Frazzled career women can call it quits and retain their self-respect, according to a new book about what may be a small but growing trend among career women.
Susan Wittig Albert, author of ”Work of Her Own” (Tarcher/Putnam, $19.95), interviewed 80 women who left career tracks to become artists, writers or self-employed businesswomen. She found similarities among them, mainly that they felt limited by the way in which their careers in male-dominated environments had become the core of their self-image.
Albert, formerly a vice president at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, knows whereof she speaks. In 1985 she left a 14-hour-a-day job that, as she puts it, had her ”within shouting distance” of the university president`s job. She moved to a farm, began writing children`s books, selling eggs and making quilts.
She and her husband, Bill, willingly abandoned the jobs (he was a computer analyst) that pulled in a six-figure household income to become self- employed people (Bill also writes) earning no more than $25,000 a year.
Albert began research for what became ”Work of Her Own” in 1988, mainly because of her own mixed feelings about jumping off the fast track.
”It was a voyage of my own discovery,” said Albert, who will be in Chicago this week to autograph and talk about her book.
What she discovered was that women who make such a move feel a terror and unease that is unique.
”There`s a generation of women with a special problem,” Albert said.
”They moved into the career culture and got a ticket to status as careerists. They have no other means of judging their self-worth other than who they are in the workplace.”
Albert believes that while men have their ”ticket to status stamped at birth,” women have had to earn that status through their jobs in male-dominated environments. Women who decide then to leave the fast track confront an instant lowering of status.
”The stages we go through are very like the stages we go through when a loved one dies,” she said. ”We have to say good-bye to the old self and have all kinds of misgivings and fears. It`s a matter really of redefining who we are and trying to create something new without models.”
Albert said about 20 percent of the women she interviewed for the book had left their jobs to become full-time mothers. The others simply wanted more variety in their lives.
Albert will read and speak at 7:15 p.m. Monday at Women & Children First Bookstore, 5233 N. Clark St. Free. For information, call 312-769-9299.
