The following is taken from “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” a film which comes out this month. The film's trailer is wholly consistent with romantic-comedy tropes: a quick flash of a party heavy on pink decor; a shot of Sarah Jessica Parker, the film's star, in a passionate clinch. Yes, there will be glamorous settings and a broad-shouldered Mr. Right, but the plot of the film is not so much between a woman and the perfect man but a woman and the perfect career.
"Chauvinism is the air I breathe--a bracing blend of Gucci Envy and salty gym residue. Like one of those cuboid amber air fresheners; the smell stuns you. As soon as you enter the City; it lays waste to your septum before curling into your brain. Soon it becomes the only smell in the world. Other odors--milk, apples, soap--seem sickly and feeble by comparison. When I first came to the City, I smelled the smell and recognized it immediately as power.
Truth is, I don't mind: let them comment on my legs if those legs help keep my children in shoes. Being a woman doesn't get you what you want in the company where you work, but it enables the firm to get what it wants outside--accounts, a reputation for "diversity"--and they owe you for that.
The way I look at it, women in the City are like first-generation immigrants. You get off the boat, you keep your eyes down, work as hard as you can and do your damnedest to ignore the taunts of ignorant natives who hate you just because you look different and you smell different and because one day you might take their job.
And you hope. You know it's probably not going to get that much better in your own lifetime, but just the fact that you occupy the space, the fact that they had to put a Tampax dispenser in the toilet--all that makes it easier for the women who came after you.
Years ago, when I was still in school, I read this book about a cathedral by William Golding. It took several generations to build a medieval cathedral, and the men who drew up the plans knew that not their sons but their grandsons, or even great-grandsons, would be around for the crowning of the spire they had dreamed of. It's the same for women in the City, I think: we are the foundation stones. The females who come after us will scarcely give us a second thought, but they will walk on our bones."
Source: Allison Pearson: I Don't Know How She Does It
To reclaim your time and life: "When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women" by Barbara McEwen & John G. Agno.
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