Flexibility: Pay It Forward

A couple of years ago, the American Association of Law Libraries published profiles of several librarians as a recruitment tool for the profession. I was among the librarians profiled in a piece entitled, “Change is Good . . . Even if You Love What You Do”. In it, I described my decision to balance my family and career by switching from a full-time law firm career to a part-time academic one.

As a result of this profile, other librarians contact me for advice on this option. Clearly, this is a very personal decision working women need to make with their partners, but I’ve always encouraged those who call to at least consider trying meaningful part time work for one simple reason:

Whatever we do to increase flexibility in today’s workplace will make it that much easier for our daughters and sons facing these decisions in twenty years.

In last December’s American Prospect, Linda Hirshman published an article, “Homeward Bound,” in which she revealed the results of her research on couples whose weddings were announced in the “Sunday Styles” section of the New York Times in 1996. To her horror, she discovered that the vast majority of these highly educated, elite women were home raising children. She criticized this “opt-out phenomenon” and set off a firestorm that continues to play out in the media. (See Judith Stadtman Tucker’s “Everybody Hates Linda”, “A Working Girl Can Win” by Meghan O’Rourke, and Ms. Hirshman’s own account of the last few months in “Unleashing the Wrath of Stay-at-Home Moms”) The original research is now a controversial new book, Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World.

I’ll be taking this book to the beach with me, but from what I’ve read so far, some of Ms. Hirshman’s real message may have been lost in the backlash. The choices educated, wealthy women make have repercussions beyond their own circles. They have the power to serve as role models for their less-privileged peers as well as for their successors. By opting out, these women diminish the contribution women can make to improve the world.

That sentiment is, in part, what motivates the advice I give the librarians who contact me. I believe that the workplace can change, but not without guidance and definition from the women with the most at stake. Those of us who reach certain professional levels have the power to negotiate for flexibility, and although it means endless juggling and constant vigilance, I feel we owe it to the past and the future to do so. These small contributions can have a profound effect over time because they set precedents in individual workplaces.

Ms. Hirshman is not enthusiastic about part-time work, stating, “If my interviewees are working, they work largely part time, and their part-time careers are not putting them in the executive suite.” However, she acknowledges that many women had become so alienated by a workplace designed by and for males, that “[n]ot surprisingly, even where employers offered them part-time work, they were not interested in taking it.”

I think that’s where librarians are lucky – and why we should work toward creating meaningful part-time library employment. We really like what we do. Yes, there are difficult bosses and colleagues, threats of downsizing, and incursions from other professionals, but most of knew we were choosing careers burdened by such problems. We did so anyway because librarianship is fulfilling, and it is that fulfillment that can support the creation of small, but satisfying, work along the entire continuum of a librarian’s career. If we embrace the notion that flexibility in the workplace is for everyone – parents of young children, children of aging parents, women, men, old and young – we can have the opportunity to do good now and in the future.