The Problems of Workingwomen

HEADLINES often tell of women having glamorous and well-paying jobs formerly held almost exclusively by men. Some become presidents of countries, government cabinet members, TV anchor women, stock brokers, and so forth. Yet it remains true that the vast majority of women have low-paying, low-status jobs, with very little chance of advancement.

The fact is, despite legal victories and federal laws outlawing discrimination against women in employment, the job picture appears to be getting worse for women workers, not better. “Progress? What progress?” the National Organization for Women admitted last year. “We are slipping back. Things are not even staying the same.”

Recent government statistics show that the gap between what the average man and woman earns has been widening, not narrowing, in the last twenty years. More than 80 percent of all workingwomen in the U.S. make less than $10,000 a year, while only 38 percent of all men do. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, some female college graduates earn only 60 percent of what male college graduates earn. Furthermore, a study by a New York research organization reported that more than two thirds of the increase in female employment between now and 1985 would be in modest clerical jobs, and that wages would continue to lag substantially behind men’s wages.

What this all means is that a woman who hopes to find an exciting job at a high enough rate of pay to provide her with financial independence is likely to be disappointed. Not only will her job probably be of a mechanical and menial nature, but also if she pays someone to care for her children while she is working, she may just barely break even, if that. For there are usually other costs: transportation, lunches away from home, a working wardrobe, higher priced convenience foods, laundry service, trips to the hairdresser​—all of which can take a big bite out of a paycheck.

On the Job Problems

Further, the work environment frequently can take a toll on a woman’s nerves. Many do not like the backbiting, office politicking, competitiveness and sometimes dishonesty of the “dog-eat-dog” business world. Nor is the moral climate always an upbuilding one. Many women have experienced sexual harassment on the job by male employees or bosses.

The Cornell Human Affairs Program conducted a survey on this subject and found that 92 percent of the women that they polled felt that sexual harassment on the job was a serious problem, and a full 70 percent said that they had personally experienced it. The poll showed that sexual harassment, which they defined as constant leering and ogling, squeezing and pinching, continually brushing up against a woman’s body, sexual propositions backed by the threat of losing a job, and, in extreme cases, even forced sexual relations, occurred across all job categories, ages, marital statuses and pay ranges.

What About the Home?

Another problem of many working mothers is that their job exhausts them. Yet, when they come home there are still many things there for which to care. In many cases, their taking on the extra burden of working outside the home does not result in their husbands’ pitching in and helping out at home any more than they did before their wives began working.

For example, consider a survey taken of women doctors in the Detroit, Michigan, area in 1976. It showed that besides being full-time physicians, three out of four of these women took care of all their families’ cooking, shopping, child care and money management. Two thirds of them had some domestic help one or two days a week to assist with laundry and cleaning, but the remaining third even did all their own housework.

The energy drain on such a woman can be a serious problem if she tries to carry such a superhuman load for long. Women who have tried to do it admit frankly that inevitably the housework suffers. One working mother acknowledged that she now removes towels from her drier and literally throws them into the linen closet to save folding time. Another said that her husband used to complain if she didn’t iron his handkerchiefs; now that she is working he is glad if she even takes them out of the drier and puts them in his drawer.

What Happens to the Children?

Although many husbands nowadays may be willing to overlook a great deal that they at one time expected of their wives, there is another matter that working mothers find harder to sweep under the rug​—the needs of their children. They may argue that it is the quality of time spent with their children, not the quantity, that counts, and there is truth to that. Yet a working mother may become so frazzled that both the quantity and the quality of time with the children suffer.

Recognizing this problem of working mothers, the authors of a book that encourages housewives to work offers this suggestion to them when they arrive home only to be greeted by their children wanting to tell them about their day: “Tell those adorable dimpled faces to button their lips until Mommy has 15 minutes alone in her room to make the transition, pull herself together, change clothes, and maybe have a quick martini. Lock the door if you must, because, as far as we’re concerned, this is a very important part of any working mother’s schedule.”

The problem with this advice is that the working mother may discover, as some have, that by the time she is ready for her children, they may have withdrawn from her. Their precious earnestness to share with their mother the things important to them has faded, having been replaced by a silent barrier.

One psychiatrist who specializes in the emotional conflicts of career women says that children don’t like to have their mothers working, period. “While the children rarely complain about the father being away from home, they freely express their anger at their mother for being away,” he claims. “The mother, they feel, should be for them alone.”

This psychiatrist claims that career women, due to the women’s liberation movement, have become intolerant of any kind of dependence. “For those with children,” he says, “it means that they expect their children to grow up as soon as they’re born. They want the children to be more like themselves, resourceful and independent. And the children are not prepared for this.”

Nor are small children the only ones that require attention, as one mother and homemaker, who has two grown children and one sixteen-year-old son still living at home, points out. “You have to prod children,” she says, “really show that you’re interested in them, in what happened to them that day. They won’t volunteer it. And if you’re not at home to discuss these things with them, they’re going to find someone else to confide in. How do you know but that they may choose to confide in someone immoral or immature?”

This mother went on to add: “Two girls in the neighborhood, whose mothers work, often come here to visit after school until someone is home. They tell me things that they never tell their mothers. When I suggest that they do so, they say that their mothers are too busy for them.”

The Problem of Success

Some women become real successes in the business world. They make a lot of money, exercise considerable influence and are respected by business associates. But their work often requires overtime and even travel. For a mother, this means having to leave not only her children but her husband as well. Yet refusing overtime and travel can mean losing her job.

One woman executive on the American Stock Exchange, a job traditionally classified as ‘male only’ until recently, needs to travel more than 30 percent of the time. She also has twin infant daughters. Her solution? She has a housekeeper daytimes and, when she is traveling, her husband baby-sits for her after he comes home from his job. When she is traveling, an average workday is from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m.​—a schedule that precludes mothering even if she were physically near her children.

So for a true “career woman,” the home and family must become secondary in importance, because, as anthropologist Margaret Mead points out: “The continuous care given to small children, a husband, and a household usually is incompatible with the single-minded pursuit of a career. The life style of the good wife and mother contrasts sharply with that of the good scientist, artist, or executive.”

Attempts at mixing an outside career and caring for a family often prove disastrous. One woman whose marriage broke up explains: “My work had become almost a lover to me. When I say my career comes very high in my life, it’s because it is my life.”

Yet even workingwomen who are not committed to a career need to recognize how deeply a job can affect their marital relationship. One woman who, after some twenty years of marriage, went back to work observes: “I think Lew misses having me home quite a lot . . . And now I get kind of irritated with ‘Come help me pack my bag.’ I think: ‘Pack your own bag!’ And I never used to feel this way. I was always delighted to help him because I felt that was what my role was.”

This brings us back to the question: Where does a woman belong? In the home? On a job? What is her proper role?