In March 1999, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reported on a 4 year intense effort by senior female faculty, Women in the School of Science, and senior leadership to address AND to begin to resolve the “inequities that female faculty faced” for decades at MIT.

Lotte Bailyn, Professor at MIT, described the history, the process and the results in her paper, “Academic Careers and Gender Equity: Lessons Learned From MIT” (published in Gender, Work and Organization, Vo. 10, No. 2, March 2003, pp. 137-153). See: web.mit.edu/faculty/reports/provost.html.

We can review Professor Bailyn’s paper from three perspectives:

1. The contributions she makes to clarity in the definition of gender inequity as a problem that can be addressed by civilized people of both genders.
   
   
2. A description of how MIT accomplished something worthwhile.
   
   
3. A roadmap that other academic OR corporate organizations of conscience COULD pursue if they truly wished to address their similar problems of gender inequity at their establishments.

A Vision of Gender Integration

Professor Bailyn describes an “integrated vision of gender equity” which she suggests should be,

“based on integration rather than separation of the public spheres of economic work and the private sphere of family, community, and other personal involvements.”

She describes two possible definitions of “gender equity” in academia.

• "[One definition] . . equates equity with equality: equal pay, equal access to opportunities to enter an occupation and to advance in it, and freedom from harassment.”
  
  
• The second definition “is based on fairness”: “In other words, merely allowing women faculty to meet the criteria for academic success, on terms that have been defined by men and represent their life experiences does not guarantee equity.”

If you want a man to excel as a chef in the kitchen of a great restaurant, do you tell him to do it your way or do you let him do it his way?

An interesting finding from the MIT research was the major realization that most senior women faculty at MIT were not married and did not have children. Further, Prof. Bailyn mentioned that was not the case at many bio-tech firms, which actually did a better job, in some instances, at integrating work-family balance into their employees’ lives.

Prof. Bailyn acknowledges that despite great goals and efforts at MIT and at other academic establishments, inequities persist. But, NOT for the reasons most will cite:

• Not because women do not have the skills, interests, etc. to accomplish scientific work.
  
  
• AND NOT because men intentionally discriminate because they do not want to share power.

So, pull the auto-response fangs back and consider, as she suggests, that “more subtle dynamics . . are at work . . both on the individual and the institutional level.”

What MIT Did

Prof. Bailyn provides a comprehensive overview of the efforts at MIT from 1994 through 2003. At one point, MIT’s president invited presidents from 8 other research universities, their provosts, and 2 women faculty from each campus to spend one day discussing:

“women in academic science and engineering”.

After much dialog, three goals were agreed upon and defined:

1. to have the number of women on their faculty mirror the number of women they educate; to stop the “leaking pipeline” –- the erosion of women in technical fields as they progressed up the faculty career ladder;
   
   
2. to ensure that those women already on their faculty have an equally positive experience as their men; to stop the “marginalization” -– the exclusion of women from mainstream career activity
   
   
3. to have no faculty member –- male or female –- disadvantaged by family responsibilities, whether it be for children, elders, or partners.

Not only did MIT bring the issues to the table, but they also broadened the experiential base by including other relevant campuses, and they used those resources to fully and fairly redefine the challenge that they all faced.

The universities that were included were the cream of the crop: Cal Tech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, Penn, Princeton, Yale, and -– yes, even Harvard. That Harvard was part of this process and yet Dr. Summers felt he had the right to pontificate unilaterally on the subject as he did in January 2005 provides new perspective on why some of the female faculty opted to walk out in disgust.

What MIT learned, and Dr. Summers demonstrated with force, was described by Virginia Valian in her book, Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (1998: MIT Press). Prof. Bailyn quotes Valian’s on the existence of “gender schemas” in the minds of men and women in private and institutional/organizational settings:

“[gender schemas are] the implicit, largely non-conscious beliefs about sex differences that all of us, men and women alike, share.”

As a result of “gender schemas," “men are consistently overrated, while women are underrated”.

These beliefs persist even in the face of readily available information to the contrary.

