42.5 Longest Shortest Time Takeover: It's A Real Mother

after my husband Jay died almost twenty years ago. Now Hillary and her team are out with a new series all about workplace discrimination against working moms, and that's the subject I cared deeply about since much of my career was spent as a working mom. And today we're bringing you the first episode in the series. You'll hear from former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift. Did you know she's the first American governor to give birth while in office, which,

frankly kind of surprised me. But anyway, she talks about her experience with workplace discrimination, and you'll also be hearing from listeners talking about what happened to them. So let's get to it. When Jane Swift was twenty five, she did something most women her age don't do. She ran for state Senate. This was back in western Massachusetts. One day before the election, she went to a small town in her district to talk to a newspaper reporter. It was a little bit of an older guy, and we

sat down and we started going through the typical biographical data. Um, you know, how old was I? Where was I from? Progressed too? Was I married? Jane was used to that question. Her answer was no. This is when it started to get a little odd. Uh. This reporter said to me, did I have a boyfriend? Um? At this point I felt a little bit like my mother may have called him because this was a big concern of hers as well. UM. I was actually pretty proud of myself because for the

first time in many years I was able to answer yes. Um. But his next question was really my first clue to just how strange my future would become as a young woman candidate seeking office, because when I told him yes, rather than going on to talk about taxes and my plans for local aid and improving public education, he asked me how serious my relationship was. Jane was like, why does he care that? I said, well, I'm not sure, but if you want to call and ask him and

let me know, that would be great. Uh. It did not dissuade him. Uh. He said to me, Well, at some point, I assume you're going to get married, and if you get married and start a family, what will that mean for your constituents in your career in the state Senate. I was twenty five years old, and I was probably for one of the first times in my life, rendered speechless. I had not actually thought about that question all that much, and I couldn't believe he was asking me.

But as the Google search that you may have done on me will prove, that was a question that would become pretty consistently asked of me and become a reality, uh in my political life. But that was the first clue, the first clue that Jane would face discrimination as a working mom. Except back then she wasn't even a mom yet. Let me say that again. Jane was getting questioned about her ability to do her job well as a mother before she even knew she'd be a mother. This is

the longest shortest time. I'm Hilary Frank and this episode is the first in a super exciting series or launching right here right now about discrimination against working mom. It's a real mother. Yeah, that's commentary on my part, but it's also what we're calling the series It's a Real Mother. We're going to spend four whole episodes looking at this problem, figuring out why it exists and what we can do

to solve it. In this episode, we're going to take a look at what discrimination against working moms actually is, how people get away with it, and what happens when it's not behind closed doors but in plain view. That's what Jane Swift's story is all about. Her story is groundbreaking and it's got some serious surprises. But to really get this series started, first we need to set the stage, and so my producer, Abigail Keel is here to help me break down what's really going on in the world

of working moms. Hey Abigail, Hey Hillary, So, Abigail, isn't discrimination at Lee Goal, Like, why are we even talking about this? Why are we even doing this series? Right? Are there laws to protect you? The good news is

there are laws. One of those lawses Title nine, which you've probably heard of, and that law broadly protects against all kinds of discrimination based on sex, and specifically, there's an amendment within Title nine called the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which makes it illegal to not hire somebody based only on the fact that they're pregnant. And if you do hire somebody and they become pregnant, you have to provide them with accommodations if they can no longer perform the

duties of their job. Um, so light duty, some stuff like that. There's also a law that applies to breastfeeding in the workplace, So this is another area where discrimination can happen. And actually, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, now employers must provide a space and break for new moms to express breast milk if they choose to do that when they come back to work. So it's not just a room. Not just a room they have to provide. They also have to give the time right exactly, and

it has to be a space that locks. It's not supposed to be in the bathroom. Um. But one kind of caveat to this law is that it only applies to companies that have more than fifty employees, So a small company or if you work for a company in like some sort of capacity where you're a private contractor

or something like that, this law wouldn't protect you. Okay, what else, So the other area that kind of comes into play here is UH paid leave an unpaid leave, And the law that we have nationally that applies here is f m l A, the Family and Medical Leave Act, which we've all heard about, UM, and this law entitles employees to unpaid leave, so that could be used for like maternity leave, if you've been an employee for at least twelve months and worked at least fifty hours in

that year, which is about five hours per week. And that's only for companies with fifty or more employees. So if you come in and you were hired when you were pregnant, and you come back to work, then you're not entitled to any paid leave or any unpaid leave legally. Federally, a lot of companies have their own maternity leave policies, their own sickly policies, family leave UM. Some states have different policies, but according to our government, UM, this would

not apply to you. Got it. And you know the other thing is that there's a lot of research about discrimination against moms in the workplace that shows that the ways mothers are discriminated against are really hard to pin down, So they can be things like they're just not promoted as often, they're not paid to the same level that

