Does women career rhythm differ from men?
When do you foresee the peak of your career and vitality?
This simple question, asked to many groups in many countries of the so-called “developed world” receives a surprisingly similar answer. The Golden Age of your vitality would be in your Twenties and Thirties, and in your Thirties and Forties when it comes to your career. How is it that we get such a standard and narrow response across the ‘developed’ world ?
Such a conventional expectation might rely on masculine careers as they occurred in the Twentieth century. While Madame was taking care of the household, Sir devoted himself wholeheartedly to his career, working hard and going up the corporate ladder fast, in sprint mode. Upon reaching the top of his career in his Forties, he would stay up there for a few years, and then decline slowly to retirement, deeply satisfied to have accomplished great things, and ready for a more contemplative and less active phase in his life. Or for the less lucky ones, death…
Nowadays, most women suffer from — or self-inflict themselves — a huge pressure to follow this same pattern even though it is preventing them from following their needs and deeper aspirations. Indeed, in their Twenties and Forties, women have menstruations, kids or the biological clock reminding them that they don’t have kids yet. In most cases, it is difficult to be completely dedicated to their work. This supposedly fantastic “Golden Age” period is just not the best moment for most women to fully accomplish themselves.
Yet, when women reach their Fifties, they discover in themselves a renewed energy, powerful, and amplified by their years of experience. The vast majority of women then come to realize what their personal calling is, what skills they have and what they want to give to the world beyond bearing children. Menopause has come, kids are more autonomous, experience has increased their self-confidence. They have also understood that they can dare more, without asking for permission or needing to have 120% of the skills required for the next challenge before accepting it. The road is clear for women to give all their might in work, politics, humanitarian or charitable endeavors. But tough: by then, they are considered “seniors”, damaged good, ready for retirement! Most companies consider that if women have not reached the top by 50, they don’t have the potential or stamina to do it at all. What a poor assessment… What a waste of energy and talent….
If companies, and more broadly, our societies, understood the need to consider the varying rhythms of careers, each one of us — men and women — could take time “off” to reflect when life demands it, not to follow a stereotypical model of progression that we unconsciously impose on each other. Some women would choose to go up the ladder more slowly at the start of their career and to continue to expand themselves in their Seventies and Eighties. Many men would most likely opt for a similarly less straightforward path too. Each individual would follow one’s own rhythm, the rhythm of one’s couple, of one’s family.
Look around you for couples in their sixties. Is the woman full of energy, engaged in charitable work, in local politics, training herself up in a new topic, continuing her career… whereas her husband would be quite happy for them to spend more time at home, or gardening, to appreciate what they have already accomplished together? The misunderstanding of these notable rhythms differences across men and women creates many tensions in couples. I have heard men who thought their wives abandoned them, while the women felt their husbands kept them in jail. Wouldn’t it be nice to harmonise our rhythms, to be more aware that we have different individual needs, that infinite possibilities are for us to consider and that deep dialogue will help us find more peace, innovation, health, happiness, efficiency in our couples, families and companies?
Baldini art, showing how harmony stems from rhythm chaos.
When I guide women in their leadership development, I often remind them of these rhythmic dissonances and I encourage them to consider themselves in ‘training’ until they reach 50. How freeing! Not only we are not forced to be at the top professionally in our early years, but we can also explore varying weird avenues in our Twenties, Thirties or Forties, to be ready to bring all our experiences together in our Fifties !
The more I explore this unconscious requirement to “give it all between 20 and 40”, the more I think it also constrains men, who are more and more wishing to take time off throughout their career for activities other than work (music, meditation, highly demanding sports, kids, travels…). These off-road trips are a great source of innovation.
The unconscious rhythmic pre-requisite deprives our companies of much creativity and prevents our societies to benefit from the noticeably longer life-span that allows us to slowly refine our life purpose and to discern what actions we were born to take. However our world deeply needs our soul and the meaning we are here to radiate.
We have reached a long life-span, which calls out for a reflected marathon. We have outgrown the short life-span, which justified our sprinting track run.
Looking forward to meeting you in the reflected marathon era!
