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Journal of Career Development

DOI: 10.1177/0894845307311250 2008; 34; 309 Journal of Career Development

Mary Shapiro, Cynthia Ingols and Stacy Blake-Beard Organizations, and Career Practitioners

Confronting Career Double Binds: Implications for Women,

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309

Journal of Career DevelopmentVolume 34 Number 3March 2008 309-333

© 2008 Curators of theUniversity of Missouri

10.1177/0894845307311250http://jcd.sagepub.com

hosted athttp://online.sagepub.com

Confronting Career Double BindsImplications for Women, Organizations,and Career Practitioners

Mary ShapiroCynthia IngolsStacy Blake-BeardSimmons School of Management

Over the past decade, practitioners and scholars have struggled to explainwomen’s career choices. The current language, including “opting out,” “on andoff ramping,” and “mommy track,” is not only inadequate but assumes a devia-tion from an accepted norm. We challenge the relevance of the paradigm againstwhich women are being judged, namely, the psychological contract thatexchanged lifelong employment for “work is primary” commitment. Givenorganizations’ evolving need for agility, organizations no longer offer job secu-rity. We propose that, in response, women are rejecting the outdated career modelbased on stable employment and instead are enacting an updated “we are self-employed” model. Being at the leading edge of career self-agency, women facea double bind that is exacerbated by persistent socialized gendered schemas. Weexplore the shift in career paradigms, what organizations and women have doneto date, and the implications in addressing the double bind going forward.

Keywords: women; careers; gender; flexible work arrangements; opting out;off ramping

Over the past decade, a complicated story of women and their careers hasbeen playing out in the public eye (Belkin, 2003; Hewlett, 2002; Tischler,

2004; Wallis, 2004). There has been widespread questioning of women exec-utives who have made decisions that take their careers off the traditional linear

Authors’ Note: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mary Shapiro,School of Management, Simmons College, 409 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215;e-mail: [email protected].



career path (Yang, 2005). We need only examine the clamor accompanyingthe career decisions of high-profile women leaders, such as Brenda Barnes,of PepsiCo, and Ann Fudge, of Kraft Foods, when they stepped off the tradi-tional linear career path that is associated with success and advancement inorganizations. While there are a number of reasons given for women’s depar-tures from top-level positions, an incendiary explanation for career decisionssuch as those chosen by Barnes and Fudge has emerged—women are step-ping out of traditional career paths because they do not have the drive ordesire to do the necessary work to reach the top. Tischler (2004) explains thatthey are not competing as hard so that they can focus on their families. Fels(2004) questions their ambition. These women are said to be “opting out”(Belkin, 2003; Wallis, 2004) or “off ramping” (Hewlett & Luce, 2005).

In this article, we challenge the use of those pejorative terms and the out-dated paradigm against which women are being judged. The terms them-selves (“opting out,” “off ramping,” “mommy track,” even “nonlinear”) assumea norm against which women’s career decisions are being compared. In thatcomparison, women’s career choices to work part-time put boundaries onworkload, or not work for a time are seen as deficient, invalid, and wrong.But their choices are deviant only because they are compared to a predominant“work is primary” career model, demanding full-time, nonstop employment.

We propose that women are rejecting an outdated model and instead areenacting an updated one that has been evolving over the past decade. In the late1980s and 1990s, as organizations needed to become more agile, their down-sizing and outsourcing signaled the demise of the “psychological contract,”where total commitment on the part of the employee was rewarded with life-long employment (Rousseau, 1990). As organizations reneged on their side ofthe contract, employees were forced to reevaluate the “work is primary” careerparadigm on their side. We propose that women’s career choices reflect theresponsive “we are self-employed” model and that women are no longer actingas employees working according to the mandates of their employer but as“career self-agents,” setting their own terms of employment.

It is important to note that many women do not explicitly choose to be“career self-agents.” Instead, life circumstances, such as the birth of children,the caretaking of aging parents, or a spouse who moves frequently, oftenmake the “work is primary” model unworkable in their lives. For others, the“work is primary” model simply does not permit time for their dedication tooutside work interests, such as triathalon training, church ministry, or travel.In either case, whether they are unconsciously responding to life conflicts orintentionally carving out space for outside-work passions, most likely women

310 Journal of Career Development / March 2008



do not regard themselves as “career self-agents.” Instead, they see themselvesas overwhelmed with multiple demands on their finite time and energy, mostlyunsupported inside and outside the office, and often alone in their efforts tonegotiate solutions.

Regardless of how they got there, and their awareness of their position,being at the leading edge of career self-agency, women encounter a number ofdouble binds as they drive their careers. Double binds (in relation to gender)are “contradictory frames or injunctions that signify neither traditional femi-nine behavior nor masculine behavior will be rewarded, and often these behav-iors are penalized” (Brock, 2000, p. 40). Women are faced with a dilemma anda seeming paradox—female behavior is not valued and masculine behavior isnot condoned. Regarding careers, women face a classic double bind withrewards and punishments associated with both choices: follow the outdated“work is primary” model and be consistent with organizational and publicexpectations but be vulnerable to a chaotic labor marketplace, or follow thenew “we are self-employed” model, and be labeled as unambitious and/oruncommitted, but be proactive in managing the larger life landscape. In theirchoice of flexible work arrangements (FWAs), such as part-time or flextimework), women are deciding their own work conditions but are penalized by thevery organizations that created the conditions necessitating them to do so.Penalties can be obvious, such as the denial of promotions, plum assignments,and formal mentoring relationships. Or penalties can be subtle, such as reducedinfluence and access to resources.