men are paid to. But you know, there are ways that companies can defend those decisions and say, well, we just thought, you know, this other person was a better employee. And so this kind of discrimination really quickly becomes very insidious and very hard to really understand when it's happening inside of a workplace culture that just doesn't value mothers

as highly as it might value other employees. And we're gonna get into a lot of that research actually in our next episode, but just know it's there, right, And we've also had a lot of listeners right into us for years, right, they've been telling us stories of workplace discrimination, and we also put out a call recently asking for more stories. So what have we heard? So thank you to everybody who reached out, and also we are sorry

that this has happened to you. But um, we heard from people across the whole country, so you know, Florida, Wisconsin, West coast, East coast, small towns, big towns. We even had some international listeners chime in. And you know, these are people who work in a whole myriad of jobs, so teachers, people who work in offices. We heard from someone in a factory, we heard from some academics. These were full time jobs, part time jobs atthing in between. So you brought a couple of cases to tell me

about today, right, that's right? So who are we going to hear about? So I want to start by walking through a couple of stories that I think illustrate really well some key aspects of discrimination and how it can feel when it happens to you. First, as a woman named Jessica. She lives here in New York, and before she had her baby, she and her wife decided that they both go back to work. Jessica worked at a bank. She didn't have her college degree, but she did really

like her job and her team. Two days after coming back from maternity leave, Jessica was laid off. Her boss, who was female and child list told her that they eliminated her position. But Jessica thinks being a mom had something to do with it. I think this because she said on several occasions, Oh, won't it be better now for you though? Because now you can spend so much more time with your baby, and being a mom is so hard and it takes up at least a third

of your life. You don't want to miss all of those great things that your kid is going to do and blah blah, blah blah. So Jessica's company offered her a severance package, which she decided to take, and she used the money to pay for a babysitter for the first few months of her daughter's life. And with that time, Jessica finished her degree and she started applying for new jobs. But almost a year later, she still hasn't found anything, and now that all that severance money is used up,

Jessica is taking care of her daughter at home. I can't tell you how hard it's been to have a baby and then also lose your livelihood and your sense of professional identity. Um. And I felt really strange about taking the severance. I really struggled with that decision of whether to do that or whether to fight it legally or I felt like it was selling out and I

still kind of do. And of course we should just say that obviously every kind of mom is great, working at home, working out an office, stay at home mom. We're not judging, but it seems like for Jessica what she wanted was to be a working mom. That's right. Yeah, And you know, Jessica actually had enough information in this situation that she could have probably brought a case against her employer, but she said that the reason she decided

not to were Actually, there's a couple of reasons. One was that she kind of needed this money from her severance. She had just lost her job, um. But the other

was that she felt really overwhelmed. She had just had a baby, she had just lost her job, she was dealing with a lot of transitions, and the thought of launching into a lawsuit that could last for who knows how long, cost who knows how much, all of that was just too much for her to think, Yeah, exactly, and really, the only way to prove that something discriminatory happened to you is to take it to court, which

is a big castle. Yes, this is a part of the equation when we wonder why more people don't step forward with these kinds of accusations. It's not that the discrimination isn't happening, it's just that it's not being recorded, right right, Okay, So um, let's hear about another mom. Alright. So this next mom is a mom in Oregon. Her name is Elizabeth, and she is a lawyer. She landed a job at a really big law firm that she'd been trying to get into for a long time, and

shortly after she found out that she was pregnant. When she told one of the partners at this law firm about it, he said, oh, that's going to be hard on your career, which was upsetting to hear, as he was an owner and therefore essentially responsible for whether or

not it would be hard on my career. And I told the managing partner what he had said, and he tried to reashare me that that's not exactly what he had meant, and that you know, he would talk to him and take care of it, and that was inappropriate, but then proceeded to ask me if I was intending to turn to work at all, and I just, um, I thought, I'm in trouble. But Elizabeth did come back to work, and she worked really hard. She put in FaceTime.

She ended up being the first chair in a big trial, which meant she was just in charge of that case. And at that trial she decided to ask the judge for pumping brakes, which she was granted once the trial actually started. I got that break the very first day. Um for the first break, and then never again for the full amount of time that I had asked for. The judge always gave me twenty minutes or less, um,

and at one point resumed the jury trial without me. Um. And I'm sure she did it with the okay of my co counsel. Um. But you know, to walk into a room after rushing through the pumping process in a different room in the courthouse and racing back to my courtroom, and to walk in and see a room full of pep who have proceeded without me, it made me feel as though perhaps there really isn't room for working mothers

in the law. So Elizabeth actually left litigation after that. Um. She's still a lawyer, but she works in a different field where she has a more family friendly workplace. You know. It's it's interesting, like at a law firm, you would think that lawyers would know better than to discriminate. Yeah, it's unfortunately ironic. Um. The thing that I take away from Elizabeth's story is that you know, she she left like she got out of that situation, which is awesome.

