MinnLawyer Blog

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch recently addressed a conference of the Society of Human Resource Management and said that women take time off for their families at peril to their careers. The ABA Journal picked it up and has generated a lot of comment from lawyers, many of whom agree with Welch and many of whom point out that families are more important than careers and, don’t men have families too? According to the Wall Street Journal, Welch said, “We’d love to have more women moving up faster,” Mr. Welch said. “But they’ve got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one.” In some law firms, such as some corporations, parents have to make difficult choices about their time. The difficulty arises when the assumption is that it’s only the women who have to choose and accept the “consequences.” That’s the problem with Welch’s view of the working world. It seems like a strange message to deliver to human resource managers.