Competing Devotions: Career and Family among Women Executives

This book takes a sociological approach to work/family balance and surveys a variety of college-educated women in executive level positions—and the choices they make once husbands and children factor into their lives. How can they make it all work? In most cases they can't completely, as Blair-Loy finds. Too many competing devotions to both "work schema" and "family schema" leave most of the women in her study feeling disillusioned by their choices, undermined by societal influences (they thought they could have it all), and totally betrayed. Greedy institutions such as the firms and families they "work" for require a single-minded devotion and leave little time for reassessment. So, what then is the meaning of work-family balance? Blair-Loy finds that it is much more than the transition from full time to part time. The challenges and changes will occur when more women take a maverick approach to their competing devotions. Otherwise, the grip these schemas have on our culture will continue to make it tough to break through the glass ceiling.—Sara Grant, Baker Library