“[It is] the death of the sisterhood… An end to the millennia during which women of all classes shared the same major life experiences to a far greater degree than men…. In the past, women of all classes shared lives centred on explicitly female concerns. Now it makes little sense to discuss women in general. The statistics are clear: among young, educated, full-time professionals, being female is no longer a drag on earnings or progress.”

— Alison Wolf, a professor at Kings College London and author of “Does Education Matter?,” a contentious article in Prospect magazine in which she contends that the emergence and success of elite women in well-paid jobs has essentially tolled the death knell for feminism and “female altruism” and is proof that women have finally broken through the glass ceiling. Educated women, she argues, will earn as much as men and slightly less then men if they have children. Women, according to Wolf, have been lured by career success away from careers in fields that have a caretaker component, such as teaching. The temptation of a successful career acts as a disincentive to having a family, which has led to “grave consequences,” including a decline in birth rates.

Critics of Wolf’s argument point to structural and financial mechanisms that suggest that the glass ceiling has yet to be broken through, at least properly. Significantly, women are typically the beneficiaries of long-term maternity leave.  Meaning, effectively, that even the “elite women” that Wolf highlights must choose between a career and a family at some point since women are still typically saddled with child-rearing duties. Even financially successful women are asked to bear the brunt of parenting duties, should they choose to have children, and thus bear a double burden. If such women choose not to have children, they are accused of forsaking parenthood and held responsible for a declining birthrate. Either way, successful women seem to lose.  

Jenny Watson, chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission in the UK, cites reduced promotion, less pay, a dearth of women in higher-ranking posts, and a lack of flexible work opportunities as proof that women with children suffer, on balance, compared to their male counterparts.

The glass ceiling, then, still looks pretty much in tact.

Mimi Hanaoka