To cite an example from elsewhere: Marilyn Tam, head of US Foundation, noted author and advocate of women’s economic empowerment, described an orchestra of a major metropolitan area that realized that it had too few women. In an effort to increase their share of women musicians, the orchestra held auditions where the candidates were asked to play from behind a screen – to hide their gender. The orchestra was surprised when it learned that it still had failed to dramatically change the gender ratios until it realized that the judges continued to differentiate among the candidates by the sound of the high heels of women musicians on the stage floor. Only after the orchestra installed silencing carpeting in the auditioning rooms was it possible to have truly “blind” and objective auditions. The number of women musicians increased dramatically once talent became the sole criteria for acceptance into the orchestra.

The Roadmap Out of Gender Inequity

MIT did the only thing it could to get out of the “gender inequity bind” -– it had to look at the problem with all of its ugly warts. Prof. Bailyn reports that,

“All of [the] assumptions and the practices [about competence and success in academic institutions] were built upon the practices and norms constructed around the life experiences of men. All of these assumptions and the practices associated with them disadvantaged academic women. But they are so ingrained and so taken for granted that one forgets that they are not God-given, but are constructed by mere men . . . and may have some unintentional consequences for the university mission.”

Once the institution recongizes that the risks were larger than merely salary schemes, but might actually limit the ability of the institution to perform to its full potential, then the institution started to accept the possibility that it might be cutting off more than a digit and may actually be cutting into an essential artery.

MIT applied what Prof. Bailyn calls “an integrated gender lens” to remedy the unjustified inequities it found there. It was not a fast process, nor is the job complete; but, the roadmap they used is worthy and ready for use by any institution of conscience which truly wishes to find its way out, as well:

1. A committed champion: Prof. Bailyn describes one woman scientist who finally had had enough, who wouldn’t take this stuff anymore, and who was willing and committed to do something to fix the situation.
   
   
2. A point of connection: That first woman found one other like-minded woman scientist willing to join her and to broaden the dialog among other women faculty in science.
   
   
3. Collecting data: The women opted to involve the Dean to appoint a committee to collect the data systematically and comprehensively, rather than “go it alone” and risk missing a lot of data under the Dean’s control.
   
   
4. Working with the Dean: The Dean not only had the data, but he also had the power to fix things -- to achieve their goals of redress and remedy.
   
   
5. Appointing the committee: Senior women from each department were included on the committee AND some men – a condition to which the women agreed ONLY if the men were powerful enough to implement solutions.
   
   
6. The findings: The results of the research provided “a convincing picture” that -- initially -- was evaluated and shared privately within the university.
   
   
7. From private to public: Two years after the initial report was prepared (and 5 years after the initial committee was formed), a narrative report was released to the public at large.
   
   
8. The media: The university finally took the discussion into the greater community, the public domain, and involved the media which showed itself to be both respectful of the process and worthy of its presentation.

MIT is not yet what would be considered "gender equity heaven." But, it has the respect of the Women in the School of Science for taking the initiative and not simply accepting the status quo. And it has provided universities, globally, with a real process and a roadmap to address the challenge they all face.

Would they choose to be as daring?

On March 28, 2005, the Census Bureau released a report that was described in Associated Press releases with a unique spin. (See Wall Street Journal, 3-28-05, p A7: “Data Show Racial Gap in Incomes of Women”:

“Black and Asian women with bachelor’s degrees earn slightly more than similarly educated white women . . .”

This cold, hard, and allegedly objective review of the data is intended to get white women mad at their competitor Black and Asian women who all are vying for, the anonymous writers believe, the same slice of the pie.

Well, I’m not buying it. I say to my Black Sisters and my Asian Sisters,

“You GO, Girls! Those women who struggle to earn a bachelor’s degree at levels, like my white Sisters, who exceed the graduate rates of males, OUGHT to be earning as much as they possibly can in this so called Meritocracy!”

But the reality is that NO WOMEN with a bachelor’s degree is doing that well. That’s the message to our young, bright, but extremely naïve Younger Sisters – regardless of race, color, creed, religion OR political beliefs. To all of those young women who have been saying to themselves, “Oh, but we’re making SOOOOO much progress these days! That pay differential issue is SOOOOO yesterday.”

We reply, “That’s what WE THOUGHT, too, back when we were your age. Back then, we didn’t have the data that YOU do today.” And here it is:

In the year 2003, “… white men with four year degrees make more than anyone else.”

