Simmons Study Finds 90% of Working Women Use Flexible Options vs "Opting Out"
With all the hype in the popular press about women “opting out” of leadership and abandoning their careers, the SOM collaborated with HP in a survey of 400 professional women and found that most women in our sample are not “opting out.” Instead our respondents are using flexible work options to remain in the work place while managing complex lives. The study, conducted at the 2006 SOM Leadership Conference, found that more than 90% of women had used flexible work arrangements (FWAs) at some point in the careers; 88% of women had used them to remain employed full time. And unlike earlier reports that warned that women who ask for FWAs will experience decreased earning power, the women surveyed who used FWAs did not sacrifice financial success, when compared to those who did not use them.
Study authors, Mary Shapiro, Cynthia Ingols, Ed.D, and Stacy Blake-Beard, Ph.D, found the high FWA usage supported their hypotheses that women aren’t “opting out,” but are managing their careers differently. By doing so, women are rejecting an outdated career model that was created for and by the white male managers who were building corporations after World War II. That historical career model, demanding that work be primary in an individual’s life, was founded on the stay-at-home mother and stable organizations and markets. As that foundation has eroded, a new model has emerged where individuals act as “career self-agents,” and negotiate their own terms of employment. Women, as they negotiate FWAs (to essentially determine when, where and how much they will work), are leading that shift in the career paradigm.
To read a pdf version of the study findings, click here.
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