Speaker 1: So Mother's Day on Sunday, And I gotta say, when
Speaker 1: I worked at the Wall Street Journal report at down Jones,
Speaker 1: we had a tradition for our show that aired on
Speaker 1: Mother's Day and we thanked our moms and the credits
Speaker 1: and it was kind of just a very very sweet tradition.
Speaker 1: Another tradition at the Journal was always always checking the
Speaker 1: column of our next guest. Joanne Lublin was the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journalist career columnist for many years, also an editor
Speaker 1: covering workplace issues from the c suite on down Pultzer
Speaker 1: Prize winning journalist is still a contributor to the Journal.
Speaker 1: Author of two books about female business executives, she understands
Speaker 1: this so well her latest book, Power Mom's How Executive
Speaker 1: mothers navigate work in life and Joan joins us on
Speaker 1: the phone from suburban Philadelphia. Joanne, so nice to have
Speaker 1: you here with us. How are you and what's what's
Speaker 1: the last year been like for you? Well, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for having me on the show. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: the last year has been sort of anticlimactic for me
Speaker 1: because I turned in the manuscript for this new book
Speaker 1: literally on the day before America shut down, and I
Speaker 1: had been a hermit for the prior nine months writing
Speaker 1: the book, and I thought, oh great, now I can
Speaker 1: go out and party and socialize and take some trips.
Speaker 1: And you know, then the world's kind of turned on
Speaker 1: its head. And so I've been doing what everyone else
Speaker 1: has been doing, which is basically, you know, quarantining in place.
Speaker 1: I've taken flights twice in the last year to visit
Speaker 1: my out of town grown children and grandchildren. But that's
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, interesting, and I do wonder how are
Speaker 1: you thinking about women right now? We talked about some
Speaker 1: data earlier that showed that women dropped out of the
Speaker 1: U s labor force in April for the first time
Speaker 1: since January. It was I think initially we thought Joey
Speaker 1: and the pandemic would be maybe helpful for women, you know,
Speaker 1: finally giving them some flexibility and how they worked and
Speaker 1: took care of their families. And yet we're finding out
Speaker 1: that that's not the case necessarily. Unfortunately, that is indeed correct,
Speaker 1: And in fact, the Wall Street Journal did an analysis
Speaker 1: of US data only a week or so ago, and
Speaker 1: they concluded that they're nearly one point five million few
Speaker 1: were working mothers in the workforce and before COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: And this is especially hitting women hard who have school
Speaker 1: aged children. They're having a difficult time returning to work because, frankly,
Speaker 1: the balance of power in the home, as much as
Speaker 1: has shifted somewhat, dad's have certainly picked up a bigger
Speaker 1: share of responsibility while everyone's been working from home, the
Speaker 1: burden is still squarely on mom's shoulders, particularly when it
Speaker 1: comes to school aged children. Is that even for younger
Speaker 1: generations of couples that it's still the case. Well overall,
Speaker 1: that's what the studies I've seen have suggested, But certainly
Speaker 1: in the women that I interviewed for the book, I
Speaker 1: saw a marked difference between generations. For this book, I
Speaker 1: interviewed women from the Baby Boom generation my generation to
Speaker 1: look at the first wave of women who had gotten
Speaker 1: an executive level roles in business and also had kids,
Speaker 1: and then I compared that to a similar sized group
Speaker 1: of women who were millennials and Gen xers anywhere from
Speaker 1: their early thirties to early forties. Altogether eighty six such
Speaker 1: women plus twenty five adult daughters of the boomers, and
Speaker 1: I was looking to see what had gotten better, what
Speaker 1: had stayed the same, and what had gotten worse in
Speaker 1: terms of how they navigated work and life. And to
Speaker 1: your point, yes, I did see that there were improvements
Speaker 1: among the younger generation when it comes to sharing the
Speaker 1: duties at home. But we haven't gotten all the way
Speaker 1: to the you know go line yet. Yeah, no, exactly.
Speaker 1: Well what's interesting is talk to me a little bit
Speaker 1: about your book. What did you set out to do.