Given that white females earn only 57.3% of what white males earn, does it really matter that black females earn a whopping 5% more or that Asian females earn 9% more than white females?

Isn’t the issue that men earn much more than their presence in college degree programs would warrant? And that men earn much more than their graduation rates from college would warrant? Isn’t the issue NOT that women might need to hold down two or more jobs to earn a measly 62.3% of what their while male counterparts earn in one job?

Isn’t the issue equity? Fairness? That good ol’ American “level playing field”? That “meritocracy” that we’re always hearing about?

The intense efforts to “explain” these tiny differences among black, Asian, and white women college graduate salaries is akin to the shuffling of the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Why try to “explain” a 6% variation in incomes among women, while we totally ignore the huge and persistent 40% variation in incomes between women and men?

Reporters and journalists at the Associated Press get to hide behind their anonymity in order to give us their special spin on the Census Bureau data. It’s probably because they’re all a bunch of white male college graduates, anyway, cackling to themselves as they write their copy, trying to pit one woman wage earner against another –- and laughing all the way to the bank.

We seem to take the "issue" of the lack of diversity on U.S. corporate boards very lightly.

The statistics on women on boards of directors tend to take only a "snapshot" view. It is difficult to compare trends overtime because the annual surveys of women on Fortune 500 boards are interwoven with other surveys of the Fortune 1000, or the Canadian women on boards, or Women of color.

It's a challenge, but let's take a look at just some of the statistics that tell women how well corporate America is at "achieve diversity".

Catalyst is a New York-based organization advocating advancement of women in corporate America. It conducts annual surveys of US and Canadian women on boards of directors, women of color, and women in top management positions in corporate America.

Catalyst started surveying women on the Fortune 500 boards of directors in 1993. The latest survey was in 2003 -- 11 years of experience. In 1993, women represented 8.3% of F500 board positions. In 2003, women represented 13.6%. However, the size of F500 boards decreased to 5,728 in 2003, down from somewhere around 6,500 in 1993. So, some part of that "progress" resulted from there being a lower denominator. But, growth DID occur.


How do these statistics suggest women will fare in the future? Let's use the 11 year history of the Catalyst survey as the forecast basis for estimating the year by which women will achieve parity with men (50% representation on boards of directors) assuming no further reduction in size of the average board. Parity won't happen until 2049 – that's 45 years from now.


If we use the most recent 2 year history of the Catalyst survey as the forecast basis, we can estimate that women will achieve partity with men on boards of directors by 2031 – that's 27 years from now.

In order for women to achieve parity in the more reasonable timeframe – by the year 2020, a mere 16 years from 2004 – we will have to add MORE THAN 100 women EVERY YEAR to the boards of directors of Fortune 500 companies to achieve parity.

To put that number in perspective, Catalyst reports that they place around 12-15 women on boards of directors annually. And they are one of the very few entities that focus exclusively on placing women on boards.

Oh, and by the way, women constitute an even smaller share of the number of seats on boards of the second tier of the Fortune 1000. In the 2001 Catalyst survey, comparing the F500 with the F501-1000, companies in the lower half of the F1000 were 3 TIMES more likely to have NO WOMEN directors (197 firms) compared to companies in the top half (66 firms).

Anna Fels' book, Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives (Pantheon: 2004) explains a lot of things. It's a book that provides perspective and light around a picture you're having trouble putting into focus.

Dr. Fels is a practicing psychiatrist in New York City who has written for the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Self, and, most recently, the Science Times section of The New York Times. She is a member of the faculty of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University at New York Presbyterian Hospital and has written a Harvard Business Review article entitled, Do Women Lack Ambition?

Her work focuses on the question of why women feel anxiety or are evasive about having ambition. Why do women hesitate to admit they aspire to anything: power, position, influence, money, wealth, achievement, success? Why do women bang back the nail that tries to stick out - those women who do strive to be different and to succeed? Why do women NOT cheer each other on - slap each other on the back, encourage each other along their chosen paths?

Reviewers say that Fels "examines the mixed messages that women get about claiming recognition." In her own words, Fels says:

"Throughout their lives women are subtly discouraged from pursuing goals by a pervasive lack of recognition for their accomplishments. Parents, peers, teachers, professors, bosses and institutions all underrate work by females and therefore unwittingly withhold appropriate praise and support. All too often girls and young women incrementally lose their early convictions about their abilities and talents. A belief in the likelihood of achieving their goals slowly fades and is supplanted by aspiration for more socially available types of attention; particularly attention for sexual attractiveness."