This double bind is exacerbated by persistent socialized gender expecta-tions and schemas (Rapoport, Bailyn, Fletcher, & Pruitt, 2002; Valian, 1999).Women who decide that they want to focus predominantly on their careerface questions of their role as “good women” (Covering the Mommy Wars,2006; Fels, 2004). Yet women who decide to focus on their families at theexpense of their careers are also disparaged. Hirshman admonishes womento “stop wasting their expensive degrees in the nursery” (Tyre, 2006). Womenface negative perceptions whether they choose to follow the “work is primary”model or make choices, such as staying at home with children, aligned withthe “we are self-employed” model.

In this article, we contest the “work is primary” paradigm against whichwomen’s career choices are being judged and discuss the double bindswomen face as they reject an outdated career model and enact a new one. Tounderstand the context and structures that undergrid the discussion of women’scareer choices, we examine the megatrends (a term coined in 1982 by Naisbittto describe overarching structural shifts) that are driving the evolution of the

Shapiro et al. / Confronting Career Double Binds 311



current career model and review literature on evolving career definitions.With this background, we explore the strategic choices that women are makingtoday, including the use of FWAs.1 We close with a consideration of the impli-cations of women’s strategic choices on a number of different levels, lookingat the implications for organizations, for the women themselves, for practi-tioners of career counseling, and for those conducting research on careers.

While we acknowledge that men are affected by and increasingly involvedin this shifting career paradigm, this article focuses on the implications forwomen. We will explore why only women have been accused in the pressand in organizational practice of not being committed to work. There has notbeen a parallel accusation leveled at men.

Megatrends Affecting Today’s Career Definitions

How people structure and define their work lives have always been a con-fluence of macroeconomic, social, and political forces combined with indi-vidual needs and drives. Careers have moved through family farms; apprentice,journeymen and master craftsmen; “callings” for professions such as preach-ers or lawyers (Sonnenfeld & Ingols, 1986, p. 67); and skilled cogs in anassembly line to service providers. To understand what is affecting and shapinga career model for today, we first examine the major forces that are shapingemployment patterns at the beginning of the 21st century. Because employ-ment practices in the United States are complex and global, we focus on fourvisible forces driving women’s strategic choices: organizational upheaval,changing demographics, technology, and shifting family and work values.

Organizational Upheaval

Organizations are downsizing, rightsizing, off-shoring, outsourcing, merg-ing, and declaring bankruptcy at record rates. To paint a picture of the newlabor market, one only has to look at a few statistics. In 2000, there were 1.3million business bankruptcies, almost double the 1990 number (U.S. CensusBureau, 2003a). Outsourcing, estimated at $301 billion in 2004, is up from$125 billion in 2000 (Brainard & Litan, 2004). More than 587,000 jobs wereprojected to migrate overseas in 2005. By 2015, this figure is expected to be3,320,000 (“America’s Newest Export,” 2004). DeBell (2001) offers a har-rowing glimpse at the speed at which new organizations are emerging and oldones are dying: One third of the Fortune 500 companies that existed in 1980no longer existed as independent entities in 1990 (p. 83). As a result of this




organizational upheaval, the psychological contract between employee andemployer has been disrupted, most likely permanently (Rousseau, 1990). In1950, when the definition of career included an often lifetime commitment toone company, the average professional worked at no more than a few companiesover the course of a career. Today, that worker holds nearly 10 different jobsbetween the ages of 18 and 38 alone (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2004).

Organizational structures have also significantly changed since the bureau-cratic hierarchies in which the “work is primary” career model was written.Grzeda (1999) argues that structural shifts in organizations have been welldocumented and cites the evolution from the early functional structure oforganizations through Miles and Snow’s (1986) network organizations (whereindependent firms, often suppliers, are linked together, so the sum total offirms cover all the activities necessary to produce the product); throughAllred, Snow, and Miles’ (1996) cellular organization (where the organizingfirm acts like a professional association, facilitating information flow betweenfully autonomous businesses that could exist on their own); and Weick andBerlinger’s (1989) self-designing organizations (that are structured for fre-quent, nearly continuous change in structure, processes, their goal being opti-mal responsiveness to the environment). With each shift, there have beenattending career model shifts, such as the “boundaryless career” model (look-ing beyond the “boundaries” of a particular organization or department inwhich you are currently employed), in response to the networked organization(Grzeda, 1999).

