Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 22, 1992 TAG: 9203200006
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BARBARA PRESLEY NOBLE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
So when she decided to speak out on a forbidden corporate topic - the biological fact that women have babies and the social fact that they work and have careers - she chose to do it in an influential and widely read forum.
"The cost of employing women in management is greater than the cost of employing men, ' was her opening sentence of an article published three years ago in the august Harvard Business Review. "This is a jarring statement," she continued, "partly because it is true, but mostly because it is something people are reluctant to talk about."
Schwartz, founder of Catalyst, a nonprofit education and research group based in New York, soon found that if people were reluctant to talk about women, work and babies, they were not reluctant to talk about her.
For a few months she rode uncomfortably in the wash of the notorious "mommy track" controversy, accused of proposing a gender-based caste system designed to keep women barefoot, pregnant and at the edge of the fast track.
Now, she hopes to put the issue to rest. She has written a book, "Breaking With Tradition: Women and Work, the New Facts of Life," which reflects on her vision of the egalitarian corporation.
"I was the one of the first victims of political correctness," she said in a recent interview. "I dared to violate the party line that women are not different from men." She was accused of undermining 20 years of legal gains for women and making discrimination easier.
She still thinks family issues are spoken of in whispers because male executives fear litigation and being seen as tyrannical. And it is still a fundamental fact of life that women have babies and a disproportionate responsibility for care of their children.
Schwartz's paradigm is not the pyramid, that traditional bottom-heavy structure of the corporate world. "Women bump their heads early against the sides of the pyramid," she said, citing the early results of a Catalyst study that demonstrates the difficulty women have jumping from "staff" positions in areas like human resources to "line", or "fast track," positions.
Instead of the pyramid, her chosen image is of a jungle gym, on which everyone, men included, can move laterally as well as up.
Dana Friedman, co-president of the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit research group based in New York City, wrote a letter to the Harvard Business Review commending the article "for bringing motherhood out of the closet." The article, she said, was heretical.
But while acknowledging the cost of pregnancy leaves and other special arrangements, she argues now that it is misleading to look only at women's behavioral patterns. "There are several intriguing studies of men's life cycles, of how they pull in and out - but at different stages than women," she said.
"The United States is more dependent than ever on women in the work force," said Steven Clayton of the Work/Family Directions, a Boston consultant. "More and more companies see an ability to attract and retain women as central to their future competitiveness."
by CNB