And a lot of the moms that I heard from ended up leaving the situations where they were discriminated against, mostly on their own accord. But the sad part about that is that those jobs in those workplaces still exist and they're just open for the next person to come in and be discriminated against. Those employers aren't being punished, they're not being told that what they did was wrong,

and that is it. I think we need to kind of figure out how to deal with And we're gonna be talking about like a lot of this stuff in the rest of the series. Right right now, you brought a collection of voices for us to just hear kind of the variety of the types of discrimination that that mother's face. That's right. So, without further ado, I was just dropping a note to talk about being a working mom and oh goodness, is it a daily challenge. I found out I was pregnant with my second child. I

show my pregnancies very early on. It was winter. I walked into the head of school's office with my coat on. I could see the contract laying on the table. It was very clear that I was to be given an offer. I took my coat off to have a seat at the table, and I could see both the head of school and his assistant audibly gasp because they noticed my stomach. You know, sometime I wanted you to work an extra hour too, and you're stuck between trying to figure out

should you stay or should you go? Or am I going to be on the verge of losing a job just because I have a child. I found out that there was another girl interviewing for the same position that I was. She was a few months pregnant at the time, and a couple of people told me that I was definitely going to get the position over her, even though she was more qualified on paper than I was, because she was pregnant, which was kind of funny because no one knew that I was pregnant. Um. You know, I

got the job with a lot of guilt. Um Before I got pregnant, I was getting the grants, the publications. Everyone I met, from my advisers to people at conferences told me they were expecting a lot from me, wanted to collaborate, We're interested in future work. Once I got pregnant, though, and once the new spread, these alphas began to dry up,

I'm currently in a situation at a small startup. They talk a big game, you know, newly decorated mother's room, flexible hours, maternity leave, But when it comes to salary review. I feel as though my flexibility is being held against me. I have been promised a job and told after I had um our little girl that they didn't want me to have to divide my attention between being a new mom and having a different position. And it wasn't something that was up for discussion. It was just told where

in this nature center am I going to pump? My office, which was about fifteen space shared with four other people. There was the staff bathroom in the musty basement, a freezer room with freezers full of dead animals. Um. It took every thing in me not to scream when the first suggestion was the bathroom. The area that I was provided to pump was actually the bathroom, and my company had purchased a ping pong table and placed it right

outside said bathroom. So when I returned from my first maternity leave, um, my manager was very hard on me. She had actually taken over my role when I was gone and then pretty much refused to give it back to me and just made me feel like the fact that I was a mother and working was something that was taking away from my ability to work. And what I was told, uh in a closed door meeting with HR was maybe I should move on. I was able to leave my job because I have a partner who

supports me. Um. And yet at the same time, my partner has never had to answer for whether he's still as good an employee as a parent, and he's never had anybody question that I've had to reevaluate my entire self worth. Um. You know, there's a lot to be done. Yeah, there's a lot to be done right, But there's also a lot you can do right, Abigail, And that's what we've discovered in doing this series. And over the course of the next few episodes, we're going to talk to

a work expert. We're going to visit a workplace where they're getting things right. We're going to get an international perspective, and we are going to talk to a mom in a low wage job. So we've got a lot we're going to cover. But first today we're going to pick up with Jane swift story. She's a woman we heard from at the top of the show, UM, and I think her story is really informative because it's not about employers discriminating against an employee. It's about how kind of

we as a society discriminate against working moms. We will be back with that story in just a minute. Stay with us. We are back with the story that we began at the top of the show today about a politician named Jane Swift, which is, you've got to admit, just the perfect politician name, and what would you like me to call you in this show? I would prefer for you to call me Jane, although I do understand that governor is a title that I'm very proud of

and that I earned. But Jane is preferable. Okay, great, I also answered a mom, but that's not preferable. That would be inappropriate for me to call you. Yes, in a little weird that's right, Governor. Jane won that state senence heat back, and a decade later she had worked her way up to running the state of Massachusetts. She was the first woman to hold that office and yes, the first mom to do it. And you know, I gotta say I was totally surprised by how open Jane

was when I interviewed her. I mean, she's a politician, so I expected her to give me like politician answers, but she didn't, and I think that's because she's still upset about how she was treated. She wants to talk about it so that maybe workplace discrimination against moms can change. Jane's path to political stardom began in college when she was an intern working for the state senator in her district, Peter Webber. Shortly after she graduated, he hired her as

his legislative aid. She helped him develop his positions on important bills. She met with constituents and local officials. She was basically the glue between Senator Webber and the people he was representing. Jane loved it, and Senator Webber took notice. He sought me out and told me that he had decided not to run for family reasons, and he thought that I would be a great successor so. I know.

