Comments on: There is No Work-Life Balance, Only Work-Life Choices

By: Ensight – Jeremy Wright » Workcations: My First Step in Finding Balance

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:43:21 +0000

[...] There is No Work-Life Balance, Only Work-Life Choices (queercents.com) [...]

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By: Anita

Anita — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:23:26 +0000

Thanks for linking to our blog post on this. We got a number of comments similar to the ones here, debating what Jack Welch meant and what work-life balance really means for women and men. It's a conversation we need to continue.

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By: Workplace Flexibility News for the week of July 12, 2009 | Connecting Career and Life

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:20:37 +0000

[...] There is No Work-Life Balance, Only Work-Life Choices (QueerCents) [...]

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By: Serena

Serena — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:01:43 +0000

Dima, he may not have been targeting his responses specifically towards women in that particular quote, but the context of that quote is about choosing to have kids. Men in our culture are still not considered to be the primary care givers of children. It's a gender-based statement that he's making, because no one really expects men to incorporate their families into their lives. It's just assumed that the little woman will take care of everything. Of course this all applies to heterosexual couples, and same sex couples really throw a wrench into the mix. But there are also some assumptions operating there, because it's usually assumed that everyone is heterosexual.

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By: dima

dima — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:33:06 +0000

Serena, according to the quotes above, he said “There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” I do not see him targeting women specifically and I do not believe he intended to. The second statement where he does mention women is more of an example of how his first statement applies to the audience he had at the moment.

That being said, I give him props for not sugar coating the fact that employees no longer give a damn about your life. I have seen my company make a complete 180 in the two years I have been here. They are still promoting the work-life balance, but the key word is promoting. Nobody takes the management seriously anymore when they talk about this while also forcing everyone to put in anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of unpaid overtime and making performance evaluations almost solely based on how much unpaid overtime each person put in. Just makes me want to move to Europe so much more

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By: Serena

Serena — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:26:47 +0000

Paula, I read that same quote from Welch and wanted to punch him in the face. Nobody ever asks if men can balance their work and family lives. The question is always posed to women. Proof that we still have a long way to go before there's true gender equality in this country.

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By: Helen

Helen — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:44:26 +0000

Honestly, I think it's true that you're not going to make it into the top 1% (or 0.001% -- or whatever Jack Welch is) without being entirely focused on your work. For these folks, there really isn't a balance with the home life. I think that's a decision that each of us makes. To me, women's liberation (at least that's the phrasing I grew up with) was about being able to choose how you want to spend your time and what you want to accomplish in life. Just as I respect the choice of a woman to stay home to raise a family, I also respect her choice should she decide to focus entirely on her career. There's lots of room in between, and most folks aren't so single-minded, so most of us end up trying to find a comfortable point in between. Personally, I'm glad the Supermom myth of the 80's died out. I think of my life as a multi-variate optimization process -- with happiness, fulfillment and social responsibility as measured outcomes, but that's just me.

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