Changing Demographics

The demographics of American workers are constantly changing, and mostnotable is the influx of women into the workplace. In 1900, 25% of Americanwomen worked outside the home, constituting 20% of the labor force (DeBell,2001, p. 80). By 1997, 60% of women were working and made up nearly halfof the workforce (U.S. Census Bureau, 1999). Additionally, women’s partici-pation in the labor market has broadened over those 100 years. In 1930, 75%of professional women were either teachers or nurses (Bruccoli & Layman,2006). While those professions continue to be dominated by women, there area number of traditionally male positions that are now predominantly held bywomen, including financial managers, accountants, auditors, and medical andhealth service managers (U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, 2005).

As women have moved into the world of work, the structure of theAmerican family has changed. Only 35% of American families today havethe “traditional” structure of two parents with their own biological children




under 18, whereas in the 1950s close to 49% of Americans did so (U.S.Census Bureau, 2003b). The number of stay-at-home mothers has dramati-cally shrunk. In 1950, 24% of two-parent families saw both husband andwife in the workforce; by 2000, that rose to 72% (Bureau of Labor Statistics,2000). In 1960, only 19% of married women with school-age children werein the labor market. In 1990, 71% of those mothers were employed outsidethe home (DeBell, 2001, p. 80; U.S. Census Bureau, 2006). The demo-graphic foundation provided by stay-at-home mothers that permitted the“work is primary” career model has dissolved. Working fathers could nolonger ignore all the “secondary” aspects of their lives, namely, child care,dry cleaning, and housework.

Technology

It is cliché to note how technological inventions have changed the work-place in the last several decades. Just as significantly, the traditional notionof work as people gathering in buildings to work on projects is fast disap-pearing, replaced by virtual work structures and reporting relationships.Scully (2002) reported that 75% of her survey respondents worked for com-panies that encouraged the use of e-mail, and 43% telecommuted and didtheir work virtually—some or all the time (p. 1).

While technology permits work to occur anywhere and anytime, so doesmuch of the work itself. As the amount of knowledge-based work grows, sodoes the ability to conduct work from home or late at night. In 1950, virtualcommunication was limited to the telephone. Today, 72 million people usecomputers at work, and 2 out of every 5 employed persons are connected tothe Internet and use e-mail on the job (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005).Telecommuting, an outgrowth of technology, has burgeoned. Today morethan 18% of employed adult Americans, or nearly one fifth of the workforce,work at home at least 1 day per month (International Telework Associationand Council Press Release, 2004).

Shifting Work and Family Values

Current research suggests that professionals entering today’s workforcehave a very different set of values driving their careers. For example, theAmerican Medical Association (AMA) predicts a shortage of obstetriciansand general practitioners in the near future, because today’s medical students,desiring a 9-to-5 workday, are selecting areas of medicine that permit them toput boundaries around their work lives (Richtel, 2004).




What accounts for the shift toward a desire to have-a-life-not-just-a-job? Ina 2000 survey by Radcliffe Public Policy Center (2000), 80% of Americansreported that “having a work schedule that enables them to spend time withtheir families” was a top priority (p. 1). Feyerherm and Vick (2005, p. 216)found that Generation X women connect professional success with personalfulfillment, which included family and relationships. Mainiero and Sullivan(2005) point to the “latchkey children” who are now working, having familiesof their own, and not wanting to experience the same stress they saw their ownworking mothers had, or to pass on the latch key to their own children (p. 108).The affluent generation that grew up with fun as their central activity does notwant to change that lifestyle value even as they enter the workforce. Given thepressures from organizational upheavals, changing demographics and tech-nology, and shifting values, an earlier model of careers has been buffeted andstrained. What was that definition in the mid-20th century, and what does itlook like today?

The Ever-Evolving Definition of Careers

From the 1950s through the 1980s, IBM exemplified corporate hegemonyand commitment to lifelong employment and the concomitant “work isprimary” psychological contract. Founder and CEO, Thomas Watson, Sr.,having observed frustrated and inefficient workers who complained aboutsegmented work, articulated basic beliefs that guided IBM’s human resourcepolicies and actions from the company’s inception. His first value, “respectthe individual,” led Watson to establish the practice of hiring people in theearly stages of their careers and retaining them for life. This approachworked well for IBM and other large American corporations, as the economychanged slowly and the world exhibited relative stability.

By the early 1990s, the marketplace and economic, technological, andsocial changes required a different kind of organization. These organizationsneeded to be nimble and flexible to respond to market trends quickly. As orga-nizations changed, so too did the relationship between employer and employed.Morrow argued, “America has entered the age of the contingent or temporaryworker, of the consultant and subcontractor, of the just-in-time work force [hireand fire as needed to meet current demands]—fluid, flexible, disposable. Thisis the future” (Bridges, 1994, p. 1). Even if one were employed, the view ofcareer experts (Bridges, 1994; Hakim, 1995; Lassiter, 2002) is that everyone isa “contingent” worker, contingent on the organization achieving its neededresults (Bridges, 1994, p. 50).




Scholars have been hailing a new career paradigm for close to 20 years, aparadigm based on the individual taking control of their career and no longerrelying on their employer to do so. Peters (1992, 1999) directed individuals tothink of themselves as “self-employed” and to think of their career as a seriesof projects. Bridges (1994, p. 51) advised individuals to see themselves “inbusiness for themselves” and to think that the organization had “outsourced”work to them. Hutchins (1999) declared there was no more “womb to tomb”employment, and employees are now “free agents.” A decade ago Handy(1994) anticipated the off/on ramping by describing careers as more discon-tinuous than linear. Hall (1996) described career paths as becoming more“expansive.”

