tangent to björk, bathrooms, babies, and ambition

I thought I would leave an entry as opposed to a comment in response to Simone's blog.

Upon speaking to a pregnant co-worker and team member, we discussed the difficulties involved in balancing career with family-and how there is an inherent inequality between the position of men and women within the work force.

With Architecture, as am sure exists with all professions, timing is very important. One has to invest in 5 years of school, and another few years to prepare for the Architectural Registration Exams ( a grueling series of 10 tests culminating to an oral exam administered in front of a panel of architects in a hotel room) before becoming licensed in the state. This barely covers you to practice in your field legally-not to mention the extra time needed to coordinate your own projects and have them built.

Typically, architects become licensed around the age of 30-leaving hardly enough time to balance child bearing and rearing for females. In my environment at work, my pregnant co-worker struggles to achieve her title and worries about the time she will need to take off work to care for her new born. Meanwhile, our studio director (a tenaciously aggressive man) just had a baby, (meaning his wife had the baby) and has only taken one day off of work to spend time with his daughter.

I am not sure what the answer to this predicament is-I suppose only a precise balance can help women support the family they desire and the career they love. It is simply unfair for this biological burden to be placed on us. In these times, thinking of how my mother raised me and my two siblings and of all my other friend's moms who raised them on their own, keeps me optimistic...

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