Schein’s article was very interesting and encouraging for me. In the beginning I was a little concerned because of the way she associated certain effective leadership characteristics dependent with certain genders, but the way that Schein disassembled these association was amazing to me. In order to actually assess an issue, in this case sexism, it becomes important to ask the right questions and that’s what she did in this article.
Instead of focusing on making women have to choose between family and career path, she takes a very extraordinary stance and asks to effectively infuse the two. I value this because it does not completely take away from the nurturing aspect of females, which would be problematic because it is often very true, but instead disrupts the idea that a mother can not also be someone devoted and successful in their field of work. In doing this I believe that she is able to diminish the preconceived “feminine” and “masculine” qualities and successfully offers a solution to the issue of gender discrimination in the work place. By integrating these unnecessarily separate yet crucial aspect of life, work and family, there is less of a chance for these stereotypes to persist, as they resolve the issue of restricting women to the household.
The questions she raises are valuable and answering them would create the opportunity to at least address the issue.
I also appreciated how she diminished the choice between family and work stereotype with the example from Norway. She didn’t only use examples of women needing to prioritize their family, but also men that needed to leave work early. I think that was an important way to also try to break down that gender role in her article.
I think that the integration of family life into work life would be a tremendous step for women in the workplace because these two aspects dominate female’s lives for the most part. I think it would be overall beneficial because Rosner says both men and women experience work-family conflict, but women more so, and this integration of family into work would enhance the workplace a lot for women trying to succeed and succeeding in their jobs.