\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen Corinne Low gave birth to her son in 2017, everything seemed to be lining up. A tenure-track economist at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School, she was working in a career she had long dreamed of. Her husband, stepchild and baby lived in New York City and the two-hour commute to Philadelphia was inconvenient but sustainable. She was embarking on a journey to do it all: a working mom, supporting her family with a career she loved.<\/p>\n As track repairs tripled her commute time, things suddenly felt like they were falling apart. Instead of getting home in time to put her baby son to bed, Low found herself sobbing while breast pumping in an Amtrak bathroom.<\/p>\n As an economist, Low searched for a more precise term to describe how she and other working moms often find themselves stretched for time and energy. She came up with \u201cthe squeeze\u201d, and it\u2019s backed by data that shows how women often get burnt out trying to manage competing demands at home and work, especially when they are parenting young children.<\/p>\n Low has spent much of her career as an economist trying to understand how women navigate a modern world that has prioritized the careers of men. In her new book, Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women\u2019s Lives and How to Get the Most Out of Yours, Low outlines how structures around women\u2019s work and home lives fail to truly accommodate working women.<\/p>\n Low calls the book a \u201clove letter to women\u201d, an effort to let women know that society has so often made them feel like something is wrong with them<\/em> instead of the system. Much of the book is dedicated to offering advice on how women can figure out what \u201chaving it all\u201d means to them in the face of stubborn expectations around work and home.<\/p>\n In an interview with the Guardian, Low said the book encompasses how women are \u201ceconomic agents\u201d just like men. They make rational decisions to optimize outcomes. As obvious as this may seem, the field has tended to discount women\u2019s economic contributions.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we think about the fact that women spend, on average, more time outside the labor force and spend more time with children, we\u2019re like: \u2018Oh, well the gender wage gap is because women have different preferences, and this is their choices\u2019,\u201d Low said. But women aren\u2019t \u201cjust having these feelings and preferences that are perpendicular to economic realities\u201d.<\/p>\n Historically, the work women did at home was drastically undervalued compared to the salaries that their husbands earned. Low and other economists have pointed out that \u201chome production\u201d \u2013 childcare, laundry, cleaning and cooking \u2013 is a full-time job.<\/p>\n When a woman specialized in home production, it meant that her husband could fully focus on his career and earn a salary that could support the entire family. On the surface, it appears to make sense. Two people for two full-time jobs.<\/p>\n But economists have noted that this setup only works when the relationship remains intact. It\u2019s no coincidence, Low points out, that women entered the workforce right as unilateral divorce laws were introduced <\/strong>in the US in the 1970s, and getting a divorce became easier in most states. Low cites a paper that traces the connection between these divorce laws and rising college graduation rates for women and is aptly titled Degrees Are Forever.<\/p>\n \u201cMen could walk away from their marriages, taking their paycheck with them,\u201d Low writes. \u201cWives could have spent years investing in home production and easing the path of someone else\u2019s career that they now couldn\u2019t benefit from.\u201d<\/p>\n Low notes that poorer women and women of color have always been working because their households could not afford only one person with a job. Being a stay-at-home mother, for a time, was actually seen as a privilege.<\/p>\n But, among other factors, the possibility of divorce pushed women to develop their own \u201chuman capital\u201d, a term used to describe the skills and expertise a person has to earn an income, which allowed for economic freedom in case something went wrong in their relationship.<\/p>\n There were a few catches. First, just as women were starting to make their way into the workplace, expectations around parenting started to become more intensive. Instead of outsourcing breastfeeding to powdered formula and meals to microwave TV dinners, parents were expected to be present with their children.<\/p>\n But while data shows that many women are now earning just as much, or sometimes even more, than their partners, the time men spend on home production hasn\u2019t budged.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you understand women entering the labor force as a gender revolution that came in and changed our attitudes about women\u2019s role in society, then of course, men\u2019s role would change, too,\u201d Low said. But \u201cthere was no force acting on men requiring them to do something different.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, much of the societal focus has been about how women can adapt to workplaces that were built and designed for men, rather than encouraging men to take on home production tasks, especially things like childcare or cleaning a home. While men fix windows and mow the lawn, these \u201cexterior maintenance\u201d tasks take less time than the tasks more often done by women.<\/p>\n Books like Lean In by former Facebook boss Sheryl Sandberg\u2019s and Sophia Amoruso\u2019s #Girlboss in the early 2010s ushered in a new era where women were told to take up space in the workplace and show their male colleagues they can keep up and work harder.