Almost two decades ago, Kanter (1989) forecast the new skills necessaryto succeed as “self-employed” career agents. In her writing, she suggested thatin a “post corporate career,” firm-specific knowledge would be less impor-tant, and portability, or skills employees could take from job-to-job would becritical. Lassiter (2002) added skills, such as knowing how to effectively self-promote and using social and professional networks successfully (see Table 1),to the “we are self-employed” skill set.

The Double Bind Women Face

As women enact the “we are self-employed” career model, they takeresponsibility for their work lives, making critical decisions such as length ofworkweek, amount of travel, and leaves of absence. Being an independentcareer agent, however, has earned women the label of opting out and not beingcommitted to work. These labels place women in a double bind: Either playby rules that career scholars have pronounced outdated, or establish one’sown rules and support the popular myth of opting out.

A central question is, “Why is the discourse on women’s career choicesso heated?”

One reason is that women’s careers have always been seen as deviant. Inthe past, men were often the focus of researchers who generated reports ofnormative behavior. “When one group—in this case men—is the norm, theother group’s behavior—in this case women—is seen as the deviant patternthat required explanation” (Valian, 1999). As recent as 1992, Powell andMainiero commented that “the state of literature on women’s careers issomewhat dismal” (p. 215). Many career scholars have developed models formen’s careers and seen women’s careers as anomalies (Powell, 1988) or




317

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women as developmentally deficient (Gallos, 1989). Even with women com-prising 46% of the workforce in 2005 (U.S. Department of Labor, Women’sBureau, 2005), the norm is still to dismiss women’s behavior as deviant fromthe majority.

A second issue is commitment. Being perceived as committed, an essen-tial component in the “work is primary” model, has always been genderedand is now the most basic accusation leveled against women. Rapoportet al. (2002) argued that “the definition of commitment remains rooted ina traditional concept of the ideal worker as someone for whom work isprimary, time to spend at work is unlimited, and the demands of family,community and personal life are secondary” (p. 29). Artificial signs of pro-ductivity, such as whose cars are in the parking lot at 7 a.m., become keyindicators of commitment that disproportionately affect women (Valian,1999). A stark example of this conflation is the legal profession’s focus onbillable hours, which objectively measures the time a person puts in at work,but does not measure productivity or efficiency (Valian, 1999, p. 258). Ifperceived commitment is synonymous with long hours, anyone, male orfemale, who has responsibilities outside work is disadvantaged (Rapoportet al., 2002, p. 30).

Given that the career model has shifted in a rational response to organiza-tional, demographic, technological, and attitudinal megatrends, and womenare enacting this new “we are self-employed” model, questions quickly arise:What options do women have for managing this double bind? What are theimplications for organizations? Clearly, negotiating these tough career andemployment issues should be a two-way street, navigated jointly by womenand organizational leaders. To date, we have seen many women leading organi-zational responses to megatrends and the new model. Faced with the doublebind of either acting as a career agent or following conventional norms, manywomen are making strategic, often difficult and contested choices.

The Strategic Choices Women Are Making

Historically, women have been forced to choose work or family. In 1989,Felice Schwartz, founder and president of Catalyst, a not-for-profit organiza-tion dedicated to women’s advancement, argued for two career tracks forwomen: one “career primary” and the other “career-and-family” managers.This second track was later dubbed the “mommy track” (Schwartz, 1989,p. 68). Powell and Mainiero (1992) argued that women still faced either-or




choices, using opposing riverbanks as a metaphor for the difficulty in suc-ceeding in both career and family spheres at the same time.

Clearly many women continue to make an either–or choice. Hewlett andLuce (2005) found that of the women that they studied who left work, 44%did so to take care of family responsibilities. Mainiero and Sullivan (2005)found that women taking an “off ramp,” particularly when those decisionswere made mid-career, were driven by the need for balance in their lives (p. 114).

But the “we are self-employed” model allows us to think of the work–family choice differently. If employment is a “temporary state, or the currentmanifestation of long-term employability” and a career is “the unfoldingsequence of any person’s work experiences over time” (Arthur & Rousseau,1996, p. 29), then are sabbaticals or part-time work (whether because offamily reasons or others) just part of the lifelong career continuum? And isthe act of making those decisions evidence of career self-agency: decidingwhat is primary, deciding when to work, and negotiating the terms ofemployment? In addition, what about the woman who is making a work–lifechoice? What if children or family are not the driving issues for career self-agency, but instead life passions and commitments? Often those women faceeven more challenges in defining their careers: leaving work at 3 p.m. to gohorseback riding has less legitimacy inside organizations than leaving tomeet preschoolers at the bus.

What are some of the other choices women are making as they enact the“we are self-employed” model? There are several options women are selecting.One option is to negotiate who will stay in the workforce and who will stayat home. In 2002, one third of the women on Fortune Magazine’s 50 MostPowerful Women list have stay-at-home husbands (Sellers, 2003, p. 80).