Politicians say family reasons as a cover a lot of the time, but apparently Senator Webber's family reasons were real. He wanted to spend more time with his young children, and him choosing Jane I was also exceptional. Research shows that women rarely get this kind of shoulder tap from men in politics. They don't get invited to the party. Jane enthusiastically said yes, and little did we know would

start a path for some historic accomplishments. But I have to say that had I known at the time uh the gender barriers and the degree to which people would find it odd that a young woman would have an ambition to serve in an elected political office, or how difficult it was perceived to be, I may not have

done it. And so the real gift that Senator Weber gave me, beyond his terrific support and some great advice, was he made it seem like a normal thing to do for a twenty five year old woman to run for the first political office, to be the state senator from my hometown. Jane won that election as a Republican, she got right to work on her main issues, family

and education. She focused on improving Massachusetts public education system, helping small businesses, and promoting environmental protection for the part of the state that she represented. And along the way, Jane met a guy, a different guy from the boyfriend the reporter had grilled her about. This new guy was a dairy farmer named Chuck, And for all you nosey reporters wondering how serious this relationship was, they did get married in the middle of Jane's second term in the

state Senate. You know. When I was little, I was the you know, have ten kids and um, have a big family. I outgrew that, luckily, um pretty quickly. But UM, I always assumed that I was going to be a mother, And I guess I probably assumed i'd be a mother like my mom, who stayed at home, uh, you know, was the girl Scout leader, was the uber volunteer. But when I got into politics, I realized I was good at politics and it began to be a realistic career.

And by the time my husband and I started to think about having a family, UM, my career was starting to take off. Jane had her eye on a congressional seat. She lost that race, but kept moving up the political ladder in appointed jobs. Things were good. Jane was in her early thirties and she decided it was time to start trying to conceive. But right around when she started trying, Jane got a phone call. It was from the Governor

of Massachusetts, Paul Salucci. He was running for re election and he wondered if Jane might want to be his running mate. And I told Governor Salucci that I was potentially pregnant, but I wouldn't know obviously for a little while. Um, but that starting a family I didn't feel like was something I could delay, certainly not for another four years. Now. Jane had not even taken a pregnancy test yet. Some people don't even tell their partners this early that they

might be pregnant. But Jane told the governor it was a ballsy move. Well you know what I mean. He didn't bat an eye. He said, you know, lots of women are having babies while they work, and we'll figure it out. You did you get the impression that he saw it as a plus? I truly believed, and I

believed this throughout our partnership. He saw me as a person and braced Uh, you know, a young woman in everything, all the complexities of that running for office, and it turned out that you were pregnant, And so how did you feel about it? Wasn't an easy choice for you to decide to run? Yeah, because I was so stupid, I you know, just assumed, oh, I'm pregnant, no big deal, as only somebody who's never been pregnant before it can be.

How hard could it be? The famous last words from a woman who proceeded within about eight days of that to throw up every single night for almost the rest of my pregnancy. So so yeah, pretty hard. So first, let me say I was very healthy. I just threw up every night. Um. I also had a gluten intolerance, which sounds so incredibly normal sitting here in Seen, But in nineteen ninety eight, there was not a McDonald's on the planet who could serve a hamburger without a bun

without having to consult like supervisors three stores away. Um. So traveling around Massachusetts pregnant, trying to eat food that didn't have gluten in it, being sick, tear stomach, and

not being able to chew on saltines wasn't easy. Um. A funny story that before anybody knew I was pregnant, this nice nurse suggested to me that because I couldn't chew on saltines, that if I cut fresh lemon wedges and just dabbed them on my tongue, Um, that that might actually keep me from throwing up on people and

parking lots. And UM, I was at some event with the governor, you know, sneaking back to my car and like just licking the crap out of a lemon, and this woman came up to me and she's like you're pregnant, and I got this awful look on my face because it was too soon to tell anybody. Um, and I'm like how, She's like, nobody licks lemons unless there pregnant. I'm like, all right, nobody licks lemons when they are pregnant except for me. And I'm not admitting to anything.

