The Best of Both Worlds

To add additional context to Linda Tischler's feature story, Fast Company offers two edited transcripts of interviews with Professor Charles A. O'Reilly at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Catherine Hakim, a sociology professor at the London School of Economics.

Catherine Hakim, a sociology professor at the London School of Economics, recently completed a large survey in Spain and the UK of people's labor force preferences -- in short, how men and women each value work in their lives. Her results are notable since they get at how people feel about these topics in their personal lives, rather than how they feel about public policy. The results may surprise you; they certainly did the European Commission.

FC: You recently completed a survey of 3,700 people in Britain and Spain about labor force preferences. What did you find?

Catherine Hakim: Over the last 20 years, we've gotten a completely new scenario in terms of social and economic changes. Women have genuine choices for the first time in history. In modern societies you now see three very distinctive labor force preferences: A minority of women -- about a third -- are work-centered; a minority -- again, about a third -- are home-centered; and the majority are in the middle. I call them "adaptives." They want the best of both worlds. They want to combine family and paid employment. That means they're never going to give priority to paid employment.

Since you're only likely to get to the most senior positions if you give primacy to your job, women who want to balance between family life and paid employment will never reach the top. It's more likely to be roughly 2 to 1 men at the highest levels of professional and managerial work, and you'll never get the 50/50 split that many of us have hoped for in the past.

FC: What kind of reception have your conclusions gotten?

Hakim: I've given a lot of talks to labor groups on both sides of the government. There's been a lot of interest and concern because the European Commission has explicitly stated that its goal is to have 50/50 men and women in all occupations, and very particularly in all senior positions. Any departure from that is being treated as sex discrimination.

I think that is completely insane. You can artificially impose such quotas, but if we're going to allow people to make their own decisions about what occupations they enter, then it's not a realistic goal.

FC: You conducted your study using preference theory. What is that?

Hakim: Both American and European studies ask what I call "public opinion" questions about what people think are good rules for society at large. But a lot of this data is misleading because it asks very general questions like: "Do you approve of women going out to work?" and "Do you approve of mothers working?" Of course, they all get a massive positive response. Methodologically, we have to ask questions that explore what a person might personally choose for her own life. Then you get a completely different answer. For example, a mother who says in general it's a very good idea to allow mothers to work will say, "I personally choose not to. I want to be a full time mother. I want my children to have the best and I know that I can give them better care than any child minder that I can afford to pay." So that's where social scientists have made a mistake: confusing personal preferences with survey data on public attitudes.

FC: What did you discover about the men?

Hakim: Slightly less than half of all men are adaptive in that they want some kind of balance between family life and paid employment. But the majority of men -- about 55% -- are work-centered. That turns over one stereotype: that all men are totally career-obsessed. But it's still 55% versus about 30% for women, which is a big difference.

Interestingly enough, gay men are less likely as a group to buy the total dedication to the job story. If they're pairing off, they automatically have two salaries, and therefore more choices about how much to invest in their jobs, much the way women do.

FC: Still, 45% of straight men are saying they want more balance, too. Does that presage a change in the workplace?

Hakim: Eventually men will start to say, well, women have a lot of choices that we don't have, and we wouldn't mind them. Once employers start giving women all sorts of rights about balancing home and family, they're going to start demanding the same privileges as well.