Women – even when they are making more money than their husbands and working longer hours – still tend to do more on the domestic front, which can cause some problems, Myers adds. “They are at work making big decisions and being the boss, and then they come home and they are still the boss and they have to organise and schedule. They are directing the office and they are directing the home. This is why a lot of powerful, successful women are single or don’t have kids.”
1992 versus 2012
There are signs that the next generation of women CEOs and dual-career couples will have a more egalitarian dynamic in the home. Wharton’s Friedman heads a longitudinal research project that surveys the school’s students and alumni on their beliefs and attitudes about two-career relationships.
In 1992, he surveyed more than 450 Wharton undergraduate students as they graduated. This past May, he posed the same set of questions to Wharton undergraduates in the Class of 2012. The survey asked questions such as: “To what extent do you agree that two-career relationships work best when one partner is more advanced than the other?” and “Two-career relationships work best when one partner is less involved in his/her career” [agree or disagree].
In 1992, men were much more likely to agree with such statements than women, according to Friedman. But in 2012, there has been a convergence of attitudes about two-career relationships: Men are now less likely to agree, but women are more likely to agree. “Young men graduating today are more egalitarian in their views and women are, well, more realistic,” he says. “The important point is that men and women today are more likely than the previous generation to share the same values about what it takes to make dual-career relationships work.”
Today’s young men have a greater sense of shared responsibility for domestic life, he says. “Young men are realising they have to do more at home than they traditionally did, and they want to do so. Of course it might also be that men today are more inclined to expect and want their wives to work, both for income and for their wives’ professional fulfilment.”
Indeed, the new breed of women CEOs are taking a new approach to how they run their businesses and their personal lives. Noha Waibsnaider, founder and CEO of Peeled Snacks, the eight-year-old company that sells healthy snacks to Starbucks, Whole Foods and other locations, has two small children. She says that she and her husband, who is the head of sales at the company, are “big believers in work-life balance”.
“Working crazy hours does not make you more productive or effective,” she says. “I try to spend the hours of 5pm to 8pm every day with my kids, and I don’t check email during those hours. I have evening events, but I try not to miss my kids’ bedtime more than two nights a week.”
She employs a full-time nanny, and her mother lives close by and regularly provides childcare. She and her husband split household chores equally. “We’re very different, and we have complementary skill sets. I do a lot of the home and kids’ organisation, and he probably does more of the grocery shopping and cooking. We’re both in charge.”