Another option is to leave and come back. Some of the women who becamesymbols for the opt out revolution have reentered the workplace. BrendaBarnes, CEO of PepsiCo North America, took a 6-year hiatus to focus on herfamily in Illinois before becoming the CEO of Sara Lee Corp in 2004. AnnFudge, a prominent African American executive, relinquished her position aspresident of a $5 billion unit of Kraft Foods to take a 2 year sabbatical; shereturned to corporate life as CEO of ad giant Young and Rubicam in 2003(Brady, 2004; Yang, 2005).

Another strategic choice women are making is to become self-employed.Today there are 10.6 million firms that are at least half-owned by a womanor women, employing one out of 7 U.S. workers (19.1 million people) andgenerating $2.5 trillion in sales (Center for Women’s Business Research,2006). Women-owned businesses are growing at nearly two times the rate of




all privately held firms (17% vs. 9%). In the United States, 1 in 11 adultwomen is an entrepreneur, and 2 out of 3 entrepreneurs are women (Centerfor Women’s Business Research, 2006; Hymowitz, 2005). eBay, for example,has enabled a new class of workers to flourish (Conlin, 2004). Of the 430,000people who are estimated to earn a full-time or part-time living from eBay,approximately 48% of them are women, “who have found in eBay a way totap into the marketplace from their kitchen tables and finesse a saner work-life balance” (p. 70). Finally, in some instances, women are not pushing againstthe work-family choice dictated by the outdated “work is primary” modelalone. Some corporate leaders are positioning their organizations in the labormarketplace to lead the dialogue on work-life balance.

Strategic Positioning by Organizations

There are two compelling reasons why organizational leaders shouldshape organizations to enable career self-agency: the predicted labor short-age and research that shows a correlation between a strong bottom line andthe number of women in management. Experts are forecasting a cominglabor shortage of 10 million workers in the United States by 2010 as 76 mil-lion baby boomers retire en masse (Dychtwald, Erickson, & Morrison,2004; Tischler, 2004). At the same time, Hewlett (2002) found that in 2000,more than 22% of women holding professional degrees, such as MBAs,PhDs, and MDs, were not currently in the workforce (p. 66). Clearly, savvyorganizational leaders who are aware of these parallel trends will see advan-tages to reaching out to highly trained women who are not currently in thelabor market.

The more compelling reason organizations will want to keep their talentedwomen is provided by a 2004 Catalyst study. Looking at 353 of the Fortune500 companies from 1996 to 2000, Catalyst found that companies with ahigher percentage of women in top management reaped, on average, a returnon equity 15.7% higher than those that did not (Catalyst, 2004). On theexpense side of the ledger, organizations only need to look at the “measurablecost of developing individuals who then choose to [leave] . . . and the immea-surable cost of the loss of talent” (Rapoport et al., 2002, p. 7). Some organi-zations are actively working to reverse the “brain drain” of talented womenand men. To be successful, the strategies they employ must touch all aspectsof human resources planning and practices. In this article, we will focus onrecruiting, retaining, and reengaging talent.




Recruitment

If organizational Web sites accurately reflect organizations’ actual recruit-ment policy and practices, then few organizations use FWAs as a recruitmenttool. One exception is that of Partners HealthCare Inc., a large, Boston-basedumbrella organization of multiple health care units. Job seekers can selectopenings by “Job Type,” such as “JobShare, Regular, or Temporary,” andby “Employment Type,” such as “Full Time, Part Time, or Per Diem” (www.partners.org).

Retention

As competition for top talent grows, organizations will continue to expandtheir offerings of FWAs. While many organizations offer the usual menu ofFWA options: job sharing, quality part-time work, compressed workweeksand telecommuting, others have gone further. Deloitte offers its partners a2-month paid sabbatical for rejuvenation every 5 years. Employees at WellsFargo can take up to a 6-month unpaid time-off for volunteer work. Otheroptions include offering vacation hours instead of vacation days, or offeringservices to employees such as on-site child care and elder care, or “conciergeservices” such as dry cleaning and dinner take-out.

Reengagement

Organizations are rethinking their attitudes around employee dispos-ability as the labor pool shrinks. “Skills, knowledge, experience and rela-tionships walk out the door every time somebody retires, and they taketime and money to replace,” states Dychtwald et al. (2004, p. 48).Hewlett and Luce (2005) found that only 5% of the women they surveyedwho had taken an “off ramp” were interested in returning to the companiesthey had left.

To lure ex-employees back, companies are getting creative. Managers atMonsanto are encouraged to contact retirees for job sharing and other tem-porary vacancies (Dychtwald et al., 2004). Firms such as Booz AllenHamilton are holding lunches and workshops for women who have left theworkforce, helping to reduce the barriers to reentry through flexible sched-ules, retraining and updating out-of-date skills, and reviving professionalnetworks. The goal of these firms is to make it easy for professional womento return to work in these large organizations. Deloitte and Touche’s




“Personal Pursuits” program, launched in 2004, provides top performerswho have exited with mentoring, training, and project work for up to5 years. Lehman Brothers offers “Encore” luncheons for former employeesand a short course to bring them up to speed on industry developments(Shellenbarger, 2006).

