These women who give up their careers: what leads them to quit their jobs
The arrival of women in the world of work
The generation of women the author is talking about, mine, is the generation of women born between the mid-60s and the early 80s. This generation sees all its daughters entering the world of work.
Between 1944, the year when women in France obtained the right to vote, and 1990, women entered ALL professions.
These women are the first generation to have had the opportunity to enter all positions, including traditionally male professions.
They embody equality. On paper.
Why do some of them give up and what does it mean when they leave the conventional system?
A review in the context of feminism is necessary. A quick recap.
Feminism: the heritage of each of us.
To understand today where women are with regards to their careers, yes, we need to talk about feminism (like we need to talk about Mozart and Michael Jackson to understand M. Pokora 😁).
Feminism has gone through several waves:
- 1 from the end of the 19th century to the 1930s, the struggle for civil and civil rights (political rights) 2 in the 60s, the fight against patriarchy and for freedoms: professional equality, social readjustment 3 in the 90s, the fight against moral and sexual harassment
These waves attacked rights that men already had and that women were denied.
In which feminist wave is the path and the approach of these women and their careers inscribed?
👠 A maternal legacy: my daughter must have a career
The mothers of these women are from the first two waves of feminism. Even if they did not actively participate in the struggle, they lived through those hours of feminism.
These mothers have raised their daughters, consciously or unconsciously, urging them to continue the fight and rejecting the model of the housewife, in order to go even further in the conquest of professional power
There was a very strong desire on the part of mothers to avoid any form of dependence on men for their daughters.
They push their daughters to quickly acquire their autonomy. Thus, on the one hand, these mothers are not locked into their maternal role, and on the other hand, their daughters acquire very early an autonomy that has long been reserved for boys.
Thus, girls are encouraged to complete the process of emancipation initiated by their mothers. But they are also implicitly invited not to give up their maternal aspirations.
Because the 3rd feminist wave was to have everything.
👠 The other parental figure, the father
These fathers encourage their daughters to follow in their footsteps and do as well as they did. They were the models on which these women were built.
These fathers signaled to their daughters that they could do what they did and be as successful as they were.
The fear of financial dependence pushes women to move as far away as possible from the model of the woman in the home while inviting them to personal growth.
And gaining financial independence meant turning to historically more masculine professions.
👠 Feminization of work: meeting the codes and practices of another age.
When women enter the workplace, especially in these traditionally male professions, men have always occupied this space. They feel comfortable there and accept, more or less willingly, to let women enter.
Women slip into a corner and seek to spread out.
It is once they reach the top that they come up against codes and practices, professional habits that they thought were long gone.
And these women do not like these games of strategy, politics, intrigue, co-optation, intimidation, not really related to competence.
They don’t particularly want to “do politics” on top of their job.
Not to mention the use of bragging, lathering, monopolizing or cutting off speech, at the expense of the work and time of others…
They are confronted with the cult of presenteeism: the race to see who stays late the most, the most sleepless nights and weekends.
👠 But who takes charge of the domestic sphere?
The culture of face-to-face over-investment dates back to a time when women had no place in the workplace and were responsible for all aspects of home life.
Women who entered the workforce had to deal with the question “who takes over the domestic sphere?”
Women have experienced the effects of this new parental role on working time much more violently than their spouses, while pursuing the same type of careers.
When they entered the job market, which took about 50 years, there was nothing to facilitate their entry and answer the question
“who was now going to take care of the domestic aspects while the men and women worked?”
This is a societal unspoken but very real fact.
And that becomes one of the main sources of stress: between the desire for professional efficiency and the hours lost in presenteeism.
They felt out of place, torn between the office and home all the time, like they were running around all the time.
Woman and career: mother and working girl
👠 Who is watching the children?
A woman who works = a woman who does not look after the children and does not maintain the house.
Who will take care of it?
So yes, solutions have been found for women: 4/5ths, leaving at 6pm, benefiting from school vacations.
The effect: a drop in salary but they were asked to work just as hard!
Not to mention the pressure to be “perfect mothers”.
👠 A weighted maternal duty
Because, with the 2nd wave of feminism, women now have new obligations: they have chosen to give birth to their child.
In addition, the discovery in the mid-1980s of the complexity of child development made educated, middle- and upper-class women ideal targets for the ideology of intensive motherhood (they pay more attention to the advice of experts).
Our mothers did not have to worry about the esteem of their children, this concept was then unknown.
👠 The shock of working parents
The birth of the child is a revolution for the woman, while it has no impact on the career of the spouse.
It transforms women’s careers in every way: they are forced to rethink their organization, to reschedule their priorities.
Few women had anticipated this heartbreak in the morning, this feeling of always running, this permanent dissatisfaction of being neither efficient at the office nor completely available at home.
Around the age of 30-40, the pressure intensifies: they must be both “good mothers” and “great professionals”.
They have to act at home as if work doesn’t exist and at work as if the children don’t exist.`
On which female model should we base ourselves?