And then there was a St. Patrick's Day parade in Holyoke where I almost lost us the election because in the gathering beforehand, in this smoke filled bar with the Firefighters Union, I almost blew the endorsement because I wouldn't drink a beer, both because I had a gluten intolerance and because I was pregnant. When did the public find out that you were pregnant? Uh? Write it about three and a half months, and I expected it to be the biggest non event of all times. I was married, Um,

I was thirty four years old. Um, and my husband and I were having our first child. Right, nice little story. Unfortunately, that wasn't how it played out. Instead, it became national news headlines read birth of a campaign and pregnant candidate discovers she's an issue, And so it had become a pretty major question. You know, should I still run. Um, Was this a good idea? Was it going to hurt Governor Saluci? Was it going to help Governor Salucci? It

was also if you were doing the math earlier. One of the issues was I was actually do right around the election day. Um, so that complicated matters a little bit. Jane quickly found she was caught in the middle of a war. Passions ran crazy high. I remember this one woman in particular who called my her words, selfish decision to decide to continue to run. She categorized it as our generation's Vietnam. So those who would choose to serve by meaning that stay home with their young children, and

those like me who would shure are sponsibilities. That one was from a conservative female activist. Jane was shocked. You know, I was a Title nine generation kid, right. We got the same uniforms in high school as the boys got. We didn't get the same crowds. But um, I believed if I worked hard enough, I could do pretty much

anything I wanted to. I hadn't hit a glass ceiling yet because I hadn't risen high enough, and all of a sudden, all of those things that I believed, um, and frankly a lot of debates like the mommy wars that I had not paid any attention to. I was right in the middle of and totally unprepared. Jane gave birth to her daughter, Elizabeth, just a few weeks before

the election. Since she was campaigning, she wasn't actually employed, so her maternity leave, if you can call it that, consisted of a two week break during which she recovered from her C section. Jane was now officially the thing that that reporter dude had been so agitated about almost ten years earlier. She was a working mom, and not just any working mom, a lieutenant governor mom. This was a position where the public had every right to criticize

her job performance, which they did. And it wasn't just extreme Vietnam obsessed conservatives who had a problem with Jane working. It was male politicians on both sides of the aisle. It was journalists, her constituents. But the criticism that seemed to hit Jane the hardest was criticism from other mothers. Every time, you know, there was an article written about

me being pregnant. Um, it seemed like they would go to some wealthy, suburban place where all the moms, who frankly were much thinner than me and much blonder than me, and didn't work. We're doing yoga with their children who are going to grow up to be perfect. Would talk about, you know, the great decisions they made and why they questioned whether or not I was making a good decision.

And I'm being a little bit facetious that, um, you know, I think one of the really hard things for me is I could have very easily not the thin and blonde part um, but all the other parts my life could have taken a couple of different turns and I could have been them. And so I was making this choice to take on this really high profile, demanding work and you know, how dare I Or if I did dare, then everything that came along with it, with balancing work

and family was my problem. And certainly the public shouldn't have to, you know, make any concessions or do anything differently to accommodate a mother with young children. One thing the public wasn't willing to accommodate was Jane's living situation. She and Chuck had moved to Boston to be closer to the heart of the Commonwealth after Elizabeth was born. They decided it was smart for Chuck to stay home

and be Elizabeth's primary caregiver. It made financial sense to but Boston was far from both of their families, who lived all the way on the western side of the state. So when their daughter was about a year old, they made the tough decision to move back to western mass where they would have more support from grandparents and extended family, and Jane would just have to commute to the city

for work two and a half hours each way. When people would encounter me and my mother role, they would be so surprised that I enjoyed being a mother, and it was just so striking to me that they couldn't seem to reconcile that I could be this successful or at least have achieved some level of success in my professional life and still embrace my role as a mother, UM,

And that vexed me personally. UM. I think sometimes, you know, it really hurt my feelings, but I think it really impacted me, um publicly in my ability to do the job. It was like you had to either choose to be perceived as the competent leader or the caring mother, but so many times people couldn't believe that you are both. You know, I think, Um, in the workplace, you know, the discrimination we hear about mostly is discrimination that comes from a boss or a hiring manager, and there are

laws in place to try to prevent that discrimination. But when you're a politician, um, it's the people like the public, who are discriminating against you, and it can there aren't laws about that. It can be out in the open um. Right. So does that feel unfair, like there's no there that there were no laws protecting you. Well, here's here's the other thing. You could never say it's unfair. The minute any political figure says anything is unfair, you are doomed.

That is the worst defense ever. So even when it was unfair, I couldn't say it was unfair because the minute I did, like, I could just write those terrible headlines and I'd be a cry baby. You know what I have tried in my post political life to do is when I see things now that are unfair and I can say it now, I say the things that are unfair happening to other women of both parties, um, because I know they can't say it themselves. What a game.

The other thing that I think is also important is I put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect, and two things I internalized that didn't always work to my advantage. One was I could never make mistake, Like God forbid I ever messed up. Then every you know employer out there, who, even though it was illegal to that, was just waiting note for a reason not to promote that other mom with little kids was going to use

me as a cautionary tale, at least in my head. Um. But also secondly, I didn't want to give anybody an excuse um to imply that any decision was the right decision or wrong decision. So um, as an example, my husband stayed at home. There were a lot of times when, um, it would have been a really easy political defense for me to certain questions that frankly I should have never been asked, and it was unfair for them to ask me.