How could this possibly be true? Let's just look at a recent response to Summers' musings at Harvard University.

Among all of the responses to Summers' comments, the one chosen for print by the leading business newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, was the tirade that damned the few female professors who walked out, in disgust at Summers' speech. That apparent authority on women's issues, a professor of Yiddish literature, wrote to the WSJ that the rebelling tenured professors were "feminists" and "liberals", practicing "sexual politics".

Well, if that doesn't put Hester in her place, I don't know what will.

Coming to Summers' defense apparently had to be accomplished by attacking women of conscience who took strong exception to his using his "bully pulpit" to re-iterate old wives' tales and, once again, blaming the victims -- women, themselves -- for their under-representation among his tenured top-level professorial ranks.

Fortunately, today, it takes a lot more than McCarthy-style intimidation tactics such as wielding the broad brush of innuendo, like "Commie" and "pinko", to silence divergent 1st Amendment-protected viewpoints.

Instead of trying to white-wash all independent thinkers with the same brush of sanctimonious contempt, why not simply listen and possibly learn something from viewpoints that are not the same as the homogenized, pasteurized, and politically correct mush we've heard from America media for the past decades?

In listening to a recent interview with Anna Fels talk on the Summers event, it sounded as if there was "more there, there." Her research resonates. She suggests that women search for the affirmation and recognition of their contributions just about as much as men do. Yet, they tend not to get either affirmation or recognition. Instead, they're more likely to get labeled "feminist", "liberal", "not a nice girl" or worse.

Does this describe what women have been trying to tell us as they "opt out" of corporate America? Were they too nice to tell us the truth -- that working inside the halls and gatherings of corporate top rungs was an unrewarding, unsatisfying, lonesome, frustrating, and discouraging experience? Did they conclude that changing a filthy diaper gave greater satisfaction? Whew!

Does this describe what women are experiencing when they tell us in survey after survey that "they felt left out of the key meetings and conversations" of the top corporate world? They felt excluded from real acknowledgement of their contributions. They felt "used" and "undervalued".

Fels suggests that women search for affirmation and recognition of their contributions just as much as men do, yet women tend not to get the positive feedback. Not from supervisors. Not from peers. Not from spouses. Not even from their emotional sisters.

In fact, most of these sources of potential "atta girls" end up delivering what Fels calls "a mixed message" -- how gentle of her. It's a message that says "don't outshine your boss", "don't upstage your husband", "don't make your peers look bad". And if a woman dares to aspire, she can expect to feel the subtle intimidation of innuendo that suggests she's probably not good in bed, not a good mother or wife, or otherwise just another "uppity broad".

Even among other women, an aspiring female will be viewed as "pushy" and "grabbing the limelight" away from the group. There is protection in a female crowd, a sorority clique, provided you -- as a women -- don't dare to be different from the other sisters.

Of course, though, everyone also believes that other wives' tale that this "problem" is only true for those who went through the 1960s' and 70s' feminist era. Of course, this isn't a problem faced by today's women. Of course, today, women are getting their due recognition, equal opportunity, and encouragement toward advancement. Yeah, right.

Dr. Fels, as a psychiatrist, offers some possible "treatments" for this disease.

• think carefully about your goals and your future
  
• know the enemy (cultural bias, a bad employer, a conniving friend or peer)
  
• get on the same page with your mate for balancing work-family life
  
• lobby Congress to pass more family-friendly laws
  
• seek out mentors
  
• seek out peers who acknowledge our accomplishments.

The first three recommendations are sound. First, dream your dream whatever it may be, and plan your future as if you own it, because you do. Second, trust your intuition when you confront those who would undervalue you for their own reasons -- be wary, be aware, and be not caught up in their assessment of you or your goals and dreams. The third is crucial -- your mate can provide the good counsel, encouragement, and the solace you may not find anywhere else. But, it is a negotiated settlement that must constantly be re-negotiated over time.

