Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 6, 1990 TAG: 9005030577
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But when he polled the women who left, he was shocked.
"My hypothesis had been that offering a day-care center or flexible hours would solve the problem," he said. "Well, challenging job responsibilities, not family issues, were the decisive factors in why women left."
Smith's mistaken hypothesis, in fact, has been shared by many companies.
In trying to help women balance jobs and home, they stressed the family side of the equation at the expense of the career side.
Now they are discovering that, if a job does not provide what the late psychologist Abraham Maslow called "self-actualization" - a sense of fulfilling one's potential - professional women are more likely than men to walk away from it.
As George Clement, chairman of Clement Communications Inc., a Philadelphia specialty printer, put it: "Any company that thinks it can hold onto female professionals with flex-time is nuts."
Research is starting to document that.
Wick and Co., a consulting firm in Wilmington, Del., interviewed 110 professional men and women, about half of whom had left jobs after five or more years.
Wick's findings: Dissatisfied men were more likely to stay in bad jobs than dissatisfied women.
And, only 7 percent of the women who quit stayed home.
"It isn't what's happening at home that forces women out - it's what isn't happening in the office," concluded Vicki Tashjian, a Wick vice president.
Benefits critical to lower-level women do little for professionals.
Day-care centers, for example, tend to be open regular hours; professionals are likely to work late on weekends and, to travel.
Flexible-hours programs can be irrelevant, because professionals are more often judged by results than by time spent in an office.
Money, too, is generally a less pressing issue for higher-level women. Many can afford full-time day care. And conversely, many can make ends meet if they stay home.
"Let's face it - professional women tend to be married to professional men, which means two healthy incomes," said Margaret Evans, a senior vice president at the New York advertising agency BBDO and a mother of two. "It gives us choices."
Part-time work often is necessary but not sufficient to hold women.
Most of the people who have signed up with Alterna-track, a New York agency that places professionals in part-time assignments, are mothers whose former employers would not let them switch to part-time schedules.
But about 10 percent are women who were offered abbreviated schedules, and left anyway.
"Their responsibilities had been cut with their hours, and the work wasn't meaningful anymore," said Suzanne Moore, Alterna-track's co-founder.
Some companies finally are acknowledging that women will not make that compromise.
SC Johnson Wax, the Mobil Corp. and others that offer a full array of family-related perks now stress professional development.
Similarly, Nevius Curtis, Delmarva Power and Light Co.'s chairman, had thought of using day care as a drawing card for professional women; he has created more challenging jobs instead.
Delmarva women say he is right on target. Deva M. Scheel, manager of organizational development, returned to work soon after her daughter was born last year.
She has been instrumental in installing programs that ensure that no Delmarva employee - but particularly no woman - feels stalemated.
"What corporations must realize," she said, "is that, for women more than men, it is job challenge, not benefits, that count."
by CNB