Working Late

The choice between career and family

Working late is the latest in my series of conversations with the past. The original photograph was taken by Angelo Ruizzuto in 1954 and is a part of the collection held at the Library of Congress. 

“The Anthony Angel Collection”  contains ca. 60,000 black-and-white photographs of New York City, chiefly Manhattan, taken between 1949 and 1967 by Angelo A. Rizzuto (1906-1967). The images emphasize the vast scale of the Manhattan cityscape and the complex interrelationships between people and their physical environment.”  Description from the Library of Congress

• Title: Woman smoking a cigarette

• Rizzuto, Angelo, 1906-1967, photographer

• 1954 

• Library of Congress Control Number

• 2020636137

• Rights Advisory: 

• No known restrictions on publication. 

I have been fascinated with photography since college and that fascination increased after a course in graduate school on the “History of Women in Photography”. It was the only Art History course I ever saw in a college catalog focusing exclusively on the work of women. Of course there had been a few “classes” on feminist art. Occasionally during lectures Georgia O’Keefe, Mary Cassette, or Berthe Morisot were mentioned, but never a deep dive into women as artists in any field.  

The textbook was written by Naomi Rosenbaum*. Reading the introduction for the first time in years, the opening lines hit home. 

“Women have been actively involved with photography ever since the medium was first introduced in 1839. They were drawn to it professionally, and personally, finding it, and effective means to earn a living, and to express ideas and feelings. The barriers to their participation in photography were lower, and recognition often came faster than in other arts.”

Further on in the introduction Dr Rosenblum makes note of the discrimination of women in scholarly work. There were several examples of scholars disregarding women. One example is from a book used often in college courses; “History of Photography” by Beaumont Newell. When it was first revised, the author dropped several  women mentioned in the original text. Another loss to the history of photography were women who added to the early development of the camera including a Chinese scientist Huang Lu, who added a lens to the camera obscura and was never credited. 

As Dr.Rosenblum says “Throughout most of photographic history, by male scholars, women have tended to be dismissed or slighted.”

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As I looked at the photograph of the young women smoking a cigarette against the backdrop of a large column in a massive building, I thought about those structures which kept women from moving up in their chosen fields. One simple impediment is working hours.

 

Prior to her marriage in 1955, my mother worked in a big company. Much of her time was spent in downtown Chicago. She would take the train into the city and return to her parents home in a suburb. Unlike her male co-workers she could not “safely” travel home after a certain hour. She also couldn’t spend her time “networking” at a bar or head out to play golf with the boys on the weekend. The men at that time had a built in system to allow them to work extended hours and create opportunities for advancement outside of work without trade offs. That system was marriage.

In the decades between the 1950’s and when I entered the workforce the number of women in the workforce doubled. Women were working and although married, their husbands didn’t typically take on the responsibility for home and child rearing. In that era, women with children  didn’t have any support systems for a transition to the workforce. Women had to choose between family or career. 

 "A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man's advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all."
Betty Friedan

A common support system in develope countires is paid family leave. This policy enables  workers to receive compensation when they take extended time off work  with a new child and recovering from birth. Some of the earliest policies were enacted over 140 years age. Germany was the first to enact paid maternity leave in1883, followed by Sweden in 1891, and France in 1929. In Northern European countries, paid  family leave is a year or more.  

In 1993 the United States passed the Family and Medical Leave Act. It guaranteed a woman twelve weeks of unpaid job-protected leave. The legislation excluded small business and required the woman to have worked for an extended period. Today only 8 countries don’t provide paid family leave. The United States is one of them. When economic and social pressures made room for women in the workforce, the political will in United States to help women was missing.

Even today, women can be seen by employers as temporary workers who will resign after becoming pregnant. The family leave act provides some protection. Without pay during leave, unreasonably short leave, and a lack of subsidized child care; women are still left to make sacrifices for choosing to have children. Women like me moved from higher paying corporate jobs to positions in teaching where the schedule made being a working mother possible.  

A  survey of 2,000 women from a range of business sectors, half with children and half without, suggests two-thirds (67%) are worried about the impact having children would have on their career.Of the women who don't have children, almost one-half (49%) feel their current career doesn't offer them the flexibility they would need to care for a family. Among those with children, 24% have changed their career after becoming a parent. (reference)

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A backstory for “Working Late” begins with a young woman seeing the reality of the power structures. Structures which in 1954 don’t support her reaching her highest potential. Instead she will  make a choice between career and family.  Those odds for her are highly in favor of marriage and family.

Twenty years later, her daughter will have more choices. There are double the number of women working but she will still struggle to find child care and will most likely have to modify her aspirations. By the time her granddaughter enters the workforce there will be more women not choosing family.