| In this issue, Banker & Tradesman salutes its 2012 Women Of FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) award winners.
These 20 remarkable women are inspiring because they have accomplished so much in their professions, given so much to their communities, and helped so many other women, both by example and by actively mentoring female colleagues.
It’s an honor to celebrate their achievements. It’s also an opportunity to encourage employers to help their employees achieve the highest level of success by embracing work-life benefits as an integral part of their corporate culture.
Employers have the ability to ease the stress level of both female and male employees by offering work-life arrangements like flexible arrival and departure times, telecommuting, compressed work weeks and job-sharing.
These work options can significantly improve the lives of employees who are having or adopting children, arranging childcare schedules or caring for an elderly parent.
Several of this year’s Women Of FIRE winners were single mothers who supported their families while building their careers in the residential real estate industry. The residential real estate industry has traditionally been attractive to women in part because it affords the ability to work part time, as well as the option of staying home while children are young without career stigma.
In contrast, commercial real estate has long been considered a male-dominated niche. A 2010 study by the Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Network found that although more women are entering the field, women are still a minority (43 percent, compared with 36 percent in 2005). And a pay gap still exists. Eleven percent of women were at the $250,000 salary level in 2010, compared with 31 percent of men.
C-suite positions in commercial real estate companies continue to be male strongholds. In the survey, 9 percent of the female respondents reported holding a C-suite position, while 22 percent of the male respondents reported the same.
Employers may fear that flexible work options are too costly or will encourage inefficiency: That’s unfortunate, as well as shortsighted.
A 2011 status report on workplace flexibility by the Families and Work Institute and the Society for Human Resource Management noted that employers who provide high levels of workplace flexibility that are well integrated into the culture of their organization receive a wealth of benefits, including increased employee job satisfaction and engagement, lower insurance costs through healthier employees and lower turnover.
Even in companies where work-life benefits are offered, however, some employees are still reluctant to take advantage of flexible work schedules. Women, in particular, may fear that working fewer hours or showing less face time at the office will derail them from the corporate fast track.
The recent article titled “Why Women Can’t Have It All” in Atlantic Monthly magazine by Anne-Marie Slaughter, the State Department’s first woman director of policy planning, renewed the endless debate over whether women can be ambitious and good mothers at the same time.
Slaughter is a career powerhouse who lived in Washington, D.C. during the week while her academic husband took care of their adolescent sons. Each weekend, she returned to their Princeton, N.J. home for two days of jam-packed parenting. Her 14-year-old son reacted to her absences by acting out and failing classes. After two years, Slaughter – who had been leaving at 4:20 a.m. each Monday for her commute – called it quits and resumed her tenured professorship at Princeton University.
While Slaughter orbits in a stratosphere of over-achievers far beyond the realm of most of us, the dilemma she faced is one that’s all too familiar to many working mothers: Career or family?
This year’s Women Of FIRE winners show that women can have it all – successful careers and devoted families. By adopting and encouraging use of work-life benefits, employers in finance, insurance and real estate can help other brilliant, ambitious women succeed as well, without sacrificing their families or their sanity.