Implications for Women

While organizations wrestle with making changes that create the structureand culture to support women and men in FWAs, women who are spearhead-ing the transition can use the following strategies to be more effective inbeing career self-agents.

Framing Decisions

To prevent getting structurally sidelined (i.e., put on the mommy track) orbecoming lame ducks with a loss of power and influence, women must, whenproposing a FWA, focus on how their decision benefits the organization, noton how it benefits them personally.

For example, Michelle,2 a very senior-level interviewee, declined a signif-icant promotion that would have moved her away from her passion: technol-ogy innovation. When declining the offer (to an extremely surprised president),she outlined the technology challenges and opportunities she would tackleby remaining in her present position, and the benefits to the organization. Shealso left the window open for future opportunities by stating a time frame orcondition for when she would be ready to move (e.g., “once I get this servicelaunched”).

Challenging Norms Regarding “Commitment”

This strategy involves naming a problematic practice and pointing out itscounterproductivity (Fletcher, 1999). Naming allows the norm to be explic-itly examined and alternatives to be considered. For example, Dorthea2 worksfor a large telecommunications company. She inherited a department with acrises culture—a sense of urgency pervaded every task, resulting in all-nighters to get projects out by their deadlines. When her boss questioned herwillingness “to do what it takes,” she asked him if he really wanted peopledoing high-visibility client work when they were exhausted. She proposedand carried out a “research” project: charting the accuracy of reports generated




during normal working hours versus those that had been done at midnight.Her findings were irrefutable: reports generated during normal hours wereconsiderably more accurate, and the all-nighters became a thing of the past.

Maintaining Career Identity

“Just because I’m staying at home with my kids, does not mean I’m notan accountant anymore,” said Rita.2 Recognizing that her education and workexperience does not disappear because she is not in an office, Rita maintainsher career identity by being active in her professional association and readingher trade publications. “And when I fill out forms asking for my profession,I put ‘accountant,’ not ‘homemaker.’” Rita is acting as a career self-agent,remaining an accountant over the different terms of employment that she setsfor herself.

Implications for Organizations

While many companies offer FWAs, more transformational change isneeded. Organizational leaders must create a culture that supports careerself-agency. To do so, senior decision makers will need to redefine the idealemployee, and then design and actively support policies that enable employ-ees to manage their own careers.

Redefining the Ideal Employee

An organization’s leaders must redefine what is needed from its employeesand what will be rewarded. Old norms need to be challenged (e.g., no more 5p.m. meeting start times, no more full parking lots at 8 a.m.). Conventionalmethods of measuring work need to be examined (e.g., shifting the focus fromthe number of billable hours to the productivity of those hours). Restrictivehead-count practices need to be expanded to cover job sharing and part-timeemployees. And the systems for determining promotions and awards need toinclude FWA employees and their contributions. Most important, senior orga-nizational leaders must model the new norms and expectations.

Monitoring and Providing Feedback on the Desired New Attributes

Performance appraisals (PAs) need to be rewritten to capture the newlyvalued employee attributes. Measures for work–life balance should be




included. For example, the Ford Motor Company has family members giveinput into an employee’s PA to assess their additional roles of parent, spouse,and community member (Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005, p. 119). Still in anexperimental phase, this 360-degree review recognizes that “we all operatein three domains—work, home, community [and] ‘Total’ leaders take advan-tage of [all three] connections” (Hammonds, 2001).

Encouraging Employees to Use FWAs

Organizations need to examine their use of FWAs because individualmanagers may say “no” to employees requesting participation. Powell andMainiero (1999) found that managers were more likely to say “no” torequests that they perceived would be disruptive, specifically denying alter-native work arrangements to employees who were working on critical tasksand/or possessed critical skills (pp. 41-56). To address this issue, Powell andMainiero suggest that organizations monitor the use of FWAs and rewardmanagers who use them. They also suggest having a central decision makerto evaluate employee requests to reduce the inconsistency in approvals acrossmanagers.

Another factor discouraging the use of FWAs is employees who recognizethe explicit costs in reductions to their benefits or the unspoken costs to theircareers. The explicit costs can be addressed structurally: For example, com-panies can offer full or prorated health benefits or allow employees takingtime off to continue to pay into their pensions and not be penalized. Theunspoken costs are more powerfully discouraging, and more challenging toaddress. Employees, particularly women, see FWAs as career suicide. In theHewlett and Luce (2005) survey, a full 38% of women said there was a stigmaattached to people in their organizations who use work-life policies.

The most powerful way of encouraging employees to use FWAs is toreward managers who have employees engaged in them (Mainiero &Sullivan, 2005). Managers may be reluctant to grant FWAs for a number ofreasons: They may correctly interpret from the organization’s culture andleaders that FWAs are to be discouraged because they may entail costs in theform of additions to head count, the need to cross-train employees in criticalskills, and the potential disruption of critical work flows (Mainiero &Sullivan, 2005). In addition, reluctance may stem from a manager’s own def-inition of commitment. Managers should not be penalized for FWA-relatedadditions to head count or for “bucking the system” by allowing their employ-ees to work unconventionally. Organizations should include employees’ use




of FWAs as a measure on managers’ PAs and give recognition to managerswho demonstrate commitment to FWAs.