Speaker 1: You've written books before. What was your hope to do
Speaker 1: with this? Well, my hope was to explore just that
Speaker 1: because my first book, which was called Earning It Hard
Speaker 1: One Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the top of the
Speaker 1: business world, looked at fifty two high ranking corporate executive women,
Speaker 1: all but one of whom were baby boomers, and eight
Speaker 1: of those women, it turned out, had children, and among
Speaker 1: those who had become public companies eos, the proportion was
Speaker 1: even higher. So what was their secret, sauce? Well, they
Speaker 1: were trailblazers. They were the pace setters. They were the first,
Speaker 1: frankly of their generation to get into the executive suite,
Speaker 1: and in many cases did so while having children. And
Speaker 1: it just made me wonder, have things changed all that
Speaker 1: much for that younger way The women who in more
Speaker 1: recent years have become executives after having children or having
Speaker 1: children when they became executives, And what I found was
Speaker 1: that definitely things have gotten better things. One reason is
Speaker 1: because people are entering into relationships with much more supportive spouses,
Speaker 1: whether it's a life partner or a husband or in
Speaker 1: one case a wife. There also are money more supportive workplaces.
Speaker 1: We have many more women in positions of high level
Speaker 1: jobs who can act as role models and sponsors and mentors.
Speaker 1: But thirdly, we have seen huge advanced is in technology
Speaker 1: and that's why we've been able to work from home
Speaker 1: for the last year. Those of us would like color
Speaker 1: jobs who can do so. Joanne, there was one part
Speaker 1: in your book as I was going through it, you
Speaker 1: talked about the new Spank CEO and she negotiated an
Speaker 1: employment contract and it included a provision or line in
Speaker 1: the contract that said, quote the company acknowledges that you
Speaker 1: have obligations to your family and community that will cause
Speaker 1: you at times to be away from the office during
Speaker 1: normal working hours. That was in her contract. That seems
Speaker 1: to me sounded like that was probably pretty unusual at
Speaker 1: the time. Well, on the other hand, the company was
Speaker 1: also pretty small. It's the fun wasn't fair enough, and
Speaker 1: it was run by and it was another woman, and
Speaker 1: she was, you know, coming to that company after having
Speaker 1: worked for some pretty big, mega corporations where she didn't
Speaker 1: feel there was an acknowledgement of the fact that she
Speaker 1: had a dual role in her life and that her
Speaker 1: children were important piece of that. And so, frankly, I
Speaker 1: just think women and devalue themselves and they don't ask
Speaker 1: for what they need when they're starting a new job.
Speaker 1: Not all of us, of course, are coming in at
Speaker 1: the CEO level or have the right or ability to
Speaker 1: negotiate a formal, written employment contract. That doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: can't sort of set the terms. And if they're not
Speaker 1: going to be amenable to a life in which we
Speaker 1: do have time to be parents as well as executives
Speaker 1: or individual employees, then we move on. We go work
Speaker 1: somewhere else. Right, But in her case, this was important
Speaker 1: enough that she made it a provision in her contract
Speaker 1: and they accepted it. Yeah, it's funny. It's interesting that
Speaker 1: you say that, because we are having conversations about whether
Speaker 1: or not the whole idea of hybrid working. Ultimately, will
Speaker 1: people say okay, If I don't get it here, I'll
Speaker 1: go somewhere else, because you know, the past year has
Speaker 1: shown many things good and bad, but it also has
Speaker 1: shown that hybrid can work. Tell us about who you
Speaker 1: talk to. You talk to some high powered women. Uh,
Speaker 1: Mindy Grossman, I know, Mindy Well DuPont Ellen Coleman, the
Speaker 1: CEO is a birch box at the runway. Tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about what you got from those conversations. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things I got from those conversations is
Speaker 1: that these women refused to be held hostage. That's something
Speaker 1: called working mother guilt. They were very, very secure and
Speaker 1: comfortable in their own skin in terms of the roles
Speaker 1: they had chosen for themselves to be both executives and
Speaker 1: for mothers. And frankly, one of those individuals, one of
Speaker 1: those boomer mom, suggested I write an entire chapter on
Speaker 1: the issue of how to ditch working mother guilt. So
Speaker 1: I collected the ten best hacks from both generations, and it's, frankly,
Speaker 1: one of the more popular chapters in the book. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting, Um, well, what did you take away
Speaker 1: from what they said? How did they get over it
Speaker 1: or how did they Because it's one thing to say
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna fit. It's another thing to actually feel
Speaker 1: it exactly. And so first starters, you decide that at
