She's a Kennedy, But She's a Lot Like Us

Even though the job Kennedy is trying to nab is a far cry from the account executive or publicist positions that my friends might go after, the phenomenon at work is the same. The reaction seems to be: If she hasn't followed a straight-and-narrow, logical path, we simply can't imagine her in the role under discussion.

Confronted with employers' traditional expectations, many job-hunting women back down and settle for less, taking cuts in salary, seniority or both. One friend of mine had been a highly paid health-care executive before she had kids. She continued to work full-time when her children were young, until the work-family tango got to be too much. After taking a few years off, she decided to reenter the job market. But several interviews later, she realized that the very same inhospitable conditions that had driven her out remained: long hours that didn't mesh with the kind of family life she wanted. So she changed careers, took a whopping pay cut and became a teacher.

Indeed, many women end up with positions that pay a lot less than their old jobs. Although the figure usually bandied about in pay-equity discussions is that women make 77 cents to every dollar men earn, a recent study by Stephen J. Rose and Heidi Hartmann of the Institute for Women's Policy Research puts the number at a shocking 38 cents. While the 77-cent figure compares full-time women with full-time men, the IWPR study looked at real women's real work histories over 15 years -- in and out of the labor force, sometimes working more hours, sometimes less, sometimes not at all.

For me, whenever I've been in talks in recent years about a full-time job that offers less in salary and seniority than I believe I deserve, I've thought of the intangible benefits that come with my less lucrative and less-recognized-by-the-world freelance/consulting career. Take school vacations. The number of holidays in the French school calendar truly boggles the American mind, but when they roll around, I don't necessarily have to engage in a mad hunt for camps or day-care centers to fill up the days. When my son is sick, he has a parent there to rub his forehead (and, okay, if I have a deadline, he also gets to watch a truly astonishing amount of television).

These are benefits, just two among many. On the downside: Statistics show that if I don't return to full-time work in the next five or six minutes, my chances of poverty in retirement are staggering, and the liberal Center for American Progress puts my lifetime earnings losses at about $700,000. And, heaven forfend, should my husband die or we split up, my chances of plummeting down the economic ladder are far greater and would come about way before retirement.

Caroline Kennedy, of course, doesn't share my concerns about lifetime earnings losses or 401(k) plans. But she does have to worry about being unfairly penalized for her unconventional résumé, about being nastily pigeonholed as a mere "happy housewife." For her sake, and that of all us in-and-out, stopping, opting, part-time, full-time working mothers, I hope she gets a fair shake.

glusker@rcn.com

Anne Glusker is a freelance journalist living in France and the host of "Stir it Up," a weekly food program on Swiss radio.