On January 17th when Brenda Barnes passed away it made headlines around the country. In the 1990s she when she was the head of Pepsi-Cola North America she famously left her job to spend time with her family. This decision made Barnes a polarizing figure in the “can women have it all” debate. At the time she said “I hope people can look at my decision not as ‘women can’t do it’ but, ‘for 22 years Brenda gave her all and did a lot of great things.’ I don’t think there’s any man who doesn’t have the same struggle. Hopefully, one day corporate America can battle this.”
Image Via The New York Times
Has corporate America changed in the past 20 years? Not much. In fact Catalyst recently released a study showing that a lack of flexible work arrangements is the number one challenge keeping women from work place advancement.
A lot has changed since 1997 when Barnes became a lightning rod for work life struggles:
- The iPhone was invented
- Cloud-based computing allowed for remote sharing of files
- Google and Facebook were launched
- Aeron chairs arrived. Then inflatable balls instead of desk chairs were in vogue. Now standing desks.
- Social and digital media became a thing
- LINKEDIN!
At the same time a lot has not. Women today only make up 47% of the workforce and 4% of CEOs. The corporate world is beginning to embrace the idea of flexible work, but there is a long way to go.
For seven years Barnes remained on the sidelines with her 3 young children. Like many of our Second Shift members, the demands of her job did not allow for any work/life balance. She returned to work full-time in 2004 as president of Sara Lee and then became CEO. In her story there is a lesson for businesses to think outside the box and realize, as Barnes said, “there’s a large pool of women who chose to leave the work force. But it doesn’t mean they lost their brains.”