Opting back in : what really happens when mothers go back to work / Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stone, Pamela, Author.

Lovejoy, Meg, 1962- Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Employment re-entry--United States.

Women.

Work and family--United States.

Work and family.

Choice (Psychology).

Life change events.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 239 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Taking a career break is a conflicted and risky decision for high-achieving professional women. Yet many do so, usually planning, even as they quit, to return to work eventually. But can they? And if so, how? In Opting Back In, Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy revisit women first interviewed a decade earlier in Stone's book Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home to answer these questions. In frank and intimate accounts, women lay bare the dilemmas they face upon reentry. Most succeed but not by returning to their former high-paying, still family-inhospitable jobs. Instead, women strike out in new directions, finding personally gratifying but lower-paid jobs in the gig economy or predominantly female nonprofit sector. Opting Back In uncovers a paradox of privilege by which the very women best positioned to achieve leadership and close gender gaps use strategies to resume their careers that inadvertently reinforce gender inequality. The authors advocate gender equitable policies that will allow women-and all parents-to combine the intense demands of work and family life in the twenty-first century.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Great Expectations

2. The Siren Call of Privileged Domesticity

3. Putting Family First: The Slow Return

4. Career Relaunch: Heeding the Call

5. Questing and Reinvention

6. The Big Picture

7. The Paradox of Privilege and Beyond

Appendix. Study Methodology

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

"A Naomi Schneider book"--[Front matter].

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780520964792

0520964799

OCLC:

1089275306