The ephemeral faith in legislative solutions is a source of many false hopes. Until the day that women attain a significantly greater share of the positions of power in our legislatures, this is not likely to be a source of change. Women are all too familiar with the reality that laws that were passed in one environment can too easily be repealed in another.

Seeking out mentors also is a worthy, but a weak, strategy. If there already were women in positions of authority that were inclined to give out kudos to those below, we would be hearing more from the women at the top. Not only are there few women at the top, but those that are there are not as generous as they could be with their encouragement and recognition of the women who helped them get there.

Finally, seeking out peers to give women the acknowledgement and recognition they deserve is equally tough. It simply does not happen as much as it could or should. A few writers, like Pat Heim and Susan Murphy, know the challenge and have written about it at length in their book, In the Company of Women: Indirect Aggression Among Women, Why We Hurt Each Other and How We Can Stop (Jeremy Tarcher: reprint 2003).

Instead of the last three recommendations, I would offer some alternatives. One, "to thine own self be true". Give yourself as much acknowledgement and recognition and celebration as you can possibly stand. As a woman, you will have a gigantic inner void that needs to be filled, so start filling it up yourself. And keep doing it.

Two, "give better than you get". Give those other women who deserve recognition and admiration all that you can spare. Celebrate the accomplishments and achievements of the women you know and admire. They, too, will have a gigantic inner void that needs to be filled, so start helping them fill it up as well. And keep doing it.

The third comes from a phrase in the poem Desiderata, (copyright 1927, written by Max Ehrmann, a poet and lawyer from Terre Haute, Indiana, who lived from 1872 to 1945).

"You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here."

Simply put, there is nothing that anyone can say to, or about, you or do to you, which can take away from the fact that you are a part of the greatest whole imaginable. No less than the mighty trees and the beautiful stars above, "you have a right to be here" and to be happy.

“Be a man!” yells the headline from a Kellogg School of Management web site for the Center for Executive Women.

In the perennial effort to help women advance among corporate ranks, the CEW is a throwback to the days of women’s silk scarf ties and black power suits.

“Compete harder” and you, too, can be Carly Fiorina or Ann Mulcahey, the web site says.

Citing three of the latest gender-based research studies:

1. Catherine Hakin, London School of Economics “Choosing to Be Different: Women, Work and The Family” with Jill Kirby, Center for Policy Studies, Princeton University, concludes that “men are more work-centered” and that explains their advancement in business.

2. Uri Gneezy, University of Chicago Business School, forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics; conducted tests on paying men to perform mental and physical tasks; men responded to more money to do more boring work; women didn’t; men respond to competition, especially with women.

3. Linda Babcock, Carnegie Mellon University. “Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide” with Sara Lasehaven, Princeton University Press, October 2003; women “lose” by not negotiating as effectively as men.

They recommend women should take on more of the competitive work-centered, tough negotiator roles that are the dominant characteristics of male professional counterparts.

Is this really the wisest conclusion? Is a woman-makeover-into-a-competitive-man really the solution for the 21st century business?

First, men are work-centered because they get significant emotional satisfaction from the positive feedback they can receive from the workplace.

Any woman who has risen through the ranks of power knows the same benefits seldom accrue to women who have work-centered their way to the top. Women are much more subject to jealousy, receive far fewer accolades for their achievements once attained, become targets of both male and female competitors once they achieve positions of leadership, and often must develop the thick-skinned exterior of Martha Stewart Queen Bees in order to preserve and protect their core being in the face of workplace pressures.

Women can only become work-centered if they are willing to deny some other part of their personal and emotional make-up. Children, home, family, relationships, and spouse must be “bought out” emotionally, financially or in fact. Men can mentally ignore whole segments of their lives much more readily than women can. Men have entire built-in security blankets, safety nets, not to mention cooks, cleaners, bottle washers, and full-life partners to support their work-centeredness. Women can barely find decent child-care facilities.

Men get the message, daily, “Go for IT! You can have it ALL!” Women get the message, “You can have it all BUT not all at the same time” or worse, “Maybe, later.”

Women can only become work-centered if men made an effort to even the playing field in the family-centric world. There are studies showing an increased interest on the part of men in home life, family life, and the total support infrastructure there. But interest does not get the cooking done, honey.

Second, men respond to motivators differently. That includes, primarily, money motivators, but also to challenges to their male-hood.

