Does marriage hold back career women?

 

On paper, the path that the lives of women in our society take seems very unexciting. After she has completed her schooling, she gets a job and starts her career.

She finds a man who fits the bill of a husband. She settles down. She gets married. She bears children and puts her home together. Her world revolves around husband and children.

And she carries these titles – homemaker, caregiver and companion – for the rest of her life.

But women in modern society have tried to change this unexciting script. Between starting their careers and settling down to get married, women have explored the possibilities of other ideas.

Some women have gone on to further their academic qualifications with a Master’s and Doctorate degree. Other women have tried their hand in business and entrepreneurship.

Others have gained unprecedented momentum in their careers and climbed the corporate ladder. Others have pursued their passions and hobbies. Others have simply chosen to remain single, or childless.

How far a woman pursues these dreams and ambitions is dependent on one factor: the man in her life. Yes. A man can be the reason why a woman exhausts the possibilities of her ideas and realizes her full potential, or whether she is known as wife and mother.

A renowned British writer, Jeannette Winterson, boldly declared that men get in the way of women. In a 1997 interview with the Paris Review, Winterson said that she made a decision not to have children or to get married because she wanted to explore her career.

“There was a part of me that instinctively knew that in order to be able to pursue my life, I would be much better off on my own. A man would simply get in the way, and I would have to use up energy that I didn’t have to spare.”

Winterson believes that having a man would have been a hindrance to her success. “When a woman is young and is trying to find her way in the world, a man can get in her way.” The question isn’t whether to have a man in your life or not. The question, rather, is this: do men get in the way of women?

Erase a man from the schedule of your life

“Yes they do,” says Priscilla Wamaitha*, 32 and single. Priscilla is self-employed – she runs her own consultancy firm in Nairobi.

Priscilla describes herself as a brilliant and driven woman, independent and ambitious to the point of being obsessive about it. And it is on this premise she supports the view that men do get in the way of women.

“In terms of time and focus, it’s great not to have a man. I have shared Winterson’s view at different points of my career. Most especially when I was starting my consultancy firm five years ago. The way our society is set up, a man is more likely to pull a woman down than to push her up.”

Priscilla laments that there was a man she has dated in the past who put her in a position where she felt she had to forego her ambitions altogether in order to satisfy his needs.

“I pursued my Masters degree at 24, as soon as I got my first job. The programme was intensive and demanded a lot. The man I was dating at the time asked too much of my space, time and energy, resources I obviously didn’t have. So I made a choice. I knew what I wanted for myself out of my career and academic pursuits so I chose to let him go. Selfish as it may seem, I am glad he is gone. Life is about choices, isn’t it? I had the wisdom and strength to choose one thing and let the alternative go.”

Since then, Priscilla has invested her passion and commitment to achieving the milestones she had set for herself early in her adult life.

“My personal ambition was to be in a position where I can provide for myself – a position where I can exercise my leadership and inspire others. I love success. I love winning. I love living life to the fullest. My goal isn’t just to meet my career and financial ambitions. My goal is to see how far I can go in life. To see what I am made of.”

“I am who I am because of my ambitions. If I have to leave out them out to be with a man, then he is not the man for me and he does not want me – he wants the woman I would be if I was not so ambitious.”

Priscilla says that she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of marriage or family altogether. “The issue of how a woman will bear children and put up a home, while still pursuing the career she wants has never been fully addressed. It has simply been postponed. And that’s my decision too, to postpone it. I will cross that bridge when I come to it.”

Priscilla appreciates the importance of dating and choosing a partner wisely.

“That’s the main purpose of dating – to understand your partner’s direction in life then to decide whether you will support them or not. I want to believe I will marry a person who will support my ambitions as much as I do his. I look forward to a society where women will not have to choose between personal goals and men. I want them both. I don’t know what that will look like but I want them both.”

Take charge of your life

Carole Mandi, publisher and owner of Carole Mandi Media Ltd, says no. “I don’t support the view that men get in the way of women.” Carole is 47, wife and mother to two. Carole started her media house in 2009.

“Speaking from personal experience,” Carole says, “I got married at 25. And I made reasonable headway in my career with a family in tow. If anything, my husband provided the greatest motivation to achieve all that I have.”

Carole ponders on the what-ifs of Winterson’s views: “What if she had married and still had been successful in her career? What if she married but was unsuccessful in her career? What if she remained single and was unsuccessful in her career? Would she have put in equal praise/blame on the man (or lack of) in her life? There are countless married women who have succeeded in their careers or business, and would quickly disprove this theory.”

Carole points out that women need not feel that they have to decide which path to pursue in life because, “In a single day, there is certainly plenty of time to pursue relationships and other passions a woman may wish to.

A career is one facet of life. Developing healthy relationships is another facet. We need them all to create a strong social support structure – a healthy relationship is a reprieve, a safe haven from a hectic schedule pursuing your career. Healthy relationships also energise you to go out and take whatever the world throws at you.”

If she would do it all over again? “I would still make the same decision I made: marry early, have my children young then aggressively pursue my career. It worked for me in that order. I recognise that it may not work for other women.”

It’s true; how a woman achieves her goals and how she measures her ‘success’ varies from woman to woman. For some women, success is the achievements made in her career, her academic or her financial fronts.

For others, it is a well put home and a satisfied husband. And for others, it is children who grow up under her doting love and the firm hand of her guidance. Carole says that all this is driven from an individual’s point of view,

“Every woman should create her own path determined by her values, desires and ambition. When a woman takes full charge of her life, it is unlikely that she will blame a man or children for the outcome of her decisions.”

Find the right dynamic

Careers and academic ambitions aside, do women have to keep some of their finances and investments a secret for fear that they will not get a go-ahead from their partners?

Personal finance consultant Waceke Nduati Omanga explains that this is a problem both men and women face; it is not isolated to women.

“The way men and women handle money in their relationships is often determined by their socialisation. Many times people are either following or rebelling against what they saw growing up as children. What they observed creates an expectation – a woman who grew up in a house observing her father openly discuss money and investments with her mother will expect the same from her husband. The man who grew up in a similar environment is likely to relate to her without a struggle but the one who did not (say, if he grew up where money discussions would cause conflict), will not see things from the same perspective and this may cause tension. This tension is what causes people (both men and women) to hide money because they are trying to avoiding conflict. To get the dynamic right, it is important for both parties to understand what is influencing them personally as well as their husband/wife’s financial decisions or behaviour, and find a way of open communicating their beliefs and coming to a common understanding.”

Time for change

Life coach Ivy Luta holds the view that if a woman is in a relationship where she feels unsupported, then what the relationship needs is change. “If either the man stops supporting, or if the woman starts to feel it’s better to run her own gig, it’s not time to end the relationship. It’s time to reinvest better ways to work together.

“No matter how modern we have become,” Luta continues, “there are traditional fundamentals that ensure a relationship works. Understanding these fundamentals enables you to influence your situation positively. One of them is what wellness coach Wanjiku Lumula says: ‘A man’s security in a relationship is dependent on him being accorded his rightful role of leader, protector and provider. If this is taken away, then he is silently resentful and also unsupportive.’

“There is a fundamental principle that caters for the woman too: ‘A woman’s ability to be vulnerable and a participator in the relationship, is dependent on how loved, cared for and acknowledged she is made to feel."

“In a relationship,” Luta concludes, “both parties need to feel heard enough, compensated enough and assured enough to work together.”

SOURCE: DAILY NATION