Where I could have said, you know, I have a stay at home parent, and there would have been a certain uh constituency group it would have been appeased by that. I never wanted to say that because that implied that I was buying into the argument that the only way to do parenthood right was to have one parents stay at home. And I don't believe that it was what

worked for us at a particular point in time. But I just felt this really strong senses someone who was achieving some first that I shouldn't ever say something that implied there's one way to do this, because that would have just a made it worse for everybody who came after me, but potentially would have just not advanced the issues um that I had come to realize still needed to make a lot of progress. Jane struggled in both

of her roles as mom and politician. Once Chuck got sick and Jane was alone with Elizabeth, Jane woke up in the middle of the night to the baby screaming. Elizabeth had a diaper rash, so Jane grabbed some cream and put it on the baby's bottom, but that just made the baby scream louder. Jane was like, what is going on? Then she realized the cream was actually ben Gay, you know that sort of icy feeling pain reliever for

grown ups. Jane felt terrible at the office. Jane felt like she had so much to prove, and she worked incredibly hard. Looking back, she thinks maybe too hard. She worked through her lunch break, she asked to be fully briefed on every single issue, attend every event. She helped implement an education reform bill running between about a hundred educators. But Jane's time at the desk came at the expense

of family time. Well, you know, balancing work and parenthood is really challenging, um, and you had a really high profile job. Do you think that any of these fears that people were expressing were warranted? So I didn't. I was not perfect every single day. There were definitely days when I was not a hundred percent. So if the measure was is Jane Swift a day? Um, then the criticisms might have been valid. But what isn't valid is nobody ever applied that to guys for that or other reasons.

There are a lot of guys who show up hungover UM for work, or who take time off to golf or frankly, um. Here's an even better one, people who openly guys openly leave for family events and actually get credit for it because they're not giving that day to their job. And our perception of that and how we evaluate that is totally different. So I hate if what you're getting at is this, can you have it all?

I hate that question. I will never engage, nor will I ever answer that question except privately to my own daughters when they ask me advice that they want to make for their own decisions, because nobody ever asks a guy whether they're having to sequence their career or if they have to make a decision based on having it all. It is a false premise. It's a sexist premise, and I wish women would stop answering the question. In a minute, Jane's job gets bigger, and so does her family stay

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thing is like big news in the Star Wars galaxy. Um. The Inventor Kit allows kids to create custom droids, including an R two unit with these little electronic bits that snapped together. So kids master steam skills with these things. They sound like a ton of fun too. Sasha. Sasha loves this thing. She will record her own voice into the droids. So she recorded it going warning, Warning, and

then it like chases after You. It's pretty hilarious. Long at shortest time, listeners, get the little Bits droid inventor kit at little bits dot com, Walmart, Amazon, and Apple. This holiday season, give the gift of invention. We're back with Jane Swift. When we left off, she was Lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. Now, if you knew anything about Jane before this story, it might be this next thing. One particular incident with an aircraft. Yeah, I would love finally

to talk about the helicopter. The helicopter incident came in the year two thousand, just few days before Thanksgiving. Jane's daughter Elizabeth, had pneumonia, but Jane was in Boston. She was supposed to lead some conference about regional airports. Governors from all over the country were flying in for the meeting. At about ten o'clock the night before that event, UM, I got a call from my husband saying that UM, they were thinking about taking Elizabeth to the e R

because her temperature had gone up pretty high. Um, wasn't sure what they were gonna do. I hemmed in hot if I should go home then she had never been that ill before, but decided that, you know, I couldn't tell Governor Salucci or the press and everybody else that I had to cancel a big, high profile event because my daughter was sick. But the thing is, this event was taking place at an airport, an airport where the State Police's helicopter is based, and sometimes the governor or

lieutenant governor can use that helicopter. Jane says. The protocol is simple. There's a pretty standard UH way that it's evaluated. There's UH State Police helicopter that goes on training runs fairly frequently, and if they're scheduled to do a training run and they're going in the direction that a governor lieutenant governor is going and it doesn't interfere with something else, then they put them on the helicopter. Unbeknownst to me, the troopers started to ask the State Police if there

were any training runs scheduled on the helicopter. It was two days before Thanksgiving UM and they arranged for me to take the helicopter home at the end of that event and frankly um and if things had gotten bad with Elizabeth's health earlier. So the event ended and Jane boarded the helicopter at Logan Airport and the state police flew her home on a ride that was already scheduled to go in that direction. She didn't give it a second thought, but word got out and the press feasted.

