Many of the differences between men's and women's careers that we've examined have implicated parenting as a major factor in advancement. Most recently (2009-05-15), the example of lawyers was used to argue that taking time for parenting led to decreased career advancement in both men and women. Another field which has been extensively studied (by academics) is academia. In an Academe article, Mason and Goulden (2002) claim that women without children achieve tenure significantly more often than women with children; women with tenure are twice as likely to be single as men with tenure, according to their research. Women who have late babies are also more likely to only have one.
Yesterday (2009-05-28), I made a throwaway comment about the fact that SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor has no children. It kept tickling at the back of my brain, like there was something important there. So, I tried to think of a prominent successful woman who has children. Hillary Clinton has Chelsea. Martha Stewart has one (Alexis). Oprah Winfrey doesn't have any. I find I'm having trouble thinking of "successful women", which also depresses me.
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5 comments:
Justice Ginsburg has two.
Ooh, good example.
From Wikipedia:
[Nancy] Pelosi has five children: Nancy Corinne, Christine, Jacqueline, Paul, and Alexandra, as well as seven grandchildren.
ukelele
2009-05-29 05:37 pm UTC (link) Track This
Suzy Welch has 2, iirc (they attended my school), although I don't know that she was prominent before marrying Jack.
Digging back a bit, of course there's Lillian Gilbreth (sp?). And there's Phyllis Schlafly, although I suppose you wish she wasn't successful. But she has 6, I think? I wonder if you wouldn't be able to think of more prominent-women-with-children if you were thinking of women-prominent-among-conservatives.
Benazir Bhutto apparently had 3, though I don't know if you were thinking internationally. (Angela Merkel has none, it seems.)
Angelina Jolie, natch. Although I think there's a lot of ways the usual rules don't apply to her. But celebrity women in general seem to be having kids these days -- it's very trendy.
This makes me think it may depend a lot what you are successful *at*.
Justice O'Connor has three.
Ann Coulter has zero.
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