Title: Women And Men Make A Great Team When The Woman Make It To Senior Roles
Study: Behind Every Great Woman (Bloomburg BusinessWeek 2012)
Finding: Many powerful women are receiving significant help – to the point of social role reversal – more and more often to help them achieve work-life balance.
InPower Insight: Work-life balance isn’t just the responsibility of – or the interest of – professional women. Men are part of the solution.
Summary:
As women begin to advance to greater and more powerful management positions in their careers, their husbands are beginning to have to step up more in the household and raise their children. Seven of the 18 women who serve as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies have or have had at one point or another stay-at-home husbands. Other powerful women’s husbands have had to settle in at positions in their companies with less responsibilities. This “role reversal” has grown as women comprise 51.4 percent of managerial and professional positions. Twenty- three percent of wives make more than their husbands and for women thirty and under, they make more than their male counterparts in all but three of the US’s largest cities. As a result of the recession, more men lost their jobs than women- three to one. Men who have been laid- off end up taking care of the children full- time. Thirty- two percent of men regularly care for children under the age of five and one in five serves as the main caregiver. As men take up a greater role in the home, they have faced criticism for being lazy while their powerful wives work hard.
Career Coaching Tip: As you chart your career and think about what’s important to you, factor your partner into the equation. Develop a joint plan for managing your family with a realistic understanding of the kind of work responsibility you both plan on taking on. If your partner is interested in cutting back to take care of the family and you like the idea, encourage them and let them know that they will be part of a growing trend of stay-at-home dads.
Keywords: Role Reversal, Stay-at-home dad, work-life balance, men and women