Speaker 1: the outset of when you're starting to feel working mother guilt,
Speaker 1: that you're not going to own it, that you are
Speaker 1: to accept the fact that you have imperfections, and that
Speaker 1: you're going to celebrate the good parts of your life
Speaker 1: and not dwell on the bad. And so the great
Speaker 1: example that the woman who gave the inspiration for that
Speaker 1: chapter gave me was you're sitting down for dinner yet
Speaker 1: again and at seven o'clock, and it's you know, you
Speaker 1: haven't been able to get down done with work while
Speaker 1: working from home soon. In this, rather than beat yourself
Speaker 1: internally about this, celebrate the fact that, gosh, I'm having
Speaker 1: dinner with my children and my significant other. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: exactly right, Like kind of just change how you're thinking
Speaker 1: and addressing it. Hey, one thing I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: because you did speak to some very prominent, very very
Speaker 1: successful women, there has been at times some criticism I
Speaker 1: think of some of the more successful women who are
Speaker 1: at the top, you know, saying well, I can kind
Speaker 1: of have it all or I can juggle it, or
Speaker 1: I can figure it out, because they can often afford
Speaker 1: to have help, whether it's taking care of the kids
Speaker 1: and so on, and not every mom has that ability
Speaker 1: to do that. How do you dress? Of course not,
Speaker 1: But that was the whole point why I focused on
Speaker 1: these women at the executive level, because they are definitely
Speaker 1: women of privilege, and if they are having a difficult time,
Speaker 1: and it's still the case even in many respects for
Speaker 1: that younger wave, then that speaks volumes about what's wrong
Speaker 1: with our larger society. And what's wrong with our larger
Speaker 1: society is that we don't as a country value parenthood.
Speaker 1: We see it as something that is an individual responsibility,
Speaker 1: not a social responsibility. And until we change not only
Speaker 1: our perception of what sexual stereotypes are and what we
Speaker 1: expect the perfect mother is like versus the father, and
Speaker 1: until we have, for instance, government mandated paid parental leave,
Speaker 1: then we're unfortunately going to be stuck in a society
Speaker 1: in which it is very very difficult to be a
Speaker 1: working parent, especially below that level. These are Listen, you
Speaker 1: understand this world, and you understand workplace issues, and this
Speaker 1: year has been ripe with workplace issues, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: we're spending a lot more time talking about not only
Speaker 1: physical well being, but mental well being and a lot
Speaker 1: of different issues. What happens do you think or based
Speaker 1: on the conversations you continue to have with you know,
Speaker 1: successful leaders, heads of companies, what happens on the other
Speaker 1: side of this when it comes to working women. Well,
Speaker 1: I think what happens on the other side of it
Speaker 1: when it comes to working women is that there has
Speaker 1: been a profound change in how we view where and
Speaker 1: how we work. And that's because of this successful experiment
Speaker 1: and working from home. It was definitely the exception, not
Speaker 1: the rule, and it's been the role for many many
Speaker 1: white collar employees over the last year or so. And so,
Speaker 1: as you were pointing out, we're going to have hybrid workplaces.
Speaker 1: It is going to be possible to be successful in
Speaker 1: your career and not be commuting five days a week.
Speaker 1: In some companies the option will be to do it
Speaker 1: part time, and others that will be to do it
Speaker 1: full time. But for women in particular, they're going to
Speaker 1: have to work harder at being visible to the extent
Speaker 1: that they continue working remotely, They're going to have to
Speaker 1: be better networkers, and they're going to have to learn
Speaker 1: how to network virtually and make sure that they have
Speaker 1: sponsors and mentors at key points in their careers and
Speaker 1: different sponsors and mentors at different times. Hey, listen, just
Speaker 1: got about thirty forty seconds left it there was I'm
Speaker 1: thinking for the leaders that are maybe listening at this moment,
Speaker 1: if there was one policy that they could change that
Speaker 1: could you know, help mothers, help women, uh in their
Speaker 1: careers at this point, what would it be? Just quickly,
Speaker 1: it would it would be to judge people on their results,
Speaker 1: not on the hours worked. That was nice, short and
Speaker 1: sweet and a great a great way to wrap it up. Um, Joanne,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, really really appreciate it. Joanne Lublin
Speaker 1: Cheese Wall Street Journal contributor her new book. As I said,
Speaker 1: she's written several books about workplace issues, but her latest
Speaker 1: book called Power Moms, How exact get of mothers navigate
Speaker 1: work and life. And like I said, she covered this
Speaker 1: in a column for the Wall Street Journal for many
Speaker 1: many years