A tweet not long ago from Andrew Rosenthal of Harvard Business School (HBS) and MassiveHealth announced that at a recent conference presented by the HBS Women’s Student Association, it was reported that 80% of women at the top (in business, I presume) have husbands who don’t work.
Whoa.
As high as that number is, I believe it – and I’m sure the reverse is true as well.
What fascinates me is the apparent contrast with medicine, where so many of the women and men at the top seem to have spouses who not only continue to work, but often are physicians as well.
For example, Boston.com recently presented an interesting spread on power couples in the Boston medical scene. This feature – including such notables as HMS Dean Jeffrey Flier and his wife, endocrinologist Terry Maratos-Flier; oncologist and New Yorker writer Jerome Groopman and his wife (and occasional co-author), endocrinologist Pamela Hartzband; and Barbara Bierer, SVP of research at the Brigham, and her husband, neuroscientist and former Harvard Provost Steven Hyman — only scratched the surface, and could easily have included many more examples.
I follow this area with particular interest, as my parents are both physicians, my wife is a physician, and many of our colleagues from training have married other physicians as well; generally, both partners continue to work and climb their career ladders together.
Dual career couples were also a prominent feature of my training. I learned immunology from the late Charlie Janeway, whose wife, Kim Bottomly, is also a distinguished immunologist, and currently President of Wellesley; one of my favorite preceptors in medical school was the late Nina Braunwald, a cardiac surgeon whose husband is the legendary academic cardiologist Eugene Braunwald; I learned about fetal ultrasonography from one of the field’s leading lights, Beryl Benacerraf, whose husband, Peter Libby, is chief of cardiology at the Brigham.
What’s different about business (assuming for the moment there is a difference – it’s always a bit perilous to base sweeping generalizations on a second-hand 140 character summary)? Why are power couples in business seemingly less frequent than in medicine?
The obvious answer is that it’s the money, stupid. Most of the “top physicians” I’m thinking of are leading academics – one of the ways a “top physician” is often defined. Consequently, while many may be distinguished, or even outright famous, and can certainly afford and enjoy a relatively comfortable life, few are filthy, flying-the-Gulfstream-to-Fisher-Island-for-the-long-weekend rich, in the way that perhaps a number of top business people are. Thus, choosing not to work, or to work significantly less, may not be an option the way it is if your spouse is pulling down seven or eight figures.
Yet, I don’t think this is the real explanation.
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