Women in the Workplace

To the men…

Men, if you were married and independently wealthy, would you prefer that your wife be some ultra-successful person too (in whatever business she was working in– ie, think power couple), or would you prefer that she didn’t have a job/career, and just relied on you to support her?

Several factors add in to this equation…

People who are very successful, tend to hold positions that carry a lot of responsibility.
Let’s say he’s the CFO of a major corporation. She’s the CEO of a major corporation. Hence that whole power couple thing. They both spend a significant amount of their time working or attending functions, seminars, conferences, dinners, etc. that help them keep their businesses on top. And this isn’t a new thing… To get to the positions they have, they’ve both been doing those things for many years. They both feel a sense of accomplishment when it comes to their professional lives, enjoy their jobs, and they’re both respected greatly by colleagues. Together, their net income is in the millions, but aside from the one week a year they make sure they both take off, they don’t spend much time together.

Now maybe that’s okay for some… but my feeling is, you should marry someone because you want to spend time with him/her. If two people are married to their jobs, then they aren’t really married to each other. (This is like people who have children, and then hire a nanny to raise them, never spending time with their own kids… why have them in the first place?)

So in this case, let’s say the woman gives up her career to stay home. The benefits… they are still living an extremely comfortable life on his income alone, and she’s now available to spend time with him in the evenings and on weekends, and whenever his schedule permits him to take vacation or time off. So they see each other a lot more. The down side is that the satisfaction she had from working her ass off and making it to such a respected position in senior management, isn’t as evident on a daily basis anymore. Sure, it’s an accomplishment that no one can ever take away from her, but the daily sense of satisfaction she once received from doing her job– something she enjoyed– is gone. So is that the best thing for them as individuals, and as a couple?

Here’s another scenario…

A couple wins the lottery.
A middle-class couple who’ve essentially resigned themselves to having to work full time their whole lives just to be able to afford a comfortable living, sit down at the t.v. one night to find out that they’ve won the MegaLottery. Nice… They both decide that they’ve spent enough of their lives working, and now want to enjoy all the things they couldn’t afford to do before, from simply taking days off work to go sit at the beach, to taking vacations together, to taking up spear fishing which they’ve always wanted to try. Both quit their jobs and do all these things they’ve wanted to do for so long. Life is good. Eventually, being home all the time gets a little boring, so she takes up golf and he takes on a philanthropy project. Life is still good.

So, I asked myself this question. Now mind you… I’ve had a job since I was 16 years old, sometimes more than one at a time. I’ve paid for pretty much everything I own, and paid for much of my college education (a combination of work study, academic scholarships, and student loans). I chose to work in a highly competetive industry, struggled for years to get my career in motion, and am finally seeing my hard work pay off. In short, I’m doing pretty well, I’m good at what I do, and I’m proud of how far I’ve come. I learned not so long ago, to stop being so critical of myself and start relishing in my accomplishments because I worked my ass off to achieve them and I deserve to pat myself on the back every now and then. So, in some ways, while I’m not defined by my career, it is certainly a part of who I am, and I like those things about myself.
If I married a man who wanted me to quit working because he made more than enough money for the both of us, and the financial component of why I work was suddenly lifted away, I’m not sure if I’d stop working or not. I think a part of me would feel less self-worth than I did when I was proving to myself daily that I can achieve what I want, and I’d miss the good feeling of exhaustion when you’ve put in a hard day’s work and it’s time to just enjoy yourself.

On the other hand, part of me thinks, what a gift! What a spectacular gift to give someone else– to tell them that you’ll take on their financial burdens so that they can enjoy the precious little time we have on earth. Look at how many people go to such extremes by marrying people they don’t love, by filing frivolous lawsuits, etc. just so they can have that very thing. And how great would it be to actually have the choice to spend time with the person you want to spend your life with, and your children, and your parents, and everyone who’s important to you because those 40-60 hours that were owned by your mortgage company, or your car insurance company, or your cable company, now belong to you? So many couples live in the same house but never see each other, and that’s definitely not how I want to be with the man in my life.

I was listening to a tape of some motivational speaker who was trying to pep people up and get them to join whatever franchising marketing pyramid thingie he was making his millions off of. The stuff he was selling was complete bullshit, but he did say something that I found interesting… He said, “Now don’t boo me… but I’m going to honestly tell you that I think a woman’s place is in the home.” Of course, people boo’d (which is what he wanted–the power of suggestion, right?). Then he went on to say, “And a man’s place is also in the home, enjoying the time he has with his wife, and children, and the people who are important to him.” Then everyone cheered. So I came to the conclusion, that somehow, if women not working has to do with some sort of notion that women shouldn’t work, it’s bad (in the eyes of society). But if it has to do with the notion that no one should have to work, it’s suddenly the best idea ever.

I don’t know, honestly, what I would do if I were in that situation. I would hope that my husband would support whatever my choice was– whether to continue working even if we didn’t need the money, or to quit working and enjoy the people in my life who won’t be around forever. I guess it would be a good problem to have…