looking out for the future

March 8th was International Women's Day. I'd never heard of it before the actual day and as an alumni of an elite women's college I was a little surprised about my ignorance. But boy was I inundated with notes and info about the day, it is apparently a big big deal overseas and I credit Facebook with my new awareness since most of the info I got was through my Facebook feed. I'm apparently friends with a lot of people who fight for women's rights and equality. Given that whole women's college thing not a huge surprise.

Well as a result of this new 'holiday' there have been a few articles about how women are doing in various industries, and I recently read this article talking about how women are stacking up in the business world.

**Warning, here is where I veer off of the 'how cute is Ada' track and jump on my soap box, I won't blame you if you stop reading now...**

A lot of the material was a repeat of stuff I've read over and over again. The focus of the article was around how women in the business world require flexibility to perform. I agree with this to some extent but I would argue that the flexibility can exist in your family life if it can't exist in the business world. Don't get me wrong, I think a flex schedule at work can work, but I've also seen it go horribly wrong at no fault of the woman wanting the flex schedule.

As I read the article I started to think about Ada and what a different world she knows from the one I knew, and WOW how totally different is her world from my mother's or my grandmother's. It also drove home that while my mother and grandmother's generations laid down the ground work for the opportunities I have in front of me, the work is not done. I think the challenges for my generation are not so much equality of opportunity or pay (although there is a bit of that left over) but it is about creating a new understanding of what a working woman/mother looks like in the business world. For so long it seems women have been trying to be like men. Makes sense, it was a familiar comparison point and the closer we could get to men the better we could be understood and evaluated. But here is the thing, we aren't men. We look at the business world differently, we interpret information differently, not better or worse, just different. I believe this difference is an important part of business today. It adds a dimension and an understanding to strategy that is very powerful. But it is only powerful if we respect it, don't try to shove it down and don't try to deny that it is there.

So that is my challenge to my generation of working women/moms - be proud of who you are and what you bring to the table, fight for balance in your life whether it is flexibility in the office or flexibility at home (or both), and visibly show how proud you are of both the work you do and the time you dedicate to your family.

I know I don't do all of these things all of the time. It is sometimes so much less stressful to take the easy route and ensure your boss that work comes first, or promise your partner that you are going to carve out time to focus on family. But the catch is, you can't be true to either of those promises unless you are 100% honest to all partners in your life. If you promise your boss that your work comes first you better have passed that by your spouse/partner otherwise you will feel stressed and guilty and will do a worse job because of it, and same with the promise to your family.

I never took women's issues so strongly when I was single, it is much easier to paint yourself in the image of the familiar masculine business person when you only have yourself to report to. But now, now that I have a little girl looking up to me and imitating everything I do, and a man that I have committed to sharing all of life's joys and burdens with I feel a lot more compelled to speak up. So in honor of International Women's Day (about a week late) - I'm jumping up on my soap box and calling out my generation.

Let's do this!

...all 6 of us reading this blog :)