A few weeks ago, Jack Welch let loose with his view that women, to make it to the top of the corporate food chain, must let work consume their lives and to forget work-life balance — as in, don’t even think about it. (Want more detail? Check out the July 16 piece by Debra Cassens Weiss on www.abajournal.com titled “Jack Welch: Women Take Time Off for Kids at Their Peril.”) Some likely think that’s very Gordon Gekko of Welch, but it raises an important question: How far have women come in the workplace, legally and culturally — not in theory, but in reality?
First, work culture. Consider “Backlash: Women Bullying Women at Work,”a May 10 piece in The New York Times by Mickey Meese. It says men bully men and women on an equal basis, but women target other women for bullying more than 70 percent of the time. Why? Meese’s article says women bullying other women may stem from the belief that, to succeed, a woman must be aggressive and thus act against a perceived gender stereotype of the nurturer, not the leader.
