How Executive Moms Navigate Work and Life

column of our next guest. Joanne Lublin was the Wall Street Journalist career columnist for many years, also an editor covering workplace issues from the c suite on down Pultzer Prize winning journalist is still a contributor to the Journal. Author of two books about female business executives, she understands this so well her latest book, Power Mom's How Executive mothers navigate work in life and Joan joins us on the phone from suburban Philadelphia. Joanne, so nice to have

you here with us. How are you and what's what's the last year been like for you? Well, thank you very much for having me on the show. Yeah, well, the last year has been sort of anticlimactic for me because I turned in the manuscript for this new book literally on the day before America shut down, and I had been a hermit for the prior nine months writing the book, and I thought, oh great, now I can go out and party and socialize and take some trips.

And you know, then the world's kind of turned on its head. And so I've been doing what everyone else has been doing, which is basically, you know, quarantining in place. I've taken flights twice in the last year to visit my out of town grown children and grandchildren. But that's about it. Yeah, interesting, and I do wonder how are you thinking about women right now? We talked about some data earlier that showed that women dropped out of the U s labor force in April for the first time

since January. It was I think initially we thought Joey and the pandemic would be maybe helpful for women, you know, finally giving them some flexibility and how they worked and took care of their families. And yet we're finding out

that that's not the case necessarily. Unfortunately, that is indeed correct, And in fact, the Wall Street Journal did an analysis of US data only a week or so ago, and they concluded that they're nearly one point five million few were working mothers in the workforce and before COVID nineteen. And this is especially hitting women hard who have school

aged children. They're having a difficult time returning to work because, frankly, the balance of power in the home, as much as has shifted somewhat, dad's have certainly picked up a bigger share of responsibility while everyone's been working from home, the burden is still squarely on mom's shoulders, particularly when it comes to school aged children. Is that even for younger

generations of couples that it's still the case. Well overall, that's what the studies I've seen have suggested, But certainly in the women that I interviewed for the book, I

saw a marked difference between generations. For this book, I interviewed women from the Baby Boom generation my generation to look at the first wave of women who had gotten an executive level roles in business and also had kids, and then I compared that to a similar sized group of women who were millennials and Gen xers anywhere from

their early thirties to early forties. Altogether eighty six such women plus twenty five adult daughters of the boomers, and I was looking to see what had gotten better, what had stayed the same, and what had gotten worse in terms of how they navigated work and life. And to your point, yes, I did see that there were improvements among the younger generation when it comes to sharing the duties at home. But we haven't gotten all the way to the you know go line yet. Yeah, no, exactly.

Well what's interesting is talk to me a little bit about your book. What did you set out to do. You've written books before. What was your hope to do

with this? Well, my hope was to explore just that because my first book, which was called Earning It Hard One Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the top of the business world, looked at fifty two high ranking corporate executive women, all but one of whom were baby boomers, and eight of those women, it turned out, had children, and among those who had become public companies eos, the proportion was even higher. So what was their secret, sauce? Well, they

were trailblazers. They were the pace setters. They were the first, frankly of their generation to get into the executive suite, and in many cases did so while having children. And it just made me wonder, have things changed all that much for that younger way The women who in more recent years have become executives after having children or having children when they became executives, And what I found was

that definitely things have gotten better things. One reason is because people are entering into relationships with much more supportive spouses, whether it's a life partner or a husband or in one case a wife. There also are money more supportive workplaces. We have many more women in positions of high level jobs who can act as role models and sponsors and mentors. But thirdly, we have seen huge advanced is in technology and that's why we've been able to work from home

for the last year. Those of us would like color jobs who can do so. Joanne, there was one part in your book as I was going through it, you talked about the new Spank CEO and she negotiated an employment contract and it included a provision or line in the contract that said, quote the company acknowledges that you have obligations to your family and community that will cause you at times to be away from the office during

normal working hours. That was in her contract. That seems to me sounded like that was probably pretty unusual at the time. Well, on the other hand, the company was also pretty small. It's the fun wasn't fair enough, and it was run by and it was another woman, and she was, you know, coming to that company after having worked for some pretty big, mega corporations where she didn't feel there was an acknowledgement of the fact that she had a dual role in her life and that her

children were important piece of that. And so, frankly, I just think women and devalue themselves and they don't ask for what they need when they're starting a new job. Not all of us, of course, are coming in at the CEO level or have the right or ability to negotiate a formal, written employment contract. That doesn't mean we can't sort of set the terms. And if they're not going to be amenable to a life in which we do have time to be parents as well as executives