People were furious, why should she get flown around using taxpayer money while the rest of the state had to sludge along on the highway on one of the busiest travel days of the year. It hit lots of nerves, right, hit nerves of people who are mad at state government because of traffic on a holiday. It hit nerves of um parents who are also struggling with you know, sick children.

Nerves of people who think that political officials are you know, above the law and have more assets and privileges than others um and so all of those things made it a awful political controversy. The Washington Post published a piece called super Mom's Power Trip. A local radio show dedicated an hour to the scandal. Callers gave Jane nicknames like Skypilot, Dumbo, and Jane Air. Get It Air, and the scandal did

not stop with the helicopter. Chuck caught pneumonia from Elizabeth, which meant he couldn't care for her, So Jane wound up asking members of her staff to perform childcare duties. A Democratic senator at the time distributed buttons that said it takes an entire state government to raise a child. Jane later admitted, Yeah, using her staff as babysitters was not okay. Eventually, an ethics committee investigated. Jane actually requested

it herself. The committee find Jane dollars for the childcare thing, but she wasn't charged with any ethics violations for the helicopter. Still, when she thinks about it, this part drives her crazy. Had I done the exact same thing as a guy, they would have never investigated, And frankly, if they applied the same standard to many other future and previous governors, they would have had the same findings. So Jane says, in hindsight, she wishes she had just taken a sick day.

Despite the scandal and the penny nicknames, Jane got a promotion. Paul Salucci, her governor, got tapped by President George W. Bush to serve as the US ambassador to Canada, which meant that just months after the helicopter incident, Jane became the governor of Massachusetts while acting governor. She's the first and only woman to hold the job. So how can

she do this across the Bay State? That is the question that greets Jane Swift as she readies to assume the responsibilities of governor tomorrow and soon gives birth to twins. Swift has endured a barrage of sometimes almost venomous when thought I couldn't possibly outdo myself, I became Governor of Massachusetts subscenely pregnant and became the first governor in the history of the country to give birth while in office.

The acting Governor of Massachusetts is in the hospital tonight for two of the best reasons in the world, twins. Barely a month after taking office when her predecessor resigned. Thirties six year old Jane Swift gave birth by sorcerean section last night, and CBS is Jim actual Rod reports her plans to stay on the job gave birth to

a political dispute. After her twins were born, Jane took an eight week maternity leave, actually working from home the entire time, her critics said the governor shouldn't be phoning it in. Then, once she was back full time in Boston, she was criticized for another reason. Here's Jane on the O'Reilly factor. You know, I think I can say this pretty safely that you're the only governor in the United

States that has twin babies right now. Twin babies. Governor Angler obviously has the triplets who are born while he was in office. But mind get a little more attention, all right now? They on Beacon Hill with you, do they get they get taken to the capital and all that. No they don't. They stay back in Williamstown. Yeah, they're on the farm where they are well away from the craziness that is massive. Take on you though, little infants just born, and you're in Boston, and if people don't

know the Commonwealth you live. Your house is on completely the other side of the stage about or our drive through, our drive you. The good thing is that it gets me out to talk to citizens across the whole Commonwealth. I probably do many. Jane tries to change the subject, but O'Reilly's got one thing on his mind. But I mission you, I see my babies a lot more than folks would. UM. I we find it. It seems to me like I catch twenty two, which is exactly the

dilemma that I think all working mothers are in. UM. You just can't seem to win at this. UM, do you have any suggestions of how to win at this? One of the lessons I learned after my oldest daughter was born is not to give oxygen to the whole family debate, which is really hard. Every new mother wants to talk about their kids and have them engaged. But unlike male politicians, I stopped letting people take pictures of my children. I stopped bringing them to events even that

we're appropriate to bring children too. So if I went to a county fair, I didn't bring my family. UM. Once the twins were born, so UM. But really walling off and not talking about the twins and the little girls really helped in just giving the public and the press talk about the work was one of the ways that I was more successful. UM. Oprah actually called and asked if she could do an interview from my working maternity leave. Alright, Q clip, Yeah, there is no clip.

Jane didn't do it. Who says no to Oprah? But my press person's point was, if you say yes to Oprah, you can't say no to the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald and all the local media. So we really didn't do any of those feel good family stories. While Jane was in office, she accomplished a lot. She managed a financial crisis. She overhauled the state's foster care system.