Is it appropriate that women re-learn or mindlessly duplicate men’s responses to financial rewards? Or can women take something else from these studies?

Another way to look at the conclusions is that men will work harder if bribed to do so or if they fear a woman might get ahead of them and thereby threaten their position among other males.

The first lesson is for women to position themselves to be the bribER rather than the bribEE. Women should look for opportunities to position men so they compete against each other for the gold ring. Women should NOT merely try to go for HIS ring, but look for ways to get him. . Or the two of them … going hard and fast for the ring that SHE wants.

The second lesson is for women to position themselves strategically in the race so that when men perceive they might possibly lose to a woman, men try even harder and women need to be prepared to benefit from the raising tide for everyone’s boat.

Women are making dramatic progress in the very real world of competitive sport. First, it was tennis, then marathon racing, and now golf. As women have entered a sport and excelled, men have responded by pushing out some other part of the competitive envelop. This “just to show them” mentality has produced Xtreme sports, new “world series”, and other new viable economic marketplaces that never would have existed without the competitive thrust. Women benefited from increased available sponsorship for all sports, thanks in large measure to the results of diligently supporting Title IX mandates.

But, isn’t this being duplicitous? Or might it rather be a case of giving to men the rewards that satisfy them, while also giving to women the rewards that are meaningful to them? Why would anyone try to reward someone with something that held no value for him or her?

And, if it were such great advice, then why will we never see anyone try to tell a man to “Be a Woman!”

In the New York Times, October 26, 2003, Lisa Belkin wrote an article titled, "The Opt-Out Revolution: High fliers trade boardroom for motherhood and redefine view of success."

There has been a lot of controversy and debate about the message Ms. Belkin was sending. In the start of the article, we read a series of quotes that translated "opt-out" into the "cop-out" interpretation that many applied to her survey:

"I don't want to be on the fast track leading to a partnership at a prestigious law firm.... Some people define that as success. I don't"

"I don't want to be famous; I don't want to conquer the world; I don't want that kind of life."

"Maternity provides an escape hatch that paternity does not. Having a baby provides a graceful and convenient escape."

If you stay with Ms. Belkin all the way through her article, you learn that women are not merely quitting, but rather many are trying to find ways to achieve success using different terms: "satisfaction, balance, and sanity."

To understand Ms. Belkin's point you have to realize that "women are rejecting the workplace [AS THEY FOUND IT]."

At the end, she makes the compelling point that:

"This, I would argue, is why the workplace needs women.... for the very fact that they are more willing to leave than men."

"Women started this conversation about life and work – a conversation that is slowly coming to include men. Sanity, blance and a new definition of success, it seems, just might be contagious. And instead of women being forced to act like men, men are being freed to act like women..... Looked at that way, this is not the failure of a revolution, but the start of a new one."

I believe the feminist movement, in the past, did a great disservice to those women who chose to emphasize the family and the human caring portion of their careers. It is crucial for women to do their first and best job well -– in some cases, that is the job of helping society keep the continuity of life from one generation to another.

My own mother was a housekeeper, a homemaker, a mother of six, an at-home teacher, a wife. Because of the choices she made and the way she educated and raised me and my siblings, we have more choices, more opportunities, and therefore more responsibility for our lives.

Women who have made those choices, whatever their choice, for whatever their well-considered reasons, should be supported in their decisions -– even if it happens to be different from the one I might choose for myself, personally, today.

The critical error is the failure to consciously make choices; it is the failure to think about the future, and the failure to contemplate the consequences of our actions and of our inaction.

When we merely "fall into" our decisions by happenstance, that is not living and choosing. That is very close to entropy. And that I cannot condone.

In that same article, we read the following:

"I rarely thought about combining life and work."

"I enjoyed the work ... but life got in the way."

"I am doing what is right for me at the moment, not necessarily what is right for me forever."

"Back in college,... she gave no thought to melding life and work."

These are the statements of "happenstance" -- not of choice.

If we are going to re-define success, if we are going to re-establish new relationships between personal and professional success, we cannot do it without thinking deeply about how we DO want to succeed, about how we are going to accomplish it, about what we need to do it, and about how WE, personally, will be re-defined in the process.

We cannot just "fall into business" the way they are suggesting they "just fell into work" and then "just opted out."

