Staying At Home

Lesley Stahl Reports On 15% Increase In Number Of Moms Who Do

(CBS) 
One of his goals as dean is to convince the business world it's in their interest to come up with creative solutions to keep women in – as Eisel's company tried to do.

"They said, 'Come on back. Work part time. three days a week,'" says Eisel. "This is perfect! And it actually worked out incredibly well for about three months."

She was supposed to work 30 hours a week, but Eisel says it ended up being more like 40 hours on a slow week, to 50 to 60 hours. She says it really wasn't the part-time situation she had envisioned.

"I couldn't say, 'OK, this is a $3 million deal. I have a mommy-and-me play date right now with the music class. So sorry, can't come,'" says Eisel, laughing.

She says that working part-time also prevented her from getting top accounts: "I had great accounts, and then I had a very frank conversation with my manager who said, 'How am I going to give you the top accounts? You're here three days a week.' And I think part of it was I am there three days a week, but I can handle it."

But could she really handle it? "I couldn't handle many top accounts. But if I had one top account," says Eisel, who adds that the option was never tried.

"A lot of companies are simply cutting people off. And when they go part time, the part-time stuff is peripheral," says Clark. "It's not fulfilling, satisfying. It's not worth it. But I know from my own experience, you can create meaningful, high content, part time jobs."

Clark points to Angela Crispi, an employee of his who worked part-time for five years. "We changed her job. We lopped a piece of it off, and restructured a couple of other people, and we created this job. … And we kept her."

And they promoted her. She now runs the business school full-time, overseeing 1,000 employees. But what's a company to do about the women who told us they wouldn't take even the greatest part-time offer? Clark has an answer for that, too. Let them go, and bring them back later.

But can companies guarantee these employees a job when they get back, even after an extended period of time?

"It all depends on the relationship we have with them during that period of time," says Clark. "Maybe we create a part-time thing where they're connected and so they continue to learn. It all depends on how we structure it."

Hall and Eisel say they will eventually return to the workplace. "I joke sometimes that this is my retirement now and then I'll be working till the end of my days," says Hall.

Several of the women Stahl spoke to said that a 40-year full-speed-ahead career with no breaks is something that only an all-male world would have dreamed up anyway -- and that it's in everyone's interest to make some room for detours along the way.

"I think that there's a possibility that I won't achieve what I might have achieved if I never left the workforce," says Frelinghuysen. "It's sad. But it's OK, because I have three wonderful babies that I love. I do think that you make choices, and with some of those choices, although they may be wonderful choices, something takes a hit."

"What changes if you're out of the workforce for a couple of years? You haven't lost your brain power," says Hagan. "You haven't lost your organizational abilities. Maybe you've gained some new ones managing at home. … I think people need to be just more open-minded."

"This is a new thing, that women are leaving the work place," adds Atkinson, who left her job as a producer at 60 Minutes. "I think that women like us, who have choices … hopefully, we'll be able to make changes. Hopefully, employers will see that this is happening and that we don't want to lose these great women. Let's make some changes so that women can work differently."