Women, Education, Careers, and David Gelertner

I am really sick of the parsing about women and careers and college educations. It has been the topic of much debate lately, and it strikes me as, quite frankly, stupid. It's like we went back in time forty years and returned to the kids-or-career "Gordian Knot" that women my mothers age sliced through.

Why are we even talking about this? Were the feminists of my mothers generation right when they warned that we had to remain vigilant, lest we lose the rights they had won?

Look, whether or not to persue a career is not an option that most women have the luxury of debating. We go to college because that is the ticket to a career versus a job, and we go to work because we either have to support ourselves, or we have to pitch in because it takes two. Most of us in the real world just figure it out, often in the carpool lane, without a lot of handwringing and angst.

The women that everyone is concerned about constitute a tiny minority of the women in this country. I certainly could care less whether some affluent woman gets a slot in a prestigious university and she isn't going to work afterward, she is just there for the "experience" and to expand her social circle and find an equally affluent mate. That woman is not a part of my reality.

Out here in the real world, women work shoulder-to-shoulder with men. Sometimes we even get to give the orders. A woman, and a neuroscientist at that, is the head of MIT. (She has a husband and a daughter.) My husbands last C.O. was a female (Bird) Colonel who answered to a female General. Until last February, I was a supervisor and had a crew that was comprised of both men and women. In 20+ years, I have never had a man question my authority based on gender, either in health care or in academia.

Out here in the real world, women actually hold their own. The hospital where I work has women in virtually every position of authority. The CEO and the CFO are both women. The head of Laboratory Sciences is a woman. In the real world we are not just taking up space, we are performing as equals. In my profession I know a lot of women who out-earn their husbands, or match their income. (This is not causing problems, either. No husbands are feeling emasculated by this fact.)

In our household, I have always had a job. I worked nights, "weekend option" from the time my first child was born until my last child was well into elementary school. Then I worked in a doctors office and had the same hours the kids did and used my day off during the week to be involved at school.

I don't have any magic formula. I just did what every other woman I know does. I figured it out. That's what real people do...They figure it out and get things done...often times while making dinner, talking on the phone and paying the bills - simultaneously.