She helped lead Massachusetts through the aftermath of nine eleven, worked with forty five governors to urge Congress to create the Department of Homeland Security. Managing all of at while being the mother of three small children took some juggling. I would often get up really early. UM many days I tried to run, usually at about five o'clock in the morning. I would get in my car with troopers who drove me to and from Boston. I would usually

spend the first half hour reading the newspapers. UM, I'd make some phone calls, and I'd get ready to do events. I'd usually spend about half my day visiting events, meeting with school kids, giving speeches. UM. I'd meet with my staff, talk about issues that were coming up, usually meet with some legislators, try to persuade them to do what I

wanted them to do. About four o'clock in the afternoon, I'd start doing more events outside of the state House, probably do a fundraiser too late in the afternoon, and on good days, around seven or eight o'clock, I'd be headed back to the Berkshire's, usually with a couple hundred page briefing book that I would get to read on the two and a half hour drive back home. By the time she got home, her daughters would usually be asleep.

Jane and her husband arranged for her to eat breakfast with the girls and take half days here and there Sundays, though we're always set aside for family. Jane's girls are teenagers now, and in some ways her husband has a closer relationship with them. He's been spending a lot of nights these days hold up in the garage, managing his feeling is over becoming an empty nester. Jane wasn't around to chaperone field trips, big cookies, or attend holiday singalongs,

but she did planned school fundraisers from airplanes. She says that her years in politics have made her a good role model for her daughters, and she enjoys sharing with them what she's learned about education and policy, about how other people's lives are different from theirs. I know there are lots and lots of parents in this world and moms in this world who have to work and leave their kids home every day for jobs they hate. And

I'm really lucky that that's never been me. And I don't know how I would do that, you know, Jane, we started this interview with you telling me that if you had known how people would have reacted to uh, knowing about your pregnancies, um and young children when you when you had started running, if you had known about how the public could react to that, that you probably wouldn't have done it. Um. Do you regret having done it? Not a day? And I encourage young women all the

time to run. So here's you know. I would have been intimidated, um, and that would have been too bad. And I would have you not done it because I would have thought it couldn't be done, you know, not a lot of times are are things that you could say a decade ago that you continue to believe. But I believed then I was a better governor because I was a mother. And I was a better mother because

I was a governor. I still believe that today, and I still believe today that for me and the personality I have and the choices I've made, I'm better as a mom as a working mom. Our family is better off with me as a working mom. I am announcing this afternoon my decision to end my campaign for governor. Jane doesn't work in politics anymore. Serving as governor of this great Commonwealth has been an honor and a privilege,

and one for which I'll always be grateful. You ultimately decided not to run for re election as governor in two thousand two. Why not because Mitt Romney could write a check for twenty five million dollars and beat me. These days, Jane works in the private sector for an education technology company. As a boss, Jane tries to apply

some of the lessons that she learned in politics. She's hired women and mothers because she knows firsthand the time management skills and perspective that they bring to the table. She herself takes sick days in vacation, and she encourages other leaders to be transparent about when they take time

off for family. Jane's story, I think is a reminder that it's often hard to tell when people are being sexist, like we're people criticizing Jane just because she was a mom, or because it was their job as constituents to scrutinize politicians, or maybe just because Jane made some mistakes. Next week, our series continues, and we're going to get into why Americans discriminate so much against working moms. In the first place, we'll talk about how our work culture is not set

up for working mothers or anyone really. Okay, now, we were so excited about this series that we teamed up with the world's largest independent design firm, Pentagram to rebrand the Working Mom. They made a video just for us that you can share to help get the word out about how badly we need to end discrimination against working moms. You can find that video at the homepage for this

series It's a Real Mother dot Com. You can also use it's a Real Mother as a hashtag, like hashtag it's a Real mother when bosses eliminate a pregnant woman's position. And if you just plain old, need help or want to help out, We've got a great list of resources all at it's a Real Mother dot Com. You can also share your thoughts with us in the comments on this episode. That's episode. This podcast is produced by me Hilary Frank with Abigail Kiel and Kristen Clark. We had

production help today from Jackie Sagiko. We are edited by Peter Clowney. Our engineers are Pete Carram and Gard O'Connell. Our technical director is the Reverend John Delore. Our music is performed by Hot Moms dot gov and directed by Alison Layton Brown. We all I use music today by Kevin McLeod. We get editorial support from a Marie Baldonado,

Antonio cotun Day, and Rica Murphy. Special thanks this week to Annie Russell, Aaron Rubinstein at the University of Massachusetts, Amorous Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Champlain University,

and all the listeners who contributed stories to us. Next week, on the Longest Shortest Time, we ask why why would we set up these systems that would disadvantage so many people who could do really great work, all because why we think that they really should be home with the kids. Do not miss this episode, the second in our series. Subscribe to the Longest Shortest Time in Stitcher or Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like. Guys the life of a working

mother is a real mother. Let's change that. It's a real mother dot com. Yeah. That's it for today's special Longest Shortest Time Takeover. I hope you liked hearing from another show in our network. Stay tuned for our next episode of The Katie Curic Podcast featuring me, Katie Curic and my colleague Brian Goldsmith next week