I’ll confess. I often peruse the Huffington Post in the mornings while I’m still in my jammies and having my first cup of coffee. It’s just silly and sensational enough to hold my attention during these first groggy moments of the day (case in point).
This morning, a piece by Melanie Notkin caught my eye. In it, Notkin verbalizes something I’ve been vaguely conscious of for some time: the pejorative status of the label “career woman”. It’s a phrase that often rears its head during discussions with or regarding childless, single women in their thirties. I know this because I am one.
While I’m rarely bothered by people’s inquiries regarding my own marital and parental status, it interests me that they’re so curious about it. And, the most common question I get is loosely framed as a compliment: “How are you not married?” The individuals asking this typically cite my looks, my intelligence, and my sense of humour as reasons that I should have been claimed by now.
I can categorize people’s reactions to my situation and responses as follow:
- Surprise – This is the most common one. Ladies my age have typically had a hubbie (or two) as well as some offspring. Most common follow-up question: “What are you doing tonight?”
- Concern – This one always comes from people from whom I don’t care to receive concern. Most common follow-up question: “Do you realize that your fertility sharply decreases in your thirties?”
- Envy – Here’s the one I get most often from fellow ladies whose lives have traversed the more well-worn path. Most common follow-up question: “Can we trade lives for a while?”
Regardless of people’s responses and follow-ups, the conversation usually comes around to my education and career. As it happens, I really loved school (so much that I spent nine years there pursuing two discrete degrees). After that, I really loved my work (so much that, to this day, I regularly put in overtime that is not required of me). These two facts in no way indicate that my education or career have anything to do with my choices regarding marriage and children, but people invariably draw their own conclusions, and these conclusions often include the label “career woman”.
Figure 1: My worst nightmare.
With so-called “career women” being depicted as untrustworthy and unmarriageable by the likes of Michael Noer, as cavalier baby-jugglers by an unknown artist (see Figure 1), and as people deserving of concern and unsolicited advice by everyday folks, it’s understandable that the label is becoming less and less of a welcome categorization. And, as Notkin points out, it might be entirely unrelated to one’s decision to remain single and childless.
Regardless of its potential irrelevance and pejorative nature, call me a “career woman” all you like; I get to enjoy (and get paid for) the following this year on Family Day:
- Sleeping in because I stayed up late with great friends.
- Chatting on the phone with my Dad and perusing the internet until early afternoon.
- Eating peanut butter toast for lunch.
- Reading books and watching ‘My Strange Addiction’ while continuing to wear my jammies on the couch until late afternoon.
- Spending money buying wildly impractical undergarments online.
- Shopping online for clothes that render previously impractical undergarments practical.
- Casually cooking whatever I feel like eating for dinner.
- Enjoying an evening doing whatever I want with whomever I choose.
- Crawling into bed early with a good book.
- Getting an amazing, uninterrupted sleep.
Figure 2: Me.
. Ms. Margolis studies gender and race inequality in computer science, a background-interest of my own.
