Women At Work

Editor’s note: This article appears in the latest magazine edition of Talk Business & Politics, which you can read here.

Two things happened in May 2012 that changed my career path significantly. My son was cast in the school play at Cow #3. An important client meeting was changed at the last minute to conflict with the play. I wasn’t a physics major, but I knew I couldn’t be in two places at once.

I knew that choosing to be at my son’s play would be problematic at work. It didn’t matter that I’d prepped a coworker to give my piece of the presentation.

I knew going to the client meeting would be problematic for my son, who was already having moderate behavior issues because he was not getting enough face time with his parents, who both worked 50 hours per week or more. The suggestion from management that I get a nanny felt like lemon juice in a paper cut.

I made my choice. I went to the play. In case you’re wondering, Cow #3 in Old McDonald’s Farm killed it that morning. Two weeks later I resigned. Never say never, but I suspect I’m done with straight jobs. I honestly can’t figure out a way to follow so many of the arbitrary rules associated with most of corporate life.

It’s not like I didn’t try. I’ve worked for small family-owned companies, Fortune 100 companies, mid-size companies and non-profits. Those jobs and people taught me so much. Some were genuinely wonderful experiences. I remain close friends with several of the coworkers. But for one reason or another, the jobs themselves never quite fit properly.

I genuinely like working. So for the past two years, I’ve been working for myself. I’ve been picking up freelance clients. It’s been going well.

My story is not unique. Almost every professional woman I know has a similar tale of making Sophie’s choices. One friend was asked to come back from maternity leave far too soon. The nurse she was promised to watch her infant at the office because she was too young for daycare, turned out to be an intern with no childcare experience. She recalls giving a presentation while listening to her baby screaming on the other side of the conference room wall.

Another woman friend agreed to come in during her maternity leave for a meeting projected to last one hour. Four hours later, without a breast pump, she’d soaked through her suit. When she tried to excuse herself to manage her mortification, her boss, having never looked at her, asked why she thought she was so special to leave the meeting early.

These are the kinds of stories women tell each other over wine, sitting on the back porch trying to figure out what part of their lives they have to screw up today in order to get the rest at least partially right. We rarely, if ever, share these stories with male colleagues. If we do, we are often tagged as hysterical, angry, entitled or just bitchy. As one man told me, “Anger is not an attractive accessory on a woman.”

That’s is why reading a new report released in August by the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas, Voices of Women Report, felt so very familiar. The report is a follow-up to a study issued last year by the Women’s Foundation in conjunction with the Clinton School of Public Service and State Representative Kathy Webb, 1973/2013: A Then and Now on the Status of Women in Arkansas.

The Women’s Foundation then conducted seven focus groups across Arkansas to get richer data about how women received the information in the 1973/2013 report and what they believed were the reasons for the persistent gender gap.

SURPRISING RESULTS
According to the Voices of Women Report, many focus group participants were surprised or even “shocked” by the data. The 2013 report found significant disparities remain between men and women in the areas of employment, income and political involvement, though the gap has been closed to some extent in some areas.

“In 1970, 38 percent of Arkansas women, and women working full-time and full-year earned 60 percent in comparison to wages earned by male counterparts. In 2011, women comprised 47 percent of the labor force in Arkansas, and women working full-time and full-year earned 82 percent compared to men,” states the 1973/2013 report.

Lynette Watts, Executive Director of the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas, didn’t expect some of the reactions the focus groups revealed. “I think what surprised me the most was how much women are still struggling with just what their ‘role’ is. One caveat is that many women do not have the luxury to struggle with defining their role; they have no other choice but to work. But, for those who have the ability or opportunity, it was surprising that women seem uncomfortable making a decision to stay home, go to work, or even advance in their careers. You could hear that they were reasoning with themselves in justifying their decisions.”

The caveat Watts is referring to is one of the stated limitations of the study: approximately 70 percent of the focus group participants reported household incomes of more than $50,000, which is above the average Arkansas household income. Also, 65 percent of the women hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Median household income in Arkansas is $40,531, according to the latest Census data. That same data indicates 25.9 percent of Arkansans hold a college degree, the lowest percentage in the nation.

I fall in to the privileged group that made up the majority of these research groups. I recognize I am in an enviable position. For starters, I hold a Masters Degree, which means I have more education than 94 percent of the state of Arkansas. I also do a kind of work that lends itself to freelance projects. Even though my income can be highly variable from month to month, my husband’s income is steady and keeps us comfortable. As a modern dad, he pulls his weight on parenting duty. Most women in Arkansas don’t have those kinds of luxuries, so they end up making unwinnable choices every day to try and balance their work and their families.

One of my dear friends who worked for a Fortune 500 company was ordered to breast pump in her car, rather than the ladies’ room, after she came back to work from maternity leave. Some of the male managers could hear the pump, and found it uncomfortable. She was also made to store her breast milk in a cooler she brought from home every day in dry ice, rather than the break room fridge. Even well labeled brown bags were just too upsetting for others.

Her job was never specifically threatened. But as the person whose job provided the insurance for her family, she felt she couldn’t do anything to jeopardize her situation. Presumably, women in lower-income jobs face the same fear of job loss, but most likely for different reasons.

The report states it does not adequately address women with low-income or low education levels and recommends more research addressing what would be considered closer to “average” Arkansas women to learn what attitudes and barriers they face.

MINIMUM WAGE
One of the most obvious barriers to income parody when looking through various reports is that professions that tend to be highly feminized are some of the lowest paying professions: Leisure and hospitality, education and healthcare, and retail. These sectors employ a disproportionate number of women, and have the highest percentage of workers making minimum wage, according to an Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families report.

