Slowing down a career to have kids

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Here are the great myths about pregnancy: Women can put it off until they establish themselves in their career. Women can control the reproductive system. Women can make a grand plan. Forget it. I'm pregnant now, and I know.

I'm pregnant now, and I waited until I had established myself in my career. I climbed up the Fortune 500 ladder. I started two of my own companies. I told myself the whole way up, Thank god I don't have kids, and I worked long, long hours.

I didn't get married until after my second company went under, and I could leave Los Angles and live with my husband in New York. I told myself I would get settled in a new job, and then have a baby. And just as I got settled, I got laid off. So after fifteen years of carefully planning my career and my family life I was old enough to be in the high-risk pregnancy category (35), and out of work in a recession.

To get back to where I wanted to be in my career before I had a baby, I would have to find a job (average six months) get settled (let's say six months) and get pregnant (at my age — average six months). But that would mean having my first child at age 37 — if I had average luck with pregnancy and the job hunt. If anything went wrong — 38, 39, who knows. Let me tell you about the risks of having a baby at 35: 1 in 169 chance the baby has Down's syndrome; 1 in 200 chance that the test for Down's syndrome kills the baby. And the odds get worse every day I get older. People did not tell me these odds when I started a company at age 32 in LA instead of getting married in NY. People said, “You have time, you have time.”

Now, fearing that I might wait too long to be able to carry a child, for the first time in my life, I risked my career for my family. And wouldn't you know it, blowing away all statistical odds, I got pregnant in a week. I felt lucky, I felt excited, but I also felt scared: I was laid off and pregnant, facing a six-month job hunt, where I would get a job, work three months, and then take maternity leave. Needless to say prospects are looking dim.

What I want to tell you is that my grand plan didn't work. I grew up thinking that women had everything: I had access to education, I had access to the pill, I had access to money and jobs. I felt that society easily accepted my choices to be single, to focus on my career. Everyone told me “don't worry about kids, you'll have time.” I thought I was in control, making choices, but there are so many factors that I could never have controlled. I thought I was so smart, so organized and driven for waiting. But I'm not sure if waiting got me all that much except a high-risk pregnancy.

I will have a pause in my career. I think it might take me a while to get back on the fast track after I have a child. Maybe two. I am not sure why a pause in my career now would have been any different than a pause in my career at any other, earlier point in my career. However I am sure that the pregnancy would have been easier if I had done it earlier. I am not sure what a solution is, but I am sure that the way women today meticulously plan their families and their careers means that women leave themselves open to the inherent unpredictability of volatile markets and high-risk pregnancies.

Don't get me wrong. I'm really excited to be having a baby. But as the first generation of women who had access to career planning and family planning, I'm here to tell you that nothing came out like I planned.

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Leverage sexual harassment

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Each time in my career that I have ignored sexual harassment aimed at me, I have moved up the corporate ladder. For example, the boss who once pulled all senior management out of the company’s sexual harassment seminar because he thought it was a waste of time — and patted me on the butt as he left the room — has turned out to be my most reliable cheerleader (and a very impressive reference).

In my first eight days of my job at a financial software company, I was sexually harassed six times by my new boss. This list does not include his sexual harassment of me during the interview process, which I chose to ignore, since it was my first interview at a respectable company in six months.

Maybe you’re wondering what, exactly, I regard as sexual harassment. The easiest conversation to relay is this one:

Me: “Thank you for setting up that meeting; it will be very helpful.”

Boss: “Big testicles.” (He then pretends to squeeze his genitals.)

I had no idea what he meant by this comment, but it is short and easy to relay to make my case.

Here are some other choice moments:

When he took me out for lunch on my second day on the job, he told me he once fell in love with a woman as tall as I am but was intimidated by her height, so they just had casual sex. I said nothing in response.

But I knew, from a legal perspective (and also a moral one) that I needed to tell him his comments were unwanted. So that afternoon when he said, “I want to hug you, but it would be illegal,” I said, “You’re right.”

Each night, I relayed some of the best lines from work to my husband. He was stunned. He couldn't believe these events actually happened in today's workplaces. I told him this was standard. He told me I should sue so that we could go to Tahiti. I told him I’d probably settle out of court after three years for about $200,000, and I’d be a pariah in the workplace.

I told my husband that his very hot, 27-year-old boss gets hit on as much as I do. He said he saw her at work all the time and this never happened. I told him that OF COURSE men don’t harass women in front of other men. After all, it’s illegal. Men are not stupid. But I suggested to my husband he was perpetuating the myth that harassment isn’t widespread.

In fact, 44% of women between ages 35 and 49 report experiencing sexual harassment at the workplace — even though almost every company has an explicit, no-tolerance policy. A national survey shows that 21% of all women report being sexually harassed at work, while a Rutger's University study indicates that for knowledge-based workers, the percentage can go as high as 88%. Yet when women leverage the no-tolerance policy their names are plastered over the business pages, and they are blacklisted in their industry.

So the best way to change corporate America is to gain power and then wield it. To get power, you have to stay in the workforce, not the court system, and work your way up. Unfortunately, this means learning how to navigate a boys’ club. But when you know the system, you then are clear about the root of its problems, and you know how to initiate change.

In this spirit, I hatched a plan to rid myself of my harassing boss. Originally, I took a job in business development, even though I hated selling to clients, because it was the only place with an opening. I told myself that the members of the management team were so smart that I would learn to love sales from them. After weeks of harassment, though, I thought management was so smart that if I explained why I wanted to be moved to another department, they would see my request as extremely reasonable. I figured they would be grateful for my low-key approach to this sensitive problem, rather than resentful that I had been hired to work in biz dev and then asked to be switched to a department with no openings.

I was right. I was moved into marketing, which I prefer. I received a more prestigious assignment and gained a smarter boss. Had I reported that I had been sexually harassed during the interview process I would not have gotten the job. Had I reported the harassment to my boss's boss without presenting a plan for solving the problem, I would not have received a better assignment. In fact, if you have a strategy, enduring sexual harassment can be a way to gain power to achieve your long-range goals.

Epilogue: Eventually, my boss was fired. Officially for low performance, though I have always fantasized that it was for rampant harassment.

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