Editorial:
From Forbes:
When NY Times [1] writer Lisa Belkin introduced the women’s world [2]to the term “opting out” in 2003, she framed it as a revolution: highly educated working women were quitting their jobs in droves to stay at home [3] with their children. “It’s not just that the workplace has failed women,” she wrote. “It is also that women are rejecting the workplace.”
Belkin wrote about a group of Princeton-educatedAtlanta [4] mothers who had, by and large, taken the off-ramp from their successful careers to stay at home and raise children. To a one, they described their choice as just that: the decision towards the preferred path. ”I don’t want to be on the fast track leading to a partnership at a prestigious law firm,” one said. “Some people define that as success; I don’t.” ”Maternity provides an escape hatch that paternity does not,” said another. “Having a baby provides a graceful and convenient exit.”
Sure, they’re not furthering the feminist cause by staying home with their babies, but do a handful of moms not living up to their Ivy League [5] potential really do much harm? In the weeks and months and ensuing media flurry, you’d certainly think so. “Opting out [6]” became the phrase of choice for thought-leaders, researchers and women’s advocates for not just women who happily choose children over paychecks, but increasingly those whose choices are much more hard-pressed.
And ever since then, “opting out” has been a bad word.
[...]
Source:
Forbes
URL:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/02/28/why-is-opting-out-a-bad-word-for-women/
Date:
February 29, 2012
Affiliate:
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