We must examine what will we be, now that we have the opportunity to choose and to make a difference.

And, as my good friends remind me, this is good sense not merely for women, but also for men in our workplaces.

There are a number of theories in development about work-family balance, about how we must be mentally engaged in our work if we are to be successful, and what we can do to ensure that our 9 to 5 experience is a meaningful part of our entire life. Lest you think this is all just "touchy-feely gibberish" from the California fringe, take a look at the following very serious researchers.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi On Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced: CHICK sent me high ee) is a leader in part of this thought-process. He was a psychologist at University of Chicago from 1971 through 1999 when he did his most important research, described in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990).

He defines "flow" as "the state of optimal experience in which one loses oneself in a task or activity" -- the capacity for full engagement in an endeavor. You know the feeling -- "in the groove".

MC has now joined Peter Drucker at The Claremont Graduate University as the C.S. and D.J. Davidson Professor of Psychology and Management within the Drucker Quality of Life Research Center, a non-profit research institute that studies "positive psychology".

In MC's latest book (Penguin: March 2004), Good Business: Leadership, Flow and the Making of Meaning, we read:

"Our jobs determine to a large extent what our lives are like."

"Leaders must make it possible for employees to work with joy, to their heart's content, while responding to the needs of society."

His earlier books include: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience; The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.

"He believes workers must put personal accomplishment and gratification above possessions and financial gain, and he also calls for business leaders to create opportunities where employees can 'work with joy, to their hearts' content, while responding to the needs of society.'"

At a recent presentation at the University of La Verne, MC presented the key points of what constitutes "flow":

• Completely involved in what we are doing - focused, concentrated.
  
• A sense of ecstasy - of being outside everyday reality.
  
• Great inner clarity - know what needs to be done, and how well we are doing.
  
• Knowing that the activity is doable - that our skills are adequate to the task.
  
• A sense of serenity - no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
  
• Timelessness - thoroughly focused on the present where hours seem to pass by in minutes.
  
• Intrinsic motivation - whatever produces flow becomes its own reward.

These are many of the same points made repeatedly by Peter Drucker and Edward Demming as they described the "knowledge worker" of the 21st Century. MC is now reminding Corporate America that they cannot treat employees, today, as if they were the brawn and brute serfs of yesterday's factories.

Teresa Amabile On Creativity

Another authority in this same field addresses the same challenge, but from a different direction: the psychology behind creativity.

Teresa Amabile heads the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School and has spent 3 decades in the study of creativity:

"looking for moments when people struggled with a problem or came up with a new idea." ["The 6 Myths of Creativity" by Bill Breen in Fast Company Magazine Issue 89, December 2004, pp. 75 ff.]

She is also a prolific writer, drawing on the results of perhaps the largest single study of creativity. See Creativity in Context: Update to the Social Psychology of Creativity, by Teresa M. Amabile et al. (Westview Press: 1996)]

In her Fast Company interview, Amabile contrasts the myths vs. the truths her research has revealed about creativity and creative people.

Myth 1: Only creative types can be creative.
Truth 1: Anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some creative work.

Creativity requires experience (knowledge AND technical skills), talent, an ability to think in new ways, the capacity to push through uncreative periods, intrinsic motivation (defined as "being turned on" by your work), and a work environment where the barriers to creativity have been removed.

Myth 2: Money motivates creativity.
Truth 2: While people need to perceive that they're being compensated fairly, they put far more value on a work environment where creativity is supported, valued, and recognized.

People are more creative when they care about their work, when their projects are matched to their experience/expertise and interests, and where they have the opportunity to stretch their skills.

Interestingly enough, "pay for performance" programs tend to make people more risk averse and certainly NOT more creative.

Myth 3: Time pressure fuels creativity.
Truth 3: People need the ability to focus on the work and be protected from distractions.

People must know the work is important and that everyone is committed to it. They are the least creative when they are fighting the clock and cannot deeply engage with the problem.

Myth 4: Fear forces breakthroughs.
Truth 4: Creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with anger, fear and anxiety.

"One day's happiness" allows a person to make a cognitive association that incubates overnight and reappears the next day in the form of a creative idea.

Myth 5: Competition beats collaboration.
Truth 5: The most creative teams are those that have the confidence to share and debate ideas.

