Forget about the negatively imbued term once used to describe people who work too much and neglect their family -- Workaholic is now relegated to join such linguistic has-beens as "I shall","To Whom It May Concern," "nimgimmer," and ""bouffage."
Today, when you want to describe someone who works more than 60 hours a week,has face-paced deadlines, unpredictable workflow and responsiiblity for a P&L, think EXTREME. That's right the workaholic of yore now has an EXTREME JOB.
Watch the headlines, read the magazines,and listen to the talking heads on cable. Chances are you'll start hearing Extreme Jobs a lot more than you hear workaholic.
From Extreme Makeover to Extreme Makeover Home Edition - the viewing public has a positive attitude toward the term, "extreme." For those who are not repulsed by people having head to toe plastic surgery, the extreme makeover gives people who have major issues with their appearance the opportunity to appear differently.
In Extreme Makeover Home Edition, who doesn't cry at the final reveal when the deserving family sees how the show has transformed their inadequate lodging into a dream home? If that isn't enough to give you the warm and fuzzies and remind you of people's basic humanity, you definitely become a believer in the good of humankind when the contractors end the show saying they are paying for the mortgage.
Hallelujah and amen.
The phrase "Extreme Jobs" was coined by Sylvia Ann Hewlett who headed up Hidden Brain Drain Task Force of the Center for Work-Life Policy. Hewlett wrote about the trend --which is on the rise--in the December Issue of the Harvard Business Review. You can also listen to the HBR podcast with Hewlett. In that interview Hewlett says that women make up 20% of all Extreme Workers. She also says that 80% of all women who have extreme jobs have one foot out the door. To Hewlett,the trend towards extreme jobs is creating yet another barrier for women who want to succeed in corporate america. As FC Now blogged,
Not surprisingly, there’s a gender issue here. Among the extreme jobbers in the U.S., less than a fifth are women. While women are well represented in jobs that require high performance (fast pace with tight deadlines, 24/7 client demands, etc.), once those jobs require more than 60 hours a week, there’s a huge fall off in women’s participation. Women, it seems, are more sensitive to the “opportunity costs” of long hour jobs, particularly as they relate to the well-being of their children. “We’ve moved the goal posts to a place women can’t go,” says Hewlett. The inevitable result? Fewer women in the pool from which an organization’s top leaders are recruited.
Writing about the issue at JobBank USA, Hewlett says,
Here's the story. Over the last 40 years, highly credentialed women have flooded into the professional labor market. In at least some sectors they started to make serious progress, rising up the ranks, snapping at the heels of men. Then what happened? High-level, high-impact jobs got redefined to become even more time consuming, even more pressurizing. Indeed they have become so vast in scope that they are now undoable by individuals who cannot conjure up a 60- to 80-hour workweek on a steady basis. These top jobs increasingly exclude women who have serious family responsibilities -- about two-thirds of the highly qualified female labor pool.
Hewlett has her detractors. Penelope Trunk at the Brazen Careerist is one of them.
Hewlett and Luce try to get us alarmed that the trend toward extreme jobs is increasing, but most people who are in extreme jobs are baby boomers, and Sharon Jayson, wirting in USA Today, shows that most young people don’t want extreme jobs. And young people are adept at finding work that fits regardless of what companies are offering. I am tired of the baby boomers thinking all their research about themselves applies to everyone. I am also tired of every researcher jumping on the battle-cry-for-women bandwagon. Hewlett and Luce spend a lot of time writing about how moms cannot do extreme jobs. But who cares? If people who don’t have kids want to work tons of hours, let them. If men want to marry stay-at-home moms to take care of their kids, let them. What is the big deal here? There is plenty of work in this world for people who don’t want extreme jobs. There are plenty of men to marry who will do their part with the kids. The real problem here is that two parents with extreme jobs are neglecting their kids. What about that? Baby boomers have been doing it for decades, and it’s terrible for kids, and people need to start admitting that. For starters, Hewlett and Luce could come out and say this, since their research supports it.
To paraphase Gordon Gekko, Extreme is good. Extreme is right. Extreme works. Extreme clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- extreme for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
Image Credit: The Women Road Warrior \
This is cross-posted at Blogher.
My StumbleUpon Page
