I am a mother. According to US Census statistics, roughly 80 per cent of women in the USA also are mothers. This interests me, because the skin care profession is nearly 100% about women: women pursue their licensing as professional skin therapists, women become their clients for treatments, and women purchase skin care products for use at home. These combined statistics suggest that most of Dermalogica’s clients are mothers, or will one day become mothers.

So, I am absolutely pro-mom. But here’s the thing: being a mother may be bad news for your career, at least in America.

Author Nanette Fonda observes that a recent US government report confirmed that the number of women in management positions in the US increased by only 1 per cent between 2000 and 2007, raising the percentage from 39 to 40 per cent. Seems pretty dismal.

Fonda, author of the book “The Custom-Fit Workplace”, and participant in momsrising.org, a group dedicated to ending discrimination in the workplace, believes that because most women are mothers, and because most domestic duties fall to mothers (versus fathers), the conventional career-path to management is derailed.

Here’s her handy acronym (“W.O.M.E.N.”):
W – Work-family spillover
O – Lack of open, flexible work options.
M – Masculine model of the “ideal” worker
E – Evaluations of performance punish use of flexible work policies
N – No time for activism

It’s hard to argue. Shattering the glass ceiling may not seem possible when you have to pick up the little ones from day-care or from school by 5 pm, hunt, gather, help with homework, feed them, bathe them, floss and exfoliate yourself before you collapse, exhausted. This description fits the lives of many, or most, working mothers in America. I myself have been there. Is it any coincidence that, here in the US, the lowest voting turn-out is among women, ages 30-42? Trust me, it is not a coincidence. They are exhausted and don’t have the energy to poke the pin through the ballot.

According to the U.S. Labor Bureau, 75 per cent of working women in America—remember that most women are mothers—work full-time. Here’s a radical suggestion. Maybe most women don’t want to work full-time. And perhaps most women don’t really want to pursue the traditional managerial path.

In the Netherlands in 2000, a law was passed mandating women’s right to part-time work—and specifically the right to cut back hours without repercussions from employers. Economist Jacob Vossestein has written about this phenomenon in his book, “Dealing with the Dutch”, revealing that people in the Netherlands view clawing up the corporate ladder with amusement, pity, even disdain.

A 2009 study (Booth/Van Ours) concluded that the Netherlands culture—the women, their partners, and their employers—are really okay with women only showing up at the office part-time, because they’re busy doing other things.

Here’s another radical suggestion: perhaps the answer to women’s success is working fewer hours at something they don’t really want. This might open possibilities to discovering and creating a more entrepreneurial way of working, and being.

But speaking as one entrepreneur to another—if this happens, you really will need a good babysitter.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 9:25 am and is filed under under my skin with jane wurwand, founder of dermalogica.