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Academic

: Conglomerate

In Praise of the Beta Male

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

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I'm still thinking about an FT article from last month, a sure sign I should blog about it. Lucy Kellaway wrote about the secret ingredient for a woman looking to infiltrate the top echelons of the corporate world. Here's her provocative thesis:

[it is right] that men hold women back, but is wrong to think the holding back happens at work. In fact, it happens at home. The biggest reason that alpha women don?t become CEOs is that they have made the common, yet fatal, error of marrying an alpha man.

Kellaway read through the FT's list of the 50 most powerful women in business with the same interest I did, and then she Googled the women searching for information on their personal lives. What she found wasn't the Elena Kagan/Sonia Sotomayor/Condoleeza Rice style "single woman married to her job" model. Indeed, almost all had children, giving the lie to the common theory that reproducing that keeps women from the corner office. Instead, the pattern that emerged was one of beta males: "husbands who have been prepared to sacrifice their careers in order to aid the glorious ascent of their wives."

This may be the dirty little secret of work-life balance for a woman. I observed it at the law firm: there were a fair number of high-flying women partners at Wilson Sonsini. Many of them had kids. All of them had stay-at-home husbands. It's just hard to balance two alpha careers, particularly with kids around.

The problem, Kellaway says, is that "[h]igh-flying women are programmed to go for high-flying men. Most men aren?t attracted to women who are more successful than they are." But her advice to a young woman aspiring to the corner office rings true to me: "give more thought to her choice of spouse. She should go for someone who is mentally her match, but who is happy to play a supporting role."

That's what I did. My husband stays home. Sure, being a law professor isn't half as demanding as being a CEO. Still, I don't think I could have had 2 children pre-tenure and not stop the tenure clock without him at home. I don't think of him as particularly a "beta male," since he's definitely in charge of the house and is quite opinionated, but I guess that's how it looks from a certain angle. It sure works for us.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on December 12, 2010 (boomark / email).