Setting Up Rewards for Employees Using FWAs

Setting up a rewards system can be done in a number of ways. First, orga-nizations should set up career paths that best utilize women according totheir goals and timelines. Women need to receive challenging assignmentsand be placed in challenging positions, since both lead to further challengingwork, promotions, and senior positions (Kanter, 1977; Larwood & Gattiker,1987). Assuming a woman wants to be on a mommy track, and automaticallyplacing her off the promotion track, cannot be permitted. Second, line expe-rience must come early in a woman’s career so that if later she does leave tocare for family, she can return with that critical experience under her belt.Third, nonlinear career paths must be institutionalized. “Up or out” workenvironment philosophies, where only vertical movement is valid, must bechallenged (Feyerherm & Vick, 2005, p. 216).

Next, organizations must examine how to minimize the “mommy tax,” theforegone income as a result of temporarily opting out. This can be sizable:The cost to a woman who temporarily leaves paid employment has been esti-mated at more than $1 million over the course of her career (Mainiero &Sullivan, 2005). Hewlett and Luce (2005) found a woman experiences anaverage 18% reduction in lifetime earning power when she off ramps and37% if she takes 3 or more years off. Companies, therefore, must rethinkhow to bring a reentering woman up to a competitive salary, provide trainingto reacclimate her, and place her in positions where she can directly affectthe profit of a company. Those profit/loss positions are typically most valuedin organizations, and her salary can then reflect that responsibility. Thesesteps will not only ease the double binds facing women as they act as careeragents but bring their practices in alignment with the 21st century “we are allself-employed” definition of careers.

Implication for the Career Counseling Practice

Career counselors play a critical role in both extending the recognitionand understanding of the career paradigm shift and in empowering women toface double binds arising from gendered expectations. First, by providinglanguage and a model, counselors can help women understand their roleas “career self-agents” and the challenges they will face in organizations,




challenges such as the potential lack of systemic support and the often invis-ible barriers and damage to their power, influence, and success. Helpingwomen change from seeing themselves as the problem to seeing themselvesas change agents empowers them to ask and negotiate for what they needfrom a position of confidence rather than apology.

Second, by talking about the “we are self-employed” career paradigm, coun-selors convey two messages essential to fostering the necessary self-agency.Women learn that they are not unique or alone in their drive to create a careerthat fits with their broader life goals: Other people are making this rationalresponse to a shifting environment. They are not an aberration. By sharingthe context (demographic shifts, organizational changes, technology), thecounselors also legitimize their personal inclinations and desires. In bothcases, the counselors essentially give women “permission” to act in waysthat make sense to them, but in ways that they have been told (by the press,by organizations) are wrong.

Counselors can also help women become more strategic (and less reac-tionary or opportunistic) in their career decision making by inviting them totake a longer view of their career. Rather than allowing women to be think-ing of just “the next job,” counselors can encourage women to look at theentire arc of their career and anticipate potential interruptions and the fullrange of their life goals. If they expect to have children, women could beencouraged to get line experience early. If they want to get into politics,women could be encouraged to build a strong financial position early.

Being strategic also entails overcoming some gendered behaviors that maybe counterproductive to their own goals. For example, women often need tobe encouraged to promote themselves (Tannen, 1995), to feel comfortablecompeting against another person for a job, and to overcome a job rejectionand resume collegial relationships.

Finally, counselors can develop women’s tactical career skills, such asnegotiating in organizations for what they want and need. In acting as careerself-agents, women need to first make current (and often constricting and/oroutdated) organizational practices more explicit. Then they need to negotiatefor alternatives while demonstrating how the organization will benefit fromthe change. There is resistance to moving from fixed-hours, fixed-place jobs.There is also resistance in challenging the conventional definition of commit-ment that is defined by “face time” versus outcome. Fletcher (1999) offersfour strategies as part of “practical pushing” that include “naming” the norm,“pointing out the potential costs or unintended negative consequences . . . andoffering different . . . alternatives” (p. 121).




Implications for Research

While recent scholarly work provides much-needed rigorous examinationof women’s careers, it has focused on a narrow band of women. The Hewlettstudies (2002, 2005) were intentionally conducted on one demographic:high-achieving women (most likely White and privileged). Mainiero andSullivan (2005) included “women and men from different levels and back-grounds to more realistically capture the careers of most working profession-als.” Even then, their sample consisted of 87% Caucasian respondents.Researchers and society will benefit if we broaden the demographic samplesto include career issues of women across racial, ethnic, and class lines.