Arkansas Advocates is part of the “Give Arkansas a Raise” coalition. They are currently collecting signatures to get a measure to increase the minimum wage in Arkansas on the ballot in November. The state minimum wage is currently $6.25 per hour. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. A variety of metrics determine which wage an employer must pay. The coalition would like the state minimum wage to increase to $8.50 per hour.

An increase in minimum wage is one of the recommendations from the 1973/2013 report. It’s estimated 75 thousand women in Arkansas would get a pay increase if that happened.

“For most of us working on this, it’s a moral issue,” said Ellie Wheeler, Senior Policy Analyst for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. “If you play by the rules and work hard, you should be able to make it. Do we want to live in a state where people are working at two or three jobs, and still have to chose between food and the electric bill?”

That kind of choice is played out daily in food distribution centers across the state. “Every day I hear stories of moms who are working two jobs, and they’re at the food pantry to feed their kids. The stories are just heartbreaking,” said Kathy Webb, now executive director of the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, an umbrella group for food banks and hunger relief agencies across the state. “Our public discourse tends to almost vilify low-income people as lazy or as takers, but that is just not the case for people we serve. They just can’t make enough money to get by.”

Webb pointed out that in producing the 1973/2013 study, it became clear, that while some women are choosing to opt out of the workforce or politics, many are steered from very early on in life toward jobs that pay less. Once in those female-dominated sectors, women are still often passed over for department-head and boss positions.

MORE MONEY, MORE PROBLEMS
Determining where the income breakpoint is between minimum-wage female workers and high-earning female workers in terms of role-related stress is difficult to quantify, according to Dr. Margaret Reid, chair of the Department of Political Science in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas. Her emphasis of study includes female work patterns.

She says most female workers feel significant tension between work and family, but for different reasons. The tension many middle-income women feel depends on what the money they make is supposed to buy. “The perception of why one struggles is quite relative and depends on household circumstances. So the actual income is not as important as what that income needs to support.”

Meaning, the higher a household income goes, the more that income is socially expected to buy, including better schools, a house in the right neighborhood, a particular class of car, braces for kids and any myriad of extra curricular activities and trips for personal and family enrichment. It doesn’t take long for money to get tight.

This is where deeply entrenched social expectations for women derived from religion and long-held traditions can get difficult. She said it’s much more common in the South or the Bible Belt for women to be torn between careers and families because of what they’ve been taught most of their lives about appropriate roles.

In fact, several women in the focus groups cited their religious views for why they did not pursue careers outside the home. “In our faith we believe that men are to preside over their families and provide for them, while mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. They help one another as equal partners, but the roles are very different,” said a Little Rock woman, whose name was withheld for privacy.

Reid said the dilemma of choosing between family and career doesn’t have to be this hard. “Most work places have been normed to the male ideals of workers in the 1950s. There’s no reason it still has to be that way. For lots of jobs, you don’t have to be sitting at a desk in an office to get things done. And if there was more flexibility about things like that, more women could participate fully or even move up in seniority.”

Freelancing gives me the ability to change the entrenched rules that existed at former jobs. I decided if I worked for myself, then I was going to be the kind of boss I always wanted. I schedule all meetings during school hours, and I make no secret about why. I work after my son goes to bed if I need to, but I’m available to take him to math tutoring, swim and soccer practice and sometimes a Sonic slushy after school.

Reid also indicated the notion of a “second wife” comes up often with professional women in interviews and focus groups. Men often have wives who will take care of lots of details for them at home, particularly those details associated with child-rearing, so they can focus on work. So a nanny or assistant becomes desirable to take over errands and tasks that would traditionally be handled by a wife. Rarely does a middle-class income support that desire.

Several years ago, after a kind, older man who I worked for tried to solve a logistical dilemma for me, he seemed flummoxed why he was able to do this when his kids were young, but couldn’t seem to figure it out now. “Sir,” I finally said. “I don’t have a wife. That’s how you worked out these details. Your wife made this part of your life happen for you.” He thought for a few moments more, then agreed, a wife would be very nice for me.

Another friend, was listening to her male boss complain about a female employee who took another day off to care for her sick child. “She has a husband, you know. Why doesn’t he take some time off?” My friend agreed. Then she asked how many days he’d taken off when his kids were sick. The conversation ended abruptly.

WINNING A DIFFERENT WAY
Because of the institutional barriers noted by women in the focus groups, some said they’ve opted to make a difference in arenas outside business and politics.

In the political arena, the 1973/2013 report indicates that women are still underrepresented, but there have been significant increases in women in politics. It states, “As of October 2012, there were eight women in the 35-member State Senate (compared to one in 1973) and 22 women in the 100-seat State House of Representatives (compared to two in 1973.)”

Many participants sited the ruthless nature of politics as a reason many women are reluctant to run for office. “Women want to do what’s logical and what’s best for everybody and if you’ve got to fight the people who don’t want that, it’s just not worth your time. You can spend your time making a difference in another area, like through foundations or doing volunteer work,” said an El Dorado woman who participated in the study.

In the forty years since the original state of Arkansas women report was released, there is no doubt, women in Arkansas have made progress in some important areas. I certainly have more career options and entrepreneurial support than women before me.

But there is also no doubt, complex socio-economic structures, ideologies and power systems govern many aspects of these issues. It will be interesting to see what corporate culture with regard to parents will look like once the last group of hold-outs from previous administrations has retired. There are a lot of people hoping a change is gonna come.