From mummy slow lane to the fast track
From The Sunday Times
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May 20, 2007
From mummy slow lane to the fast track
Economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett is fighting for a working life that women can live with
Hitting the job market at age 56 involved more than the usual indignities. Cold calls were interspersed with strategies on the let’s-cover-up-my-real-age front. My stroke of brilliance: dabbing pancake make-up on the back of my hands to disguise incipient age spots. Hands are a dead giveaway, capable of betraying the tautest size 8 body.
The whole ridiculous process made me sick at heart. Back in the 1970s women crashed through all kinds of career barriers – but little did we appreciate the complexity of the road ahead. Those of us who also wanted children had no idea how hard it would be to raise a family and conjure up the linear progression of a successful male career.
My first detour or “off ramp” was a predictable tale of being forced out of a career by childbearing troubles. In the September of 1979 I discovered I was pregnant with twins. I was delighted but scared. My first child – an adored daughter – was just two, and I was daunted at the prospect of “balancing” three small children with my demanding job as assistant professor of economics at Barnard College, part of Columbia University, New York. I was at the six-year mark and my tenure review was just starting.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s Off-Ramps and On-Ramps, Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success, is published by Harvard Business School Press
