Does Jack Welch Think Family Care is Women’s Work?
July 14, 2009
by Judy Silver
|Child rearing and family care are the responsibility of the womenfolk. That seems to be the assumption underlying former General Electric CEO Jack Welch’s comments to journalist Claire Shipman at the recent Society for Human Resource Management conference. According to Cari Tuna and Joann Lublin of WSJ.com here’s what Welsh had to say:
“There’s no such thing as work-life balance… There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” Mr. Welch said those who take time off for family could be passed over for promotions if “you’re not there in the clutch. The women who have reached the top of Archer Daniels, of DuPont, I know these women. They’ve had pretty straight careers… We’d love to have more women moving up faster… but they’ve got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one.”
I appreciate the frank discussion of the steepness of the work/life challenge, but Welch seems to be forgetting something – like 49% of the population. Men increasingly are involved in family care and – knock on wood – that trend will continue. Welch’s seemingly assumption that family is an issue for women but not for men, and that this is imbalance will and should be unchanging, is stuck in a 1950’s time warp. Tough work-life choices and their consequences should apply equally to men and women.
The WSJ story continues:
Taking time off for family “can offer a nice life,” Mr. Welch said, “but the chances of going to the top on that path” are smaller. “That doesn’t mean you can’t have a nice career,” he added.
What I’m hearing him say: Nice little girls have nice families and nice little careers. Ugh. Showing your age, Jack. Time for that mindset to retire.
I find myself thinking that we need to find a way so that neither men nor women need to give up their lives entirely in order to “move up”. The men I know wouldn’t want to make those exchanges either.
Judy – I hear something worse. Not only is he saying “nice little girls have families and nice little careers” he is saying – you part-timers (“just” 40 hours a week) give the men a hand up. You know, the men with wives at home to do all that stuff while they buckle down at work – men’s work.
why is he treated like some kind of pope? just retire already….and put a sock in it.
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