Want a promotion? Boss' wife have a career?

[fbf2006]

management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/01/women-want-a-promotion-find-a-boss-whose-wife-has-a-career/

Discuss

[winnied]

Agreed, which is not good for my job.

I don't think sexism is anywhere near as obvious as it was in, say, the 60's. It's still there, though and IMO if anyone disagrees s/he isn't paying attention. My office environments have all been sexist but I think they would all be shocked and sad if they figured it out. I call my closer male colleagues out on it and they feel awful.

[Deleted]

I've never worked in the corporate world and my longest boss is a single man who just recently promoted a woman but I believe implicit association does play a role in who gets promoted. I don't think, however, it is as cut and dry as woman v. man. It also can be about someone's age, race, religion, alma mater, favorite team, interview attire, etc. I wish they had given a statistic in the David v. Diane scenario instead of just saying "overwhelmingly."

[Susie]

Unfortunately, I agree. Although in the case of my office, it's not so much that women's careers stall, it's that mothers' careers stall. The partners all have wives who had careers and left them when they had kids. It's why I feel strongly that I can't have kids until I make partner, because if I do it in the other order, I think I won't make partner - without regard to hours, performance, etc. It's already happened to one woman, who dealt with it by leaving.

[dexteroni]

Also agree, which explains SO MUCH about my last employer. And not in a good way.

[fbf2006]

Aug 22, 2012 13:24:15 GMT -5 @notquiteblushing said:

I've never worked in the corporate world and my longest boss is a single man who just recently promoted a woman but I believe implicit association does play a role in who gets promoted. I don't think, however, it is as cut and dry as woman v. man. It also can be about someone's age, race, religion, alma mater, favorite team, interview attire, etc. I wish they had given a statistic in the David v. Diane scenario instead of just saying "overwhelmingly."

Yes I think it can be age, race, religion, etc, as well. This article was just focusing on women and I believe it is as cut and dry as that. It's not an intentional bias most times. Didn't they give the percentages for the David/Diane scenario?

[Deleted]

Aug 22, 2012 13:55:26 GMT -5 fbf2006 said:

Aug 22, 2012 13:24:15 GMT -5 @notquiteblushing said:

I've never worked in the corporate world and my longest boss is a single man who just recently promoted a woman but I believe implicit association does play a role in who gets promoted. I don't think, however, it is as cut and dry as woman v. man. It also can be about someone's age, race, religion, alma mater, favorite team, interview attire, etc. I wish they had given a statistic in the David v. Diane scenario instead of just saying "overwhelmingly."

Yes I think it can be age, race, religion, etc, as well. This article was just focusing on women and I believe it is as cut and dry as that. It's not an intentional bias most times. Didn't they give the percentages for the David/Diane scenario?

No, I even clicked on the study and tried to find it but it was all sciency stuff I can't understand. There's a chart on page 50 if someone speaks science.

[Deleted]

Aug 22, 2012 13:36:12 GMT -5 Susie said:

Unfortunately, I agree. Although in the case of my office, it's not so much that women's careers stall, it's that mothers' careers stall. The partners all have wives who had careers and left them when they had kids. It's why I feel strongly that I can't have kids until I make partner, because if I do it in the other order, I think I won't make partner - without regard to hours, performance, etc. It's already happened to one woman, who dealt with it by leaving.

Ditto for my old career. It was very hard to find a woman in a senior position, let alone a woman with kids. All of the guys I worked for had SAH wives. ALL

[ejpint]

All of our directors, save one, who is a woman, have stay-at-home wives. The rest are all in single income marriages, including our male vice president. Our entire company is very male dominated.

[jena]

I'd never thought about this before, but I believe it's true. It certainly explains a lot between my old boss (whose wife is a professor in something so technically scientific that he couldn't even explain it) and new boss (whose wife stays home, no kids, and has dinner on the table at 5pm daily). I can also see truth in it with several other managers I know with maybe one or two exceptions.

[jene]

My company is very much this way, and a large portion of my leadership team live in a single income household. It is really depressing.

[cahabalily]

I agree with this.... the academic department where I earned my MS was like this - the chair's wife stayed home, as well as the wives of all of the senior faculty.

I would have an opportunity to back there when I finish the PhD, but that's the one thing that holds me back - I don't know that I could handle the constant sexism, especially since several of them won't be retiring for quite a while.

[bqbride]

This was certainly the case at my last job. All of senior management had SAHW's. The hours and the travel requirements were intense, so people routinely got fired for refusing month-long + overseas trips, saying they needed to be home at a certain time for their kids. You know, absolutely any interests or obligations besides working. You can't move up in that environment unless you have someone at home to take care of, well, everything else. Unfair to the wives and the kids, IMO.

[Deleted]

All three of the partners in my firm have wives with careers. I guess that's good for me to make partner.

[Deleted]

This makes me even happier that everyone up my reporting chain, minus the CEO, is a woman.

[WOT?*]

I think it's not necessarily true but can be an indicator. I also think that if the guy has a MOTHER who had a career, even if his wife doesn't, he might be more egalitarian in hiring and promotion. DH's mother worked for the government his entire life and made it pretty far up the ladder; they have a close relationship and how he was raised by her has shaped his viewpoint of working women.

[otowngirl]

Aug 22, 2012 17:22:58 GMT -5 @iheartcosmos said:

All three of the partners in my firm have wives with careers. I guess that's good for me to make partner.

One of the two partners at my firm is a woman with 3 kids. She's amazing-I want to be her when I grow up. (She's only like 12 years older than me, lol.)

[anna7602]

Shortly after DD was born, his boss insisted on taking me and DH out to dinner with his wife. I had a 4-month-old at home, had just gone back to work myself, was exhausted and felt annoyed that we had to hire an evening sitter to do something as decidedly unfun as having dinner with DH's boss.

So maybe my state of mind influenced my perception of this remark, but I was pretty pissed when the boss suddenly leaned over to me at some point and said, only to me, not to the table, "I think it's great when women decide to keep working after they have kids. My wife did it and I think it makes her a better mother." Not a word about his wife loving her career, just that it was good for the children to have a working mom. WTF?

This is not the kind of person I would want as my own boss if I were seeking a promotion.