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Flexibility at work “isn’t like a favor you hand out at a children’s birthday party.” It’s good for business and good for people. “For the past 30 years [women] were happy to sit quietly at the boardroom table and that’s changed: the boardroom table has to change. We think that can finally happen now.”
These were the key messages shared by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, who together have written Womenomics. It’s no coincidence Womenomics debuted at no. 10 on the New York Times Bestseller list. Shipman and Kay have other priorities other than a “climb up the ladder,” although they are high profile journalists. They wanted successful careers but they also wanted time for family. And so they negotiated with their own employers and changed how they work. I was fortunate to hear them speak about their book and I’ve tried to capture some highlights here (and here).
Kay and Shipman stress that women have the power and the talent and the clout to change the way we work. And as Anne Weisberg at Deloitte –co-author of the excellent book Mass Career Customization—notes, the work world is changing too. Katty Kay says “We need to start talking about this openly and talk about what we need and how” we’re going to get their. “We have a real shift taking place. It’s positive and it’s empowering and move beyond the mommy wars scenario to something that really works for us.”
Kay said, “this is real feminism. If we can create a work world where women’s needs are genuinely met rather than a world where women are trying to be men, that’s real power. We empower workers, and empower families, it doesn’t need to be seen as non-feminist.…We’re not saying people don’t want to work; they just want to control the hours they have to be in the office.”
Before they wrote the book, Kay and Shipman were depressed by the plateauing data and the “opt out revolution” argument. Women, they say, have somewhat different values of what women want at work. Claire Shipman: “We are willing to say no to things in a way that men (at least of our generation) are not. And we’re saying that the workplace is changing to fit that.” She continued, “The case we’re trying to make with Womenomics is that women have so much more power in the workplace than they even understand.” We can use this power to help ourselves, and companies. Research shows that the more senior level women in the company, the more money the company makes.
Shipman believes flexibility “is something that will keep women in the workforce. It’s a positive way to keep our talent engaged. It’s not about opting out for ten years, or either or choices... The other real business case about all this is that the companies that do this see much higher productivity.”
How many times have you heard this statement from self employed or entrepreneurial friends? “Now I work for myself and I work all the time. I want to work” Why is this a cliché among people who have left the corporate world?
For me, this cliché proves true. Because, as Kay and Shipman noted, people want to be able to have a sense that they have some control over their time and their energy. No one likes to feel like a drone. We want a seat at the boardroom table that decides how we spend our days.
I started to opt out of the corporate hierarchy and I didn’t even know it. And I didn’t have a husband or children at the time. After some rocky times at work and a sense that I had no autonomy, I ducked responsibility. Even though it hurt my feelings when I wasn’t included in big meetings or decisions, I made the choices that put me in that situation. Was I less ambitious, or preserving an important part of myself?
Most people just value being able to have the conversation about working a schedule that suits their needs. As Katty Kay said, they’d like to “stop whispering in corners without people thinking we’ve lost their ambition.”
Shipman added, “The case we’re trying to make to women is it might seem like it’s scary to ask [for a new way to work] but it’s not if you’re making a strong business case to your employer. This is a business strategy.
