29 min listen
CM 205: Claudia Goldin on Women, Careers, and Greedy Work
CM 205: Claudia Goldin on Women, Careers, and Greedy Work
ratings:
Length:
57 minutes
Released:
Jan 17, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
For women who want a career and a family, we might expect things would be easier today. After all, women have greater access to education and job opportunities. We’ve seen advances in reproductive health. And we’ve made inroads in anti-discrimination laws and policies. Yet gaps in pay and promotions remain a problem.
Today’s guest, Claudia Goldin, is a Harvard University economist who’s spent her career studying women in the workplace. She believes there’s an important factor we’ve overlooked, namely, greedy work. These are jobs with lots of financial upside and promotion potential for employees who can log long hours and take on big assignments at a moment’s notice. And it’s the work that women with children often take less advantage of compared to their partners. As a result, ambitious career women can find themselves stalled out and earning less.
In her book, Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity, Claudia traces how women got here. Drawing on extensive data sets, she reveals five patterns in women’s career and family behaviors: for women graduating from 1900-1910s, it was either career or family; for 1920-1930s graduates, jobs then families; with 1950s graduates, families then jobs; women graduating in the 1970s had careers then families; and, for women graduating in the 1980s-1990s it’s been careers and family.
Yet, for today’s ambitious career women juggling career and family, it can mean increasing dissatisfaction with both. And in analyzing the way many careers today are structured, Claudia helps us understand why. It’s an insightful way to understand a problem we’ve been living with for a long time.
Episode Links
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The Other Side of the Mountain: Women's Employment and Earnings over the Family Cycle
Assessing Five Statements about the Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Women
Marriage Bar
The Group by Mary McCarthy
The Quiet Revolution that Transformed Women's Employment, Education, and Family
The Team
Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.
Support the Podcast
If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show.
Subscribe
Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.
Today’s guest, Claudia Goldin, is a Harvard University economist who’s spent her career studying women in the workplace. She believes there’s an important factor we’ve overlooked, namely, greedy work. These are jobs with lots of financial upside and promotion potential for employees who can log long hours and take on big assignments at a moment’s notice. And it’s the work that women with children often take less advantage of compared to their partners. As a result, ambitious career women can find themselves stalled out and earning less.
In her book, Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity, Claudia traces how women got here. Drawing on extensive data sets, she reveals five patterns in women’s career and family behaviors: for women graduating from 1900-1910s, it was either career or family; for 1920-1930s graduates, jobs then families; with 1950s graduates, families then jobs; women graduating in the 1970s had careers then families; and, for women graduating in the 1980s-1990s it’s been careers and family.
Yet, for today’s ambitious career women juggling career and family, it can mean increasing dissatisfaction with both. And in analyzing the way many careers today are structured, Claudia helps us understand why. It’s an insightful way to understand a problem we’ve been living with for a long time.
Episode Links
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The Other Side of the Mountain: Women's Employment and Earnings over the Family Cycle
Assessing Five Statements about the Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Women
Marriage Bar
The Group by Mary McCarthy
The Quiet Revolution that Transformed Women's Employment, Education, and Family
The Team
Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.
Support the Podcast
If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show.
Subscribe
Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.
Released:
Jan 17, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
CM 021: Jocelyn Glei on Creativity, Happiness and Meaningful Work: We all want to do meaningful work that gives our lives purpose and lets us be creative. And yet, the very tools that help us stay organized and connected can cause the kind of distractions that erode time spent on meaningful work. Jocelyn Glei, by Curious Minds at Work