People stop sharing information when they compete for recognition. Failure to share information is destructive: "None of us is as smart as all of us."

Myth 6: A streamlined organization (i.e., downsized and restructured) is a creative organization.
Truth 6: Creativity suffers, greatly, during and after downsizing and reorganizations.

Communication, collaboration, and people's sense of freedom and autonomy are all sacrificed - along with creativity - when organizations undergo major downsizing.
What do you think might be the implications of massive workforce outsourcing?

What is so unique about her research is that it tosses out much of the classical assumptions about workplace creativity.

Warren Bennis On Leadership

Finally, we have the classical authority, Warren Bennis, Emeritus Professor at USC, writing many years ago the classic, On Becoming A Leader.

Interestingly enough, Amabile's research was cited by Bennis in his book, with Patricia Ward Biederman, Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration (Perseus Books, 1998). But, Bennis takes the "old school" view of leadership and tries to apply it to 21st century knowledge workers.

For example, he argues that every great group must have "a strong leader" -- when most today speak instead of a masterful enabler or conductor. Bennis also says that great groups must have "an enemy", that they must see themselves as "winning underdogs", and that they become "their own world", driven by "self-righteous hatred" and that their work becomes "sexy". Sexy?

Bennis describes 15 traits of "great groups" and "great work" that he's studied principally in the top corporate echelons of the American capital marketplace.

He does say that "leadership always comes down to a question of character." That "we long for meaning" and that "problem-solving is the task for which we evolved." But it is hard to see how he makes the leap from character, meaning, and problem-solving to competition, a "king of the hill" mentality and sexy.

The contrast between Bennis' view of creative collaboration and that of Csikszentmihalyi and Amabile demonstrates the huge and growing gap that exists between the leadership of today's corporate world and that of the people who actually work there.

So, you think you understand the challenges women today face as they try to establish work-family balance in their lives, do you?

May I respectfully suggest that Judith Warner's forthcoming book, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, will give you scathingly refreshing insight into the issue. Her article for MSNBC.com just hints at the rage that is about to be unleashed as we begin to discuss her interpretation of the challenge of redefining "work-family balance" in the 21st Century:

"For real change to happen, we don't need politicians sounding off about 'family values' … We need solutions -- politically palatable, economically feasible, home-grown American solutions - that can, collectively give mothers and families a break."

Wagner interviewed 150 women across America. Her MSNBC.com article title speaks volumes: "Mommy Madness: What Happened When The Girls Who Had It All Became Mothers? A new book explores why this generation feels so insane."

Wagner's book, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, will be released in 2005 by Riverhead books, Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Here are selected excerpts from the article:

"Women told me of their exhaustion and depression, and of their frustrations with the 'uselessness' of their husbands."

"Our schools had given us co-ed gyms and wood-working shop, and had told us never let the boys drown out our voices in class. Often enough, we'd done better than they had in school. Even in science and math."

". . . there was a generation of optimism."

"The new generation of fathers would help."

"These are the harsh realities of family life in a culture that has no structures in place to allow women - and men - to balance work and child-rearing."

"And so [mommies today] take on the Herculean task of being absolutely everything to their children, simply because no one else is doing anything at all to help them."

"This has to change."

". . . this perfectionism is not empowerment. It's more like what some psychologists call 'learned helplessness' - an instinctive giving-up in the face of difficulty that people do when they think they have no real power. At base, it's a kind of dispair. A lack of faith that change can come to the outside world. A lack of belief in our political culture or our institutions."

"It really needs to change."

For those who think that this is a "new" idea, see The Type E* Woman: How to Overcome the Stress of Being Everything to Everybody (Reed Business Information: 1986).

This twenty-year old book was written by the late psychotherapist, Harriet Braiker, who specialized in stress management programs for corporate women. She originated the concept of "Everything to Everybody Syndrome" - a form of traumatic stress disorder experienced by today's high-achieving woman who suffers stress while trying to excel in both personal life and career.

So, who wants to tell me now how "we've really solved all these work-family balance problems - REALLY?!"

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[Thanks to Dr. Susanne Savary who pointed the way to the Judith Warner article:
www.msnbc.com/id/6959880/site/newsweek/page/3/]