Another limitation in the current popular discourse is the underlyingassumption that only women are feeling the pressures of work–life balance.But many men are also facing the issue of aligning the demands of work andthe challenges of family (Brady, 2004; Shellenbarger, 1999, 2002). In anonline study of 2000 men and women conducted by Bright Horizons andSimmons School of Management, 95% of respondents rated their life outsidework as equally or more important than their jobs (Stork, Wilson, Bowles,Sproull, & Vena, 2005). Focusing the work-life conversation predominantlyon women obscures the fact that more and more men also face an evolvingdefinition of careers. Anecdotally we know that men have run into a widerange of reactions if their career choices were deviant from the “work isprimary” model. Some men are seen as father-of-the-year if they leave workearly to watch their child’s soccer game. Komisar (2000) was held up as a rolemodel in his Harvard Business Review article about his no-career alternative.Yet another man said he was not only scorned by men for taking time off tobe the primary caretaker for his newborn but also by stay-at-home moms whorefused to allow him to join their “mother’s play group.” To the extent that weexpand this research agenda to include the dilemmas and opportunities formen, we strengthen the case for organizations to dedicate energy andresources for FWAs that benefit everyone.

Finally, we recognize that shifting career paradigms entails creating newsystems inside organizations. Research is needed to identify these new sys-tems, either by seeking out best practices currently used by experimentingorganizations or by exploring the utility of possible alternatives. For example,research could examine new ways to evaluate employees’ performance undermore flexible systems. Research is also needed to quantify the cost andimpact of FWAs.




Conclusion

In this article, we identified several megatrends that are driving the shiftfrom a “work is primary” to a “we are self-employed” career model andexplored the double bind that women, by being at the forefront of this tran-sition, are facing. We explored some of the strategic choices both women andorganizations have made, and the implications for women, organizations,and those conducting future research. In closing, there are four points to keepin mind when considering double binds.

First, double binds are pernicious as the pressure to maintain the statusquo is exerted. The popular press benefits through magazine sales by sensa-tionalizing the choices women are making rather than exploring them in ameaningful way. Organizations benefit by demanding 24/7 commitmentsfrom their employees even when there is no reciprocal loyalty.

Second, the transition to career agency will be slow and painful.Individuals on the leading edge, namely women, will face far greater resis-tance than those who follow. But organizations that lead may also suffer dis-proportionately. For example, if one bank hires a greater number of employeesto permit 40-hr workweeks or flextime, the bank’s profitability may sufferbecause of higher labor costs. Until other banks adopt the same practice, drivenby the need to attract and retain talented workers, the leader’s labor costs areout of line with the industry’s costs.

Third, while double bind decisions appear to be made by individuals, theyhave macroimplications. For example, a woman decides to stay at home withher children. Her husband then goes to work and views his female employ-ees through his own “stay-at-home-wife” lens. Working with the belief thatwomen should raise children, he may be inclined to reject a female employee’srequest for job-sharing or be less likely to institute new FWA policies for theorganization. One only has to look at the Forbes.com article (Noer, 2006)cautioning men against marrying women with careers to see how a distortedlens can affect behavior.

Another example of the macroeffect is what Hirshman (2005) calls the“regime effect”. Even though most women “don’t quit their jobs for theirfamilies, (as the White privileged women highlighted in the press have), theythink they should and feel guilty about not doing it (p. 26).” These well-publicized individual decisions have made the masses of women who cannotafford to quit work suffer even greater angst in the double bind.

Finally, there are two players in every double bind, and if only one is tak-ing action, the double bind will persist. Today’s discourse, as it is currently




configured, lets organizations off the hook. Much of the current dialoguefocuses on women and their individual choices rather than looking at orga-nizational processes and practices as a contributor to the double bind. Forexample, women are viewed as opting out rather than organizations beingviewed as offering limited career options. In addition, individual choices dolittle to change the systems and policies that disadvantage employees seek-ing to enact the new career model. Individual choice suggests that an employeehas to choose: either work or family (Rapoport et al., 2002). While organiza-tional aloofness keeps the double bind in place, the marketplace may even-tually reward those organizations that reduce it by adopting policies that arealigned with the new career paradigm. These organizations will be poised toattract and retain talented career self-agents, both male and female.

Notes

1. We are choosing the language “flexible work arrangements” rather than the often used phrased“alternative work arrangements” since the latter language suggests an outdated conventional norm.

2. Interviewee stories cited in this article are part of an ongoing qualitative research project aboutwomen’s careers. Three stories were published in the CASE Association Proceedings, 2004, “CareerDilemmas: Women Facing Difficult Choices” (Shapiro & Ingols, 2004). Several were included in TakeCharge of Your Career, 2005, Barnes & Nobles Silver Lining Press. In all cases, names have been changedto protect confidentiality.

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Mary Shapiro is a senior lecturer at Simmons College School of Management, the only all-women MBA program in the country. She teaches, researches, and publishes in the areas ofcommunication, team leadership, and, in particular, women and their careers.

Cynthia Ingols, EdD, is an associate professor, Simmons School of Management, and teachesand conducts research on leading organizational change and careers, particularly how womenmanage these activities.

Stacy Blake-Beard, PhD, is an associate professor of management at Simmons College inBoston, Massachusetts. Her research interests include mentoring at the intersection of race andgender, the impact of formal mentoring programs, diversity in organizations, and women’scareers.




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