The Illusive Nature of Equality

My husband’s former boss has downsized. For eight years, she was the primary breadwinner in her family. Her husband, a writer, watched the two kids and did his work in the evenings and on weekends. Now, they decided to give him a chance to write full time and get something published. She convinced her supervisors that she could work part-time at half pay and still be of value to the company.

How’s it all working out? Not that great. At these big investment companies, nobody has separate offices anymore. Hundreds of people work at big long tables stretched out on floors the size of an office block. It’s very democratic and open. This open floor plan means that hundreds of people walk by the woman’s empty desk and are reminded of this woman’s unique deal. And they aren’t happy about it.

The guys scoff that she has taken herself out of a position to rise up the ladder. She has been put on special projects, rather than on high profile projects. When you don’t really like your job, the only incentive to keep working hard is the competition to win titles and promotions. The guys get caught up in that. The women are more angry with her.

Everybody thinks that she uses her time well when she’s in and, with all her years of experience, she’s earning her half pay. Her absense isn’t making anyone’s else job more difficult. But there are these resentments just the same.

I’ve been keeping close tabs of this woman and her new part time position. I would like my husband to slow down in a couple of years, so that I could ramp up my career and someone would still greet the kids after school. It would mean flat lining our income, but who cares. We have enough. This plan worries him. He said it would be hard to work in a place where people were either mad with you or disdainful of you. It would be better to just quit.

This is a company that is consistently ranked in Working Mother’s magazine as one the top places for women to work.

About fifteen years ago, my old boyfriend, Mike, brought me to a May Day protest outside of the business school at the University of Chicago. All four of us sat in a circle strumming on a guitar and singing all the verses of “This Land is Your Land” really loud. I know that we shook the school to its knees. My uncle, who was head of campus police, sat in his squad car watching us from a distance. The next time we had our uncle-niece lunch, I would hear about that, along with the fact that he didn’t like that one of my five roommates was a black man.

Anyhow, the ringleader of the May Day protest was talking to me about his philosophy on life. He said that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with fur coats or fast cars just because rich people had them. After the revolution, fur coats and fast cars wouldn’t be abolished. Instead, everyone would have one.

It is unfair that some people have more opportunities than others to make themselves happy. Some people can decide to stay home to raise their children and others can’t. Some people have the education to pursue fulfilling work and others pump gas. Some people are free from the burden of poverty and others aren’t.

My May Day friend would say that we all need more opportunities. Equality shouldn’t be about the conformity of misery. We should decide what is a good life, and then try to construct a world where everyone has the same shot to get to that place.