November 14, 2011

Blazing a more flexible career path for women

• 1 Comment |
• E-mail |
• Print
• • Share:
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a report from LinkedIn declaring that only about 19 percent of 1,000 professional women surveyed in the United States said they had been "mentored" in their careers. To me, the tone of the lead implied that this is supposed to be a surprisingly low percentage given the importance of mentoring in today's business climate.

My reaction, however, was, "Wow, is it really as high as one in five?" Really, how many people do you know -- male or female -- who have said they had mentors who could help advance their careers? A mentor is a wonderful and useful person to have in your corner, but I thought that the concept was retired long ago (much like the terms "pension" and "annual bonus" have become for the nation's "99 percenters").

In my experience, instead of having managers take me under their wings and showing me the ropes, I'm usually told that my new position is newly cobbled together from the duties of three other people who are long gone, and here's a mostly obsolete manual to "guide" me. Good luck!

I didn't think much of the report until the next week, when I saw another study from More magazine stating that 43 percent working women today are "less ambitious" now than they were a decade ago and listed 10 careers that women can pursue to "give them a life" as well as a decent salary.

According to the study, conducted by The Polling Company/WomanTrend, 65 percent of the 500 college-educated women surveyed, aged 35 to 60, said that "sacrificing your personal life so that you can quickly climb the corporate ladder may not be worth the journey." Almost three quarters of the respondents said they "don't want their boss's job."

So, what's the deal, sister co-workers? I know that, despite the advances in equality over the last 50 years, women are still fighting uphill in the trenches of office politics (as was recently discussed by my colleague, Michelle Goodman). But if these studies are true, is female representation in the corporate world really full of mentor-less women who don't care about advancement? Has the Great Recession really reduced feminism to such a sorry state?

Well, not really. As with most research, the most interesting findings in both of these studies are found once you dig deeper into the data. And the news looks better than you might expect for the newest crop of women workers.

In the LinkedIn study, the pollsters found that mentorship, while still relatively rare, is on the rise among younger women. Also, it appears that a greater percentage of the mentors themselves are women. While 34 percent of the baby-boomer respondents (aged 45 to 66 years) said they had been mentored by other women at some point in their careers, the rate rose to 43 percent for Generation X (aged 30 to 44) and 51 percent for Gen Y (aged 18 to 29).

The More magazine study, it turns out, is far more about job flexibility than about blind ambition. What the data show are that free time and quality-of-life issues are becoming more important to women than salary and power. More than 90 percent of the women surveyed said they value "workplace flexibility." Two years ago, when the magazine first did the study, only 73 percent said they cared about flexibility.

And it's not just that old excuse about "raising a family." Of those who said they didn't want their bosses' jobs, only 15 percent cited child-care issues for holding them back; 38 percent said they just don't want to suffer the politics, pressure and responsibility of an executive position.

"Today's working women aren't throwing in the towel -- they want to work," said Lesley Jane Seymour, editor-in-chief of More magazine. "They are just 'redefining ambition' to include a career that offers flexibility and enables them the opportunity to pursue a fulfilling life outside of work."

What's gratifying to see here is that these studies were not about how professional women are being held back by their male counterparts. In both cases, most of the women surveyed are making their own choices about their careers and not blindly following the older protocols of the corporate ladder. It doesn't mean full equality has been achieved, but it is progress.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

• 1 Comment |
• E-mail |
• Print
• • Share:
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  

Read more
career change, gender, generation gap, mentors, work/life balance, working women

1 Comments

fintrura suterin on December 15, 2011 8:17 PM | Reply

The deal is the sister of a colleague? I know that despite the advances in equality for more than 50 years, women still have an uphill battle in the trenches of politics in the office. (For example, has been mentioned recently by a colleague, Michelle Goodman's me), but these studies is actually a female in the business world is full of women that are less than those who do not. care about their progress? The recession has really fallen to such a state that women love?

Leave a comment

* required field

Your name: *

E-mail address: (Will not be displayed)

Your comment: *

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.