or individual employees, then we move on. We go work somewhere else. Right, But in her case, this was important enough that she made it a provision in her contract and they accepted it. Yeah, it's funny. It's interesting that you say that, because we are having conversations about whether or not the whole idea of hybrid working. Ultimately, will people say okay, If I don't get it here, I'll go somewhere else, because you know, the past year has shown many things good and bad, but it also has

shown that hybrid can work. Tell us about who you talk to. You talk to some high powered women. Uh, Mindy Grossman, I know, Mindy Well DuPont Ellen Coleman, the CEO is a birch box at the runway. Tell us a little bit about what you got from those conversations. Well, one of the things I got from those conversations is that these women refused to be held hostage. That's something

called working mother guilt. They were very, very secure and comfortable in their own skin in terms of the roles they had chosen for themselves to be both executives and for mothers. And frankly, one of those individuals, one of those boomer mom, suggested I write an entire chapter on the issue of how to ditch working mother guilt. So I collected the ten best hacks from both generations, and it's, frankly,

one of the more popular chapters in the book. Well, and it's interesting, Um, well, what did you take away from what they said? How did they get over it or how did they Because it's one thing to say I'm not gonna fit. It's another thing to actually feel

it exactly. And so first starters, you decide that at the outset of when you're starting to feel working mother guilt, that you're not going to own it, that you are to accept the fact that you have imperfections, and that you're going to celebrate the good parts of your life

and not dwell on the bad. And so the great example that the woman who gave the inspiration for that chapter gave me was you're sitting down for dinner yet again and at seven o'clock, and it's you know, you haven't been able to get down done with work while working from home soon. In this, rather than beat yourself internally about this, celebrate the fact that, gosh, I'm having

dinner with my children and my significant other. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah? No, exactly right, Like kind of just change how you're thinking

and addressing it. Hey, one thing I want to ask you, because you did speak to some very prominent, very very successful women, there has been at times some criticism I think of some of the more successful women who are at the top, you know, saying well, I can kind of have it all or I can juggle it, or I can figure it out, because they can often afford to have help, whether it's taking care of the kids and so on, and not every mom has that ability

to do that. How do you dress? Of course not, But that was the whole point why I focused on these women at the executive level, because they are definitely women of privilege, and if they are having a difficult time, and it's still the case even in many respects for that younger wave, then that speaks volumes about what's wrong with our larger society. And what's wrong with our larger society is that we don't as a country value parenthood.

We see it as something that is an individual responsibility, not a social responsibility. And until we change not only our perception of what sexual stereotypes are and what we expect the perfect mother is like versus the father, and until we have, for instance, government mandated paid parental leave, then we're unfortunately going to be stuck in a society in which it is very very difficult to be a

working parent, especially below that level. These are Listen, you understand this world, and you understand workplace issues, and this year has been ripe with workplace issues, whether it's you know, we're spending a lot more time talking about not only physical well being, but mental well being and a lot of different issues. What happens do you think or based on the conversations you continue to have with you know, successful leaders, heads of companies, what happens on the other

side of this when it comes to working women. Well, I think what happens on the other side of it when it comes to working women is that there has been a profound change in how we view where and how we work. And that's because of this successful experiment and working from home. It was definitely the exception, not the rule, and it's been the role for many many white collar employees over the last year or so. And so, as you were pointing out, we're going to have hybrid workplaces.

It is going to be possible to be successful in your career and not be commuting five days a week. In some companies the option will be to do it part time, and others that will be to do it

full time. But for women in particular, they're going to have to work harder at being visible to the extent that they continue working remotely, They're going to have to be better networkers, and they're going to have to learn how to network virtually and make sure that they have sponsors and mentors at key points in their careers and

different sponsors and mentors at different times. Hey, listen, just got about thirty forty seconds left it there was I'm thinking for the leaders that are maybe listening at this moment, if there was one policy that they could change that could you know, help mothers, help women, uh in their careers at this point, what would it be? Just quickly, it would it would be to judge people on their results, not on the hours worked. That was nice, short and

sweet and a great a great way to wrap it up. Um, Joanne, thank you so much, really really appreciate it. Joanne Lublin Cheese Wall Street Journal contributor her new book. As I said, she's written several books about workplace issues, but her latest book called Power Moms, How exact get of mothers navigate work and life. And like I said, she covered this in a column for the Wall Street Journal for many many years