The Death of the 9 to 5

The 9am to 5pm work day is dead. 

I don't know a single person that has those hours anymore (who is not working part-time).

Everyone I know works to at least 6:30pm to 7:00pm (which is now considered coming home on the early side), and many have to be at the office well before 9:00am.

And that is sad.

Why is it sad? Well, it's not really, unless you have young children. Then it's really sad.

Why? Because the desecration of the 8 hour work day means that it is now ridiculously hard for us to see our young children -- and I mean see them AT ALL -- when they are awake.

Most babies and toddlers go to bed between 6:30pm and 8:00pm and get up between 6:00am and 7:30am. So if you are working 8:00am to 7:00pm you have a maximum of 2.5 hours a day with your child. And those are the lucky parents. And if you factor in a commute, which most people have to do, many parents don't get to see their kids for more than an hour each day, if at all.

And that really saddens me.

It seems clear as a society, we've chosen to value productivity and ambition over the strength of our families.

And it's not the fault of parents. We need to provide for our families. And no one wants to be the one person at work who leaves at 5:00pm or even 6:00pm. Or if you do, than you have to be prepared to sacrifice an upward career trajectory.

We are the first generation where the choice between career and family has been so stark.

It's not fair to this generation of kids, who will grow up only seeing their parents on weekends. And it's not fair to us as parents, who will miss the joy of watching our kids grow up, and the valuable role of being our children's primary caregiver.

Baby Gear Recommendations

When I was pregnant and setting up my nursery, I found it really difficult to figure out what to buy. I remember spending hours researching which car seat to get.

Some of my mom friends sent me spreadsheets or emails full of recommendations that were really helpful. In turn, I have put my list of baby gear recommendations here.

Hope it helps some of you!

Mommyland

This blog has followed me through many stages of my life. It's been with my for most of my adult life. As a wise woman once said: "You can have everything in life, but only sequentially."

I'm very aware that my life progresses in stages. I've been through the try-to-change-the-world-and-become-somewhat-disillusioned stage. Then came the-traveling-and-exploring-this-crazy-world-and-myself-is-all-I-want-to-be-doing stage. Then came the I-must-make-my-mark-before-I-get-old-and-settle-down stage. And recently, I went through the must-find-a-good-life-partner-and-cultivate-a-healthy-relationship stage. And right now, as the title suggests, I'm really heavily focused on being a new mom.

I mean, I still have a lot of other things going on (some have said too many), but being a mom is what is occupying the majority of my head space.

My son is a year old now, and I wish I had had more energy to blog some of my experiences in the first year. But I figure it's never to late to begin. This shift in priorities also coincides with a move to the East Coast for my husband's job. We are now in Boston. Time to update the mast head!

Why Women Entrepreneurs Get Funded Less

I just wanted to share some really interesting findings from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research out of Stanford about why women entrepreneurs have a tougher time getting funded than their male counterparts.

Basically, they found that:

1) Social capital and network ties were even more important to women than men : Many successful women entrepreneurs have strong ties to a man that gives them legitimacy as opposed to successful men that tend to have larger, but weaker network ties. There was also some discussion on this panel I saw recently at an Astia conference that women tend to have 2 different networks -- one social, one professional -- while men tend to integrate their social and professional networks much more easily.

2) If a woman has a technical degree then that levels the playing field: Women technicians have a much easier time getting their ventures funded. But clearly there is work to do in order to build a pipeline of technical women leaders. Sep and I are still working away to do our part through CodeEd. Looks like we'll be expanding into two more schools/program NYC and also found two great teachers to start teaching a program in San Francisco in the spring.

CNN Piece on CodeEd

CodeEd in Business Week and on Mashable

Check out this piece in Business Week on our new program CodeEd, which teaches middle school girls from underserved communities computer science.

We also got a nice write-up on Mashable.

We’re getting a lot of great feedback that there is a real need this type of program. So we’re currently trying to figure out how to reach as many girls as possible in New York and hopefully beyond. By the spring, we’ll be 3 NYC schools and programs. We’ll be teaching more classes at Girls Prep, Young Women’s Leadership School of Brooklyn and also working with a program called TEAK.

We're currently looking for volunteer teachers to help pair-teach a 5 week, 1 hour/week Introduction to HTML class in the Spring of 2011. If you know anyone who might be interested, I'd love to talk with them.

Girls and Computer Science

There is a really interesting article in the New York Times today on why their are so few women in technology and engineering.

Girls begin to turn away from math and science in elementary school, because of discouragement from parents, underresourced teachers and their own lack of interest and exposure, according to a recent report by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and the Computer Science Teachers Association.

Just 1 percent of girls taking the SAT in 2009 said they wanted to major in computer or information sciences, compared with 5 percent of boys, according to the College Board.

Only 18 percent of college students graduating with computer science degrees in 2008 were women, down from 37 percent in 1985, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology.

One reason is that engineering has a serious image problem, many women in the field say.

“There’s a really strong image of what a computer scientist is — male, skinny, no social life, eats junk food, plays video games, likes science fiction,” says Sapna Cheryan, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Washington who has researched why few women choose computer-science careers. “It makes it hard for people who don’t fit that image to think of it as an option for them.”

This is exactly why Sep and I are starting CodeEd, a program that teaches low-income middle school aged girls computer science. We launch our pilot program in less than a month at an all girls Charter School on the lower east side of Manhattan.

We're really excited to get into the classroom and start trying to break the cycle described above.