- Welcome to the knowledgette webinar on challenges facing dual-career couples. First I want to start by explaining why I saw that now was the time to reframe many so-called women's issues as dual-career couple issues. When I started working over 35 years ago, my model was in fact what I term now the Superwoman, the idea that women could do it all, that you could have, a married woman like myself could be a good wife, a good cook, a good mother, and a good employee. Many women of that period who tried to advance took a different approach, which was to either remain single or childless. It was not an issue of dual-career couples. Flash forward 30 some-odd years, and we are now beyond Superwoman. When I looked at my son and daughter-in-law, especially after they had their first child, I realized that the relationship had changed, and that it was much more equitable, that no longer was it an issue that women's careers were complementary and had to fit in, but that men and women were much more equal. To examine the nature of dual-career couples, I worked with Susan Howes to persuade the Society of Petroleum Engineers to conduct a series of surveys on dual-career couple issues. What you see in this slide is the percentage of people in different age ranges by gender who consider themselves to be part of a dual-career couple. What you can see is that independent of age, women are more likely to consider themselves to be part of a dual-career couple than men. But if you look at the age range between 25 and 55, there's a steady increase such that in the age range between 25 and 29, almost the same percentage of men and women consider themselves to be part of dual-career couples. If you project forward in time, I anticipate that a larger and larger portion of the workforce will be part of a dual-career couple. If you look around the world, you can see that it's not equal where dual-career couples are present, but that many regions of the world show this same trend, particularly Europe, North America, and Australia/New Zealand. Also, interestingly, places like the former Soviet Union and parts of Asia have a high penetration in some areas of dual-career couples. Initially, in asking people whether or not they considered themselves to be part of a dual-career couple, it was merely that question. But if you really want to look at the economic impact, which often drives many behaviors, we then asked what percentage of the household income people were providing. This is data from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists Study, where you can see the percentage of people by gender who contributed between 40 and 60% of the household income. What you can see again is that women, a high percentage of women of all ages, contributed a significant fraction of the household income, but that again, there's a trend between the 55 roughly age range and down through 35 or so of a higher and higher percentage of younger men are part of a dual-career couple. Since men tend to think they're part of a couple later, presumably the difference in the earlier age ranges is that men often settle down into a couple at a later age than women do. This is a huge cultural shift. One of the things I've done in my research is in effect follow the money. Because if you look at where the household income is coming from, that can provide great insights into the family priorities. If you're part of a dual-career couple that depends nearly equally on the income of two people, your priorities are very different than the traditional single breadwinner family. Interestingly, it's very difficult for the traditional single breadwinners to comprehend the priorities of this different segment. This is indeed a form of diversity. Compounding that is that almost all traditional, but not all, almost all but not all, traditional executives are single breadwinners, and many of them think that it's absolutely essential to have a spouse providing full-time support. When we look at the situation, the fact that there are more and more women in the workforce, that's a form of visible diversity. But the increase in dual-career couples is a form of invisible diversity. So when we look at this, looking at what impacts male members of dual-career couples, is interestingly in the survey that we did on attraction and retention of employees under the Society of Petroleum Engineers, is that men under the age of 40 who are part of a dual-career couple are more likely to quit because of working too many hours or conflict with their boss. I see this as representing this cultural diversity, and indeed a cultural clash between the traditional single breadwinners and the dual-career couples. This slide has a lot of information on it. You can look at it later at your leisure. But what I want you to take away is that over 80% of both men and women who are part of a dual-career couple where they're earning nearly the same amount of money consider both careers to be equally important. This slide highlights one of the cultural clashes, and also where the prejudice exists, in that many supervisors believe that in terms of doing proper allocation of company resources, it's essential to know if members of dual-career couples consider their career to take priority over the career of their partner. You can see that women are more likely to be asked than men. If they're part of a couple with children, the women are twice as likely to be asked. If they're a couple with children and they work for the same employer, the women are much more likely to be asked. If they have children, and they work for different employers, the women are twice as likely to be asked. In effect, that visible diversity is hurting women in terms of this invisible diversity issue. The managerial perspective behind insisting that one career must lead and the other follow is the idea that they want to allocate resources, and they don't think dual-career couples can be as effective as single breadwinners. As a matter of fact I've had conversations with many supervisors who have explained that they consider this concept of equally important careers to be totally ridiculous. What are the key challenges facing dual-career couples? Number one is the aspect that couples like to live together. Particularly in hard times, finding two jobs in one location, and keeping two jobs in one location, and after that juggling childcare. There's dealing with the issues of management perspective, which as I mentioned is this idea that in effect they're getting what I term a two for one deal, where you hire the dominant breadwinner, and the spouse provides full-time support, including doing things like hosting parties and events for business meetings. In effect, these supervisors require declaration of career precedence as a requirement for being eligible for advancement. So not surprisingly, this leads to conflict with the supervisor. How do you help yourself in this situation? The more restrictions you place on your career, the better you need to prove your worth. That means you need to document your competencies and achievements. Whenever possible, you need to put a financial value on your achievements, and you need to network so that when you're looking for employment, people know you, and it's not an issue of cold calling. Also if you want flexibility to be able to juggle childcare and household logistics, you need to support equal access and use of flexibility for everyone. You should communicate your priorities strategically. You don't always need to tell the truth. I advise that you should never put geographic restrictions on record with your employer, because if you do so you will never see what alternatives they will offer you. Depending upon the upside, people are willing to take on all sorts of pain/gain negotiations and accommodate a truly attractive option. You should be prepared to negotiate with your employer. Members of dual-career couples need to be prepared to negotiate with each other in terms of division of household responsibilities and what they're willing to do in terms of family issues to deal with one career versus the other. In closing, this webinar is just an overview of these issues. Thank you.