According to the author, women born between the 60’s and the early 80’s, had the choice between 3 models:
- the ambiguous model: that of mothers who invested their daughters to go further than them in the race for equality The unrealistic model: their fathers who had great careers but were unaware of the difficulties that their daughters would encounter by following this path The extreme model: women who are more male than men, superwomen. A dominant male model, neither enviable nor tenable.
In leadership positions, there were 2 female models:
👠 women more man than men: they have all the attributes and characters of male power. They display little solidarity or even hostility towards the female sex.The working woman, hyper masculinized, was a necessary step at the beginning.
On the one hand, it was a response to the feminist wave of the 70s which advocated the omnipotence of women and the inversion of the relationship of domination.
This model looks more like a man, in a pantsuit (many female politicians decide to wear it: practical, useful), as a sign of refusal to become a vase.It was a tactic, like lowering his tone of voice.
Focused on their own integration rather than helping others, they needed legitimacy.
The phenomenon of the woman more “man than men” has revealed many pioneers.
👠 Superwomen who had it all and achieved everything
This model of the previous generation seemed unattainable.
The perfect woman, accomplished, who succeeded in everything: her professional life, her couple, her children, her vacations, her house, her friends, her hobbies, her appearance … all this seemed unattainable.
We couldn’t identify with her.
It is these extreme models that have driven many women out of the system and onto their own paths.
Women and career: the new model of French women
These women who leave their careers do not give up the idea that it is possible to succeed professionally without giving up their other lives.
They take pleasure in their studies, in succeeding, they are proud to reach professional positions, but they have difficulties to blossom because they are confronted with foreign, even contrary values.
By leaving their beautiful situation, these women open a door in the consciences: they instill the idea of another possible.
American and French women do not follow the same path
France is one of the most advanced countries in terms of women’s access to work.
In France today, girls do better than boys in school and in post-bac studies:
- 55% of students are women they are more often graduates: 50% of women have a higher education diploma compared to 39% of men in 2013, women accounted for 37% of all Grande Ecole graduates, 61% of Master’s graduates and 62% of PhDs.
In the United States, a survey of 54 women in the 2000s revealed the abandonment of successful careers to become housewives. This phenomenon is called “opting-out”:
👢Often due to the failures of the professional world not well adapted to the values and needs of women
👢Due to an alleged personal and typically maternal desire to devote themselves exclusively to their children.
These women face a double dilemma: increased pressure from the professional sphere and in their personal life feel obliged to raise perfect children.
The case of the French is different:
Those who chose to leave their jobs did not return home, nor did they reorient themselves to the purely maternal or superminority model (mompreneur).
In France, the women interviewed liked their profession but not the conditions in which they practiced it: they decided to practice it in their own way.
They have made an act of rupture and reinvention: a true movement of affirmation of women’s life choices.
This is a new step in the advancement of feminism in the professional sphere: pioneers of the new wave.
A woman who leaves her career is no longer an individual failure but a progress, an advance, an alternative.
A woman’s career at the dawn of the 4th feminist wave
A 4th wave, recent, is emerging since the 2010s with online activism. The younger generations are mobilizing: they are working to denounce and sanction acts of sexism and misogyny.
Today, feminism is protean but it still has its first goal: equality between women and men, offering women the same situations as men.
But what about this basic situation if it does not fully satisfy or is not enough for women?
Women do not only want equality, they want to be actors of their professional life.
For the author, we are at a turning point in the history of the feminist movement: the emancipation and fulfillment of women outside the existing models.
👠 A 3rd way to feminize high positions
Up until now, there have been two main ways in the professional world to feminize high positions and get rid of the glass ceiling:
- Legislation, with the introduction of a quota system: the basis of the feminist movement, with a logic of catching up, to give women the same thing as men Redefining the model of thought by proceeding to a “rebalancing” between masculine and feminine values: we attack the stereotypes, we change the mentalities. This is more difficult, and above all, it takes time.
The third way that these women propose is to imagine their own model, to build it by answering the question: “what conditions would make them want to take power?
In the eyes of these women, success means, among other things, “not staying in the office” just to “show off the hours”.
👠 Woman, career, power and ambition
Women and power
Women have a much more collective and results-oriented view of power.
They are not interested in power for power’s sake.
Some women have no desire to exercise power as it is exercised by men.
What if we thought of power as an attribute or verb rather than as a possession?
This is exactly what resonated with me and reminded me of the ideas of François Délivré in his book “Le métier de coach”. The word power often has a negative connotation, associated with domination/submission and often associated with the adverb “on”. What if we spoke of “power for”: using one’s abilities to satisfy the needs of others?
I think women are much more interested in “power for” than “power over”.
The ambition
Sometimes, the promotion alone is enough for them: the recognition of their work by the confidence shown by their superior.
More than money, they
- are in search of meaning
- have the will to have an impact
- want to feel useful
- want to be part of a collective project
Women are willing to earn less to find more meaning. Their wish: to earn enough.
