In Mothers on the Fast Track: How a New Generation Can Balance Family and Careers, Mary Ann Mason and Eve Mason Ekman trace the career paths of the first generation of ambitious women who started careers in the 1970s and 1980s. Mason, a former lawyer and national expert on child custody issues, draws on personal experience about the struggle to balance family responsibilities and how to fast-track a woman’s career. Ekman is a medical social worker, a curator of art exhibits and was an editor, founder and art director of an interdisciplinary publication between the schools of Journalism and Social Welfare.
The novel portrays how many women who started having families, continued to work and ended up in the path towards upper management which is termed, “the second glass ceiling”. The female case studies illustrate how they followed a second tier of management which offered fewer hours, less pay, lower prestige and limited upward mobility. It is this path which replaced the traditional career goal path of intention. The novel features anecdotes and strategies from dozens of women interviewed. Advice is provided from personal, time management importance and when to say “no” to the institutional. This involves suggestions for how the workplace can be changed to allow for ambitious working mothers to reach top seniority levels. The overall result is a roadmap of new choices for women facing decisions of how to balance a successful career with family responsibilities.
Men are compared likewise, in particular those men who entered their career with high aspirations and then started their own family. This showed a similar trend to women, with some men reaching higher levels of professional success than men who had no families.
Overall, Mason and Ekman, explore why women are falling off the fast track in their careers. Statistics show an increase in the number of women entering graduate and professional schools, although a stagnant number of women reaching the top levels of corporate and academic worlds. The novel provides an interesting account of ambitious women who started careers in academia, law, medicine, business and the media in the 1970s and 80s. The authors provide a useful guide for young women who are facing the hard decision of when and if to start a family. It is also insightful for older women who seek a second chance to break through to the next level in their careers. A practical and interesting read that is suitable for career and family planning.
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