Competing Devotions: Career and Family among Women Executives

by Mary Blair-Loy

The wrenching decision facing successful women choosing between demanding careers and intensive family lives has been the subject of many articles and books, most of which propose strategies for resolving the dilemma. Competing Devotions focuses on broader social and cultural forces that create women's identities and shape their understanding of what makes life worth living.

Mary Blair-Loy examines the career paths of women financial executives who have tried various approaches to balancing career and family. The professional level these women have attained requires a huge commitment of time, energy, and emotion that seems natural to employers and clients, who assume that a career deserves single-minded allegiance. Meanwhile, these women must confront the cultural model of family that defines marriage and motherhood as a woman's primary vocation. This ideal promises women creativity, intimacy, and financial stability in caring for a family. It defines children as fragile and assumes that men lack the selflessness and patience that children's primary caregivers need. This ideal is taken for granted in much of contemporary society.

The power of these assumptions is enormous but not absolute. Competing Devotions identifies women executives who try to reshape these ideas. These mavericks, who face great resistance but are aided by new ideological and material resources that come with historical change, may eventually redefine both the nuclear family and the capitalist firm in ways that reduce work-family conflict.

Genres: Sociology, Parenting, Nonfiction, Gender, Feminism

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 30, 2003

Reviews

[a · Rating 5 out of 5]

third time for this one too, and I'm still struck by how good this contribution is. Blair-Loy analyzes elite women's work-family trajectories through the lens of cultural schemas, which, importantly, shape how they interpret the various turning points, leading some to relinquish their careers, others to remain committed, and still others to attempt to fashion something new. lucid and theoretically compelling. A great follow-up to The Second Shift, which we read last week. Can I pat myself on the back for the reading schedule I put together for this class?

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

**Read for my 2021 gender and sexuality comprehensive exams**

Really enjoyed this one! Felt it took a very comprehensive look at, literal competing devotions in women's lives, namely children and (mostly executive) work. It critiqued individualist notions of American work/family culture and asked why it is almost always women who are the ones who have to give up their jobs/work part-time even if they are earning more than their husbands. This book did focus on mostly middle- and upper middle-class women and their work, so it'd be interesting to see a more diverse group of women. The author does acknowledge that many women do have to balance work and childcare and cannot choose to opt out like many of the participants here did. Still, each of these cases does beg the question of why the burden largely rests on women to have to make these choices and be the primary caregiver even if they work equal amounts with their husband. How can we challenge cultural schemas surrounding family, gender, and work in order to truly achieve some form of liberation for women? This book gives you a lot to think about in those terms, though it does not critique capitalist notions of work as harshly as I might have ;)

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blair-Loy's main argument is that cultural schemas of devotion - devotion to work and devotion to family - have enormous power to shape and/or constrain our behavior and more importantly, our identities. These schemas are largely based on a gendered division of labor and heterosexual marriage - the idea that a man will go out and provide, while a woman stays home and cares for the children and the home. For highly educated, professional women, these schemas are at odds. In this book, Blair-Loy explores the ways in which women have both bought into these two schemas and how they attempt to alter them to better fit the circumstances of their lives.

I think one of the most interesting points she makes is that neither people nor companies/firms always act rationally. Women who earned double what their husbands did still gave up fulfilling and lucrative employment to raise children. Companies, rather than work with women to be more flexible and family-friendly, are more likely to fire a woman who wishes to work part-time - costing them a valuable asset. Her argument here is that these cultural schemas are so powerful that they override even economic rationality.

Blair-Loy's respondents are primarily White, upper class, professional women. It would be really interesting to see how working class and poor women navigate these same schemas with fewer resources.

[Jessica]

Another book required for my Sociology of Gender class. I became very well acquainted while writing a response paper in juxtaposition with an anti-feminist article. Blair-Loy interviews upper-class and executive women--because if they can't be "Supermom" and find the right balance of work and family, then hope is futile for the rest of us.

[Alisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really spot on for the most part.