Raised with the fear of financial dependence, women are used to taking care of themselves: it is out of the question for them not to continue to take care of themselves or to engage in unpaid or low-paid work.
👠 Smurfette syndrome
Before: relationships between women seemed toxic, destructive.
Some women, having entered a world of men, were the only woman in the environment and this could create the will to remain so: the smurfette syndrome.
In the 1980s, women were seen as rivals, where jealousy reigned. The author supports her remarks with the films Working Girl, The Devil Wears Prada.
This concept of jealousy and rivalry between women has also excited the male imagination.
Then in the 2010s, films brought other images of women who help each other, who create a female alliance: Number One, Late Night, Scandal.
This mutual aid between women offers direct, frank links, not polluted by ego.
A new spirit of sound, which leads to work with other women and to exercise a kind of soft positive discrimination.
A sound without hierarchy or birthright, a protective, horizontal circle.
The XXI century is the end of professional competition between women.
The woman creates her career on a new professional model
These women have chosen to give up ascending professional careers to create their own professional model, with new codes:
- a professional activity that can be carried out in several locations Where the working time can be split Where personal and professional time alternate
They establish the revolutionary and paradoxical idea that work can be realized in freedom.
It’s no longer all or nothing.
👠 based on its needs
In the old models, they feel imprisoned and stretched, frustrated at not being able to organize themselves freely or feeling like they are running around all the time, not being up to speed either at work or at home.
They want something else, they need to flourish in several lives: professional, family, social friends.
Spend time with the kids, yes, but not all of it, or even half of it.
What they really want:
be able to fit pockets of time into their work schedules for urgent non-work activities (pediatrician emergencies, picking up from school, dinner, checking homework 2-3/week, going to the end-of-year show): flexibility.
👠 basé sur l’indépendance
Today, a successful career as a woman is different:
- They will not have a straight line ascent, but a staircase with irregular steps, landings, and hollows sometimes They decline promotions to stay in a position that suits their family situation They leave their high responsibility position and spend 2 years at home part-time They leave a well-trodden path to become consultants
But one fundamental remains: never leave the professional world to remain visible.
They therefore opt for an independent status.
Leaving the workforce is like a leap into the void. They have an incredible freedom but a loss of social status.
Based on their previous professional experience, as leaders or managers, and on the contacts they made in their first career, they extract new jobs and skills to exercise them in the periphery.
They find this in-between: bringing value and at the same time being present for what is important to them.
👠 By developing new professional styles
Women are anti-individualistic: their management is focused on the collective. They seek cohesion and collaboration in their work relationships. They have a desire to create meaning and to transmit.
Women are no longer interested in negotiation strategies based on distrust, attack and defense, as in war or combat sports.
The author distinguishes 4 types of women entrepreneurs:
- individualists, whose management methods and style are modelled on the male model the maternal: the mompreneurs. Their professional project is built on the occasion of and around motherhood The over-feminized: they develop an activity that is only for women Relational entrepreneurs: they reject the male model focused on growth and ask the question of entrepreneurial success. They develop more human interactions, reciprocal empathy, mutual empowerment (that’s where I find myself 🤪)
The world of work wants to open up to other alternatives in the professional relationship, outside the dominant/dominated relationship.
Women propose an open, frank, collaborative approach. This approach is reminiscent of arbitration, mediation and conciliation techniques, as if the aggressive, confrontational, procedural attitude and the techniques of attack and retaliation were beginning to be questioned as too costly.
Leaving the world of work is therefore not a failure of women but of society.
Alone and isolated, they can appear as resigned, desirous, opt-outs. Together, we become builders, pioneers, models.
What I learned from this book about women, their careers and their life choices
First of all, the reset that the author brings is really informative, I would say enlightening.👠 I understood why I didn’t feel comfortable with the ideas of feminism. It’s a generational thing.
👠 I lived through all those “after” phases of the 70’s wave, the male models of the more-man-than-man woman and the superwoman.I lived through that push to do as well as the men while at the same time trying to be the perfect mom raising perfect kids. Paying attention to their self-esteem (and by the way working on mine 😉 ).
👠 I also understood why power didn’t attract me even though positions of responsibility were calling me. Why I didn’t feel in my element in games of strength, of strategy, even though I evolved for a long time in my first male-dominated career (hey yes, in construction, there’ quite a few “political” games).
I understood why I sometimes blamed myself for lacking ambition because I was only looking at the male model of ambition.
👠 And I’m happy (I’m moderating my words here, in fact I’m exulting): I feel fully in tune with the 4th feminist wave This wave that sees the development of sound, mutual aid between women, soft positive discrimination between women, the federation of female networks.
I am fully into it and I understand now that my need for freedom, for creating my own activity, for different working relationships, is a natural evolution.
👠 I’m happy to be one of the women who decide to stop waiting for society to give them the space they feel they deserve by creating it for themselves.
I’m glad I’m not alone.
I am happy to help other women create their place.
The 21st century will be the century of the feminine.
