What if They Had a Gender War and No One Came

[seabeyond]

I worked in advertising for a long time. Yes, it was male-dominated, and yes, there were cries of sexism all over the place. At one point I quit one job and my boss came in while I was starting to pack my office said, “What can we do to make you stay?” and I replied, “I’m leaving because I got offered a job as Creative Director. Name another female Creative Director in New England. If you can name one, I’ll stay.” I kept packing.

That was the job where, when I was working, I used to leave the office at 5:00 pm, rush home, pick up my kids, make supper, put them to bed … and then, when they were sound asleep, rush back to the office and work from 10 pm ‘til 2 in the morning. Days long before cell phones, or email as a way of working, or cloud computing—all of which makes my blurry professional and personal life totally joyous. When I left that job to take the job as a creative director, I had just gotten pregnant with my fourth child. Ten months later, I was flying to Los Angeles to do a three-week television shoot for Fidelity Investments. Two-month-old Shannon came with me. For every job after that—five full time ones and countless freelance jobs—I made as much or more than any man, anywhere I went in advertising. As Aaron Gouveia said in the comment on Hugo’s post, I learned to negotiate. I had taken the Creative Director position just so I would have bargaining power to do so.

*

But now, you know what I see? I see men who want that. They want what I’m having—that exact same thing. They want a way to be a part of their children’s lives in a way that is fundamentally different than the way previous generations had been involved. And they don’t want to do it at the expense of a great career that gives them a sense of value. They want to be good at both.

The men I know are the ones I bump into at the PTA meetings, who are coaching our kids in ice hockey, who I run into at Staples as we buy school supplies. They are the same men I later discuss a new entreprenurial business venture with, or who need help making a movie or running a non-profit. The men I know have the exact same amount of marital problems as the women I know. The men I know think this economy is tough and are working as hard as they can to make things work any way they can. I know men who refuse to go on television shoots because they would miss their child’s birthday, and men who break a phone call with me because their daughter is sick at school. Or the men I know are married and gay and have kids anyway. Or not married and gay and have kids anyway. Some of the men I know were women in a former lifetime. The men I know want to get promoted to creative director because they did something extraordinarily creative. The men I know aren’t the ones out there promoting sexism, not in any way shape or form that I can see it. The men I know get that oh, these times are hard, and guess what—we’re all in this together.

http://goodmenproject.com/newsroom/what-if-they-had-a-gender-war-and-no-one-came/