mommy track

mommy track

A career path with work arrangements offering mothers certain benefits, such as flexible hours, but providing fewer opportunities for advancement. The term was coined in 1989 in a New York Times article and was picked up by syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman in a March 1989 column: “. . . the mommy track is either a dream job that allows women the flexibility to do work they enjoy while still having time for school plays . . . [or] a ghettoized second-class job that fits what the employment pages call ‘mother’s hours.’” Both the controversy and the term persist. In March 2010, a former Goldman Sachs executive sued the firm, claiming to have been “mommy tracked” and eventually fired after going part-time after the birth of her first child.
See also: mommy, track
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • kick (someone or something) down the ladder
  • kick someone down the ladder
  • open a few doors for (one)
  • no strings
  • arrangement
  • make arrangements
  • make arrangements for
  • make arrangements to do
  • flexible friend
  • open some doors
References in periodicals archive
"I don't say the Bar's best interest, because I don't think we should attempt to deal with the profession of the law and how every member of the Bar is treated and make sure they don't get stuck on the mommy track, or whatever.
Although several stated that they did not experience the so-called mommy track, they also reported that they were unable to do some of the more exciting, quick-turnaround work that would require longer hours or working on days off.
If she wins this case, it will further establish that denying a promotion to someone on a "mommy track" constitutes sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
With straight couples, financial differences can be explained by gender discrimination, a "mommy track" career path, or full-time child-rearing responsibilities.
Anne Preston, State University of New York, Stony Brook, "Sex, Kids, and Commitment to the Workplace: Employers, Employees, and the Mommy Track"
We explore the gender subtext in three organizational settings: show pieces (the token position of the few women in top functions), the mommy track (the side track many women with young children are shunted to) and the importance of being asked ( the gendered practices of career making).
She left 60 Minutes, you will recall, when she was pregnant with her i second child and Don Hewitt refused to keep her on a part-time "mommy track." She's here as a survivor of the work/family wars, and thus given the kind of uneasy respect usually accorded to formerly blacklisted screenwriters and interned Japanese-Americans.
The 1991-93 assemblage Slave Ready (Corporate) - a woman's pinstripe suit with steel-wool trim (the "corporate" peignoir), an odd little "computer screen" painting with the message "Slave Ready," and a clock whose face begs for "one more minute" - suggests that hewing to the career path is as misguided as following the mommy track.
Welcome to what the Americans call the "mommy track" - the career path for mothers juggling family and work.
While Newsweek's headlines promise that the articles will show us What Parents Can do, the "solutions" article, Beating the Clock, lays out the usual suggestion--the mommy track. One woman's husband still gets home "too late for dinner," so she has scaled back her career.
Protestors (for or against the status quo) can be accused of mere sloganeering through smartly topical locutions: 'Radiomen who like radio the way it is have an outraged squeal of their own ('Narrowcasting!') at the whole idea [of subscription radio]'; '"Mommy track" [a derogatory term for work arrangements (for mothers) perceived as blocking employment advancement] is one of those devastating journalistic catch phrases that .
Lately we have been hearing about alternatives to the "fast track." In the mid-1980s there was controversy over the "mommy track," where women having children would be shunted onto a side track a bit less fast.
I put myself on what has come to be known as the "mommy track."
In contrast to women, they are not using organization programs such as paid parental leave or part-time work (the "building blocks" of the mommy track).
The 30 percent of male managers who are insecure are the ones who take comfort from a Felice Schwartz's suggestion to relegate women to a "Mommy Track" because they cannot do it all; mark them for all to see that they will never again be competition; assign them to their biological role and take a giant step back out of englightenment.