PM's wife or President's wife - and careers

The New York Times about Cherie Blair's comment to Michelle Obama and her new life as the First Lady. And they state “Her European counterpart have taken a different route…” pointing to Cherie Blair and Carla Sarkozy*.

Well, the president’s wife is not the same as the pm’s wife. Not really. The head of state is the Queen…. Not the PM. But sure, we could argue that for a second. Cherie Blair worked as a lawyer when her husband was PM. They also had a number of kids. And it wasn’t as strange that she worked while having kids.

Here in America, it is not as common to work and have kids. One kid maybe, but not several.

And I challenge anyone to see that the main problem with Michelle Obama “putting her career on hold while Barack, her husband, is President” is that they can not shift back afterwards since the kids will have grown up so there will be another issue.

It’s like in Sweden, when the four parties in Government chose their four people to work together. Of course all of them were men. The second person in each party (!) was a woman, but see that didn’t really help now when the four first people were to get together….

It is the same thing with this. It doesn’t matter if Mrs Obama chooses to stay at home while her husband is working as a president (I find it fairly reasonable to be honest, for the kids at least). The problem is that there aren’t exactly that many women who get to make her husband’s choice… or husbands to make her choice.

I though about a similar thing last week, after being cornered with four older women who were all talking about loosing weight and becoming “rejuvenated” and since I was not only the youngest but also clearly the heaviest, I sat quiet and listened. Afterwards I realized a sad thing, I don’t think their main problem of finding a husband (as two of them really want to) is their weight. Nor their age. No, there was something much more disconcerting that entered my mind – something fueled by one of those Swedish investigations in Swedish… “Highly educated women have a harder time finding a significant other”. You can exchange highly educated women with “high income women” or “high performance women”, it still holds ‘true’ to the polls. The richer you are as a women, the more successful, the harder to find a man for you. For men it is reversed….

Why? Well, something to do with ‘the statement that men want to feel in charge’/in power? And that women want to feel taken care of? I don’t know, but in general and with society today, I think it is a valid point. (Or maybe not valid but something that rings true and accurately describes influences today.)

The funny part may be that I have a bunch of men around of me who state “I wouldn’t mind being a stay at home man/dad”. When it comes to reality though, I am not sure they would really do it. Why? As some of those men, who said all those things and then the children came and they had an option to stay at home and be the “stay at home dad”…. And it didn’t happen as much, partly since it was really hard work and “I need to feel needed at work”, partly because they realized that it was nice to earn money on your own and not live of your wife.

That said I know that I wouldn’t like being a stay at home mother. Or a “kept woman”. I like earning my own money, feeling that some of these are mine and I can decide on my own what to do with them. I guess I might be a bit paranoid about being left without any money, 401Ks or things? Or maybe I just like making my own job and being outside of the house?

And since I am not yet as old as the women I sat next to last week I might be able to make it work? (It would probably help if I lost some weight and kept the wrinkles away from my face.) And the other main difference between us was that even if I had the highest degree, i.e. being the highest educated woman around the table, I probably was the least earning one…. With my meager post doc salary it is not too much to guess since they were all lawyers/CEOs/managers or like that.

Ah well, I’ll get back to thinking about Michelle Obama and really hope that she gets a good job when she gets out of the White house. And that it is interesting that Hillary was the first First Lady who had a career prior to entering the White house. Maybe that can make us all realize exactly how few years things have been a “reality” and why it is needed not to stop working for “everyone can make an individual choice but it is not individual until it is really a choice”.

This woman will now reenter the lab and try to make yet another experiment, which will bring her closer to that coveted “getting out of post doc card” ;)

*I left Carla Sarkozy out of this mainly because she/they don't have children and are recently married... most 'problems' arrive when the children arrive. That is when the idea of "someone being h0ome with your offsrping" is a crucial one. For obvious reasons.