so it’s a "historic time to be addressing female leadership."