Breaking the Glass Ceiling

Review of "Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World"

By: Amy P. Roebuck

Posted: 2/20/07

Recent years have shown a drastic increase nationwide in higher education for women, and women like the ones at Vanderbilt have numerous opportunities to prepare themselves for advanced degrees and successful careers.

However, the presence of Facebook groups such as "Why Can't I Just Major in How to Be a Housewife" and "Future MILFs of Vanderbilt," though they may have been created and joined in jest, point to an unsettling truth about the post-graduation intentions of many Vanderbilt women.

In her clear and concisely written book "Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World," Linda R. Hirshman argues that it is in the best interest of individual women and society as a whole for women to participate in the workforce. Hirshman, who will speak about her book at Vanderbilt on Thursday, March 15, asserts that women can best contribute to society and reach their own potential by holding jobs outside the home and making a more rigorous effort to involve their husbands in the household duties that might hold them back from success in the workplace.

"I have a Strategic Plan to Get to Work," Hirshman writes. "It is a plan to break through the glass ceiling at home, to liberate women to seek flourishing lives and to distribute responsibility for the family fairly between the two adults who created it."

Her message, though determinedly radical even when compared to the views of most mainstream feminists, is one that desperately needs to be heard at Vanderbilt, as Hirshman encourages young college women to take advantage of the opportunities they have to further their educations and qualify themselves for positions of power and influence in the workforce.

She tears at the cultural concepts of masculine and feminine gender roles, pointing out society's arbitrary placement of the female experience in the domestic sphere while the male experience is enriched by the rewards and financial gain that result from holding jobs in the public sphere. She explains, "Women-whether they stay home or, like most women, just carry the responsibility for home to work and back-are homeward bound. Their men won't carry enough of the household to enable them to succeed fully in the public world. Glass ceiling? The thickest glass ceiling is at home."

Hirshman points out that liberals and conservatives alike are guilty of perpetuating the misconception that a woman's place is in the home. She makes the candid and seemingly commonsense point that if housework is really so worthy and the nurturing of children so admirable and idealized, why don't men step up to take an equal share in such activities? Pointing out that women do 70 percent of a family's housework, Hirshman underscores that though society may regard work in the domestic sphere as valuable and necessary, it is still not valuable enough to warrant participation from male members of society.

The main controversy of her ideas lies in her claim that, in society today, full-time motherhood cannot be as personally empowering as participation in the workforce. Feminists who hold that a woman's choice in any given matter is the most important issue involved may resist or even resent Hirshman's insistence that entering the workforce is, without question, the better choice.

She is at times critical-perhaps unduly so-of educated women who choose to put their careers on hold or withdraw from the workforce altogether in order to care for their families full-time. Though she concedes that women have a right to choose work or motherhood or a combination of the two, Hirshman leaves no doubt as to which she deems the better and more fulfilling endeavor. She argues, "The less flourishing sphere [the household] is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust."

In an effort to combat this injustice, she mocks the choice to stay at home with one's children as "condemning [women] to spend [their] talents on tasks that people with no degree at all can do." Trivializing the endeavor of full-time motherhood, she says that stay-at-home mothers' "talent and education are lost from the public world to the private world of laundry and kissing boo-boos."

Despite the clarity of her appeal to college women to use their educations to prepare themselves for careers, Hirshman's criticism of and even hostility toward stay-at-home mothers greatly devalues and insults the domestic sphere, the family and those women who choose to devote their lives to it. Though she is justified in claiming that a woman puts her degree to better use by holding a job, she totally disregards the possibility that some women may not make their college degrees their highest priorities.

Though her argument is sound overall, I found Hirshman's attitude toward women who choose to be full-time mothers excessively critical. Playing with one's children and being actively involved in every stage of their development does not make an individual-whether male or female-any less smart or accomplished, while Hirshman takes the stance that an educated full-time, mother's "talent" is wasted if she chooses to step out of the public sphere.

Hirshman's "Get to Work" holds several valuable messages for women and men, liberals and conservatives, which will force the reader to examine his or her views on women's workforce participation, marriage and parenthood.

For further reading about Hirshman and her controversial manifesto, go to www.gettoworkmanifesto.com.