The bottom line is our society does not yet provide women in the workplace with the type of social supports, like high-quality subsidized child care or extended parental leave, that allows them to fully go for it, and the impact this has on the scope and depth of a career is profound. Right or wrong, men plunge into their careers without much thought about how they’ll navigate the work/family balance. They assume someone — spouse, parent, paid caregiver — will materialize to take care of it (and usually someone does.) This one assumption opens up an entire world of possibility to a young person in a way that can’t be overstated.

This may be one of the most cogent explanations that I’ve read anywhere about why there are ‘so few women’ in just about any field. Can you guess who said it? The answer is after the jump.

---

And the answer is… Tom Colicchio, in musing about why there are so few women in the top echelons of his profession. According to Colicchio, the top chefs LIKE to hire women because:

they work hard without any of the competitive, macho bulls**t you often see among their male counterparts. The women I’ve hired help each other, don’t jockey for position, and work until they drop.

For the record, I found this over at Feminist Finance, where f.f. regularly blogs about finance in a way that makes sense to just about anyone.

Technorati Tags: top chef, feminist quotes, quotable, feminist

• First Female 4-Star General
  

  This morning, the Army will be breaking another glass ceiling. Ann E. Dunwoody will become the first female American 4-star General. It’s not the first...

• I’m afraid…
  

  …that we’re going to see more comments like this one in response to a post by Matt Springer over at BlogCritics: My “knee jerk” reaction,...

• Behaving Badly and Getting Called On It
  

  So I wandered by Huffington to see if there was any commentary there yet about Jesse Helms passing (and may eternity be kinder to him...

• Acting Our Age
  

  Over at WomensVoicesforChange, Chris Lombardi wondered: (We do wonder if the Newsday editors intentionally mis-heard Madsen, and if she meant what we know: that the...

• Feminism, Fox News, and complete lack of personal responsibility… oh my
  

  Thank you Mary C. Curtis for writing it down. In an article titled The Loud Silence of Feminists, published in the Charlotte Observer, Curtis articulates...

Related posts:

• • First Female 4-Star General
    

    This morning, the Army will be breaking another glass ceiling. Ann E. Dunwoody will become the first female American 4-star General. It’s not the first...

  • I’m afraid…
    

    …that we’re going to see more comments like this one in response to a post by Matt Springer over at BlogCritics: My “knee jerk” reaction,...

  • Behaving Badly and Getting Called On It
    

    So I wandered by Huffington to see if there was any commentary there yet about Jesse Helms passing (and may eternity be kinder to him...

  • Acting Our Age
    

    Over at WomensVoicesforChange, Chris Lombardi wondered: (We do wonder if the Newsday editors intentionally mis-heard Madsen, and if she meant what we know: that the...

  • Feminism, Fox News, and complete lack of personal responsibility… oh my
    

    Thank you Mary C. Curtis for writing it down. In an article titled The Loud Silence of Feminists, published in the Charlotte Observer, Curtis articulates...