Recently NY Times writer David Leonhardt made the case that prejudice against women with children, or “momism,” in the field of journalism is the main reason why men are disproportionately represented at every level in the media workplace.
“Women do almost as well as men today,” Jane Waldfogel, a Columbia University profession, has said, “as long as they don’t have children.”
This story is incredibly personal for me because it mirrors my own. I started out in journalism as a wide-eyed intern at World News Tonight with Peter Jennings hoping to be the next Christiane Amanpour. Over the years I worked my way through internships and local news affiliates finally earning a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University. Amongst other freelance work, I worked in booking at Good Morning America, as a reporter/camera operator/editor at a local news channel in the Bronx, and as a producer and talk show host at Plum TV.
Journalism is a cutthroat career with a relentless and punishing schedule. There were very few role models for how to have a successful working marriage, family and career. At each stage of my career the signposts were not pleasant for working mothers: Not one of my female bosses or professors were married or had children. It was incredibly disheartening to look around a newsroom and not see anybody whose life you wanted to emulate, career yes, personal life no.
Leonhardt quotes from a recent article in Poynter, “The news business is unfair to journalists with children…” it continues, they “say they have few role models in management who demonstrate what it means to have a viable balance between work and caregiving responsibilities.”
When my children were born I made the decision to pivot my career to a different field. It wasn’t only the lack of role models that inspired this decision—my husband had just launched a start-up and the intensity of that endeavor upended our family balance, but equally important, the television news business had changed and was a decidedly less exciting place to work crazy hours with little monetary reward.
It turned out that transitioning my skills and experience was not easy, and the struggle I faced inspired me to co-found The Second Shift. There are many women like me, who want to continue working but need a way to remain engaged and useful when the path they are on is no longer an option. That is what The Second Shift solves—we offer a way for the workforce to retain talented women by providing a path in and out of the full-time workforce without completely giving up their careers.
To this day I am a die-hard news junkie; I have profound love and respect for the hard work of journalists and the media. I have deep admiration for my friends and colleagues who stuck it out and managed to keep their careers going while having multiple children and somehow balancing it all (you know who you are and kudos!) My hope is that women coming up in their careers will have different options open to them and a world that is more forgiving and offers more flexibility. I miss working in the news world and telling stories that affect society at large. However, I know that through The Second Shift I am making a difference in our member’s lives and changing the landscape for all working women.
– Jenny Galluzzo