“Family firsts” for female leaders
www.womensenews.org reported this week that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin became the first elected governor in the USA to give birth in office on April 18. The baby boy is Palin’s fifth child.
It got me thinking… while women have made a lot of inroads to the jobs at the top, it’s amazing that this sort of ”first” is still being achieved. There does indeed appear to be a dearth of women leaders who are dealing with the pressures of childbirth and child rearing at the same time as taking on top jobs.
We haven’t seen an equivalent “first” here in Australia, but then again our first female Premier (our equivalent role to a Governor, for our offshore readers) was only elected to office last year. I know that in North America there’s been some female CEOs who’ve given birth while in the top job - and promptly off-ramped shortly thereafter to focus on family (Brenda Barnes springs to mind -she left her role as CEO of Pepsi Co to raise her family, and has since returned to business as CEO of Sara Lee).
But I don’t know of any comparables here in Australia - can anyone help me out here?
April 29th, 2008 at 2:21:08
Ya, know. I did a whole bunch of research before on the first woman to do something - everything from run for office to climb Mount Everest. But I don’t think I ran across the whole giving birth thing. Wouldn’t have included it if I had, but kind of strange that that never gets mentioned. How much of that has to do with the fact that few women rise to the top job by an age at which they’d still be having children? Sarah is 46, right? Not a lot of women having kids at that age.