<\/p>\n The consequences of this have manifested in what appears to be the modern \u201cfeminist\u201d movement against<\/em> work \u2013 a backlash, Low said, to the \u201cgirl boss\u201d era.<\/p>\n Low argues that the advice of Sandberg and co falls short. \u201cIt ignores the structural realities that put the onus on women,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s rational to say well, because the structural barriers are standing in my way, maybe I don\u2019t feel like pursuing a career where I\u2019m going to feel like I\u2019m \u2026 a battering ram against these structural forces.\u201d<\/p>\n Where the Lean In ideology can ignore gender differences, under the guise of achieving equality, Low writes that some gender differences are important to acknowledge. When she was pregnant with her son, three of her male colleagues\u2019 wives were also pregnant. \u201cI bitterly clocked the ways in which our investments in this miracle of creation diverged,\u201d she writes. \u201cWhereas I was exhausted all the time and often bent over a toilet with morning sickness, they were merrily skipping (so it seemed to me) down the office halls.\u201d<\/p>\n The ongoing gender divide has seeped into the dating sphere, where women often complain about how men on dating apps are uncommitted and balk at the idea of non-casual dating. Low notes that women who want kids are on a much more constrained timeline than men, amping up the pressure of dating just as they are supposed to be building up careers.<\/p>\n Because the girl boss era didn\u2019t resonate with all women, Low worries that in defiance to the massive effort it takes to fight the headwinds, women have started to believe they would be happier not working at all. The so-called \u201ctradwife\u201d movement has taken hold of many spaces on social media, where couples romanticize traditional gender roles. Women become unburdened by careers, while men can focus on their work.<\/p>\n But Low said there may be a sense of \u201camnesia\u201d about how bad the arrangement was for women.<\/p>\n Women were once warned by their mothers about the impact of divorce on women without an independent source of income. \u201cThat generation went to school at high rates. But the generation coming up under me did not get that message. The message they\u2019re getting is: \u2018Your moms are really stressed out. Wouldn\u2019t it be nice to not be so stressed out?\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t think they have the historical context to understand how risky that is. You are not protected, divorce laws have changed.\u201d<\/p>\n So, where does this leave women? Low\u2019s solutions are two-fold. First, there needs to be societal changes that address the ongoing gender gaps at work and at home. For example, the US does not have a federal mandate for employers to offer paid maternity leave. When a government does not require companies to offer paid maternity leave, it can actually disincentivize companies from hiring women.<\/p>\n But societal changes take time. Instead of happiness, the elusive goal of so many advice books, Low suggests women start thinking about their unique \u201cpersonal utility function\u201d \u2013 the sum total of what makes their life full and content that may look very different from what\u2019s promoted on social media.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have 24 hours in a day, being the Instagrammable tradwife or being Sheryl Sandberg are two separate full-time jobs,\u201d Low said. \u201cYou cannot do those two together, but you can have elements of both of those \u2013 it is not all or nothing,\u201d<\/p>\n Low insists balance is possible, but it requires some forward thinking \u2013 and some tough conversations with partners.<\/p>\n After her time in \u201cthe squeeze\u201d, which was exacerbated by Covid-19 shutdowns, Low divorced her husband and moved to Philadelphia, where the lower cost of living allowed her to hire an au pair. With more time to focus on her work, Low was eventually able to get tenure, which eventually led to a better work-life balance.<\/p>\n \u201cI do have a career, but I also like spending time with my kids,\u201d Low said. \u201cI try to be a very involved mom.\u201d<\/p>\n For some women, things may look different. In the book, she cites women who have made all sorts of choices that ended up working for them because they were intentional, grounded in their own unique set of values.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not failing and you\u2019re not bad at this. This is<\/em> that hard, it is<\/em> difficult.\u201d Low said. \u201cOnce you have the tools to make those decisions with data and information, then whatever you choose is okay. There\u2019s no wrong way to navigate the life that you choose and that works for you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Corinne Low gave birth to her son in 2017, everything seemed to be lining up. A tenure-track economist at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School, she was working in a career she had long dreamed of. Her husband, stepchild and baby lived in New York City and the two-hour commute to Philadelphia was inconvenient<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1120,4932,1297,9187,4051,1935,1329,15770,418,514,1958],"class_list":{"0":"post-30762","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-boss","9":"tag-built","10":"tag-careers","11":"tag-economist","12":"tag-failed","13":"tag-girl","14":"tag-men","15":"tag-tradwife","16":"tag-women","17":"tag-work","18":"tag-workforce"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}