By Mary Ann Mason

Dean of the Graduate Division, UC Berkeley

Mary Ann Mason’s new book expands on her ground-breaking Do Babies Matter? research, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Mothers on the Fast Track: How the New Generation Can Balance Career and Family addresses the fundamental question faced by high achieving women: "Can women have it all?"

In the past few decades the number of women entering graduate schools and professional schools has been skyrocketing, while the number of women reaching the top rung of the corporate, legal, medical and academic worlds has remained relatively stagnant. Why are so many women falling off the fast track?

In this timely book, Mary Ann Mason traces the career paths of ambitious women who started careers in science, academia, law, medicine, business and the media in large numbers since the doors opened in the 1970’s. What she found was that many women who began on an equal footing with men swerved off the fast track during what she calls the “make or break years,” the decade between ages 30 and 40 when both men and women must make their mark in their chosen career, and, for women the stakes include “make or break” motherhood as well. Women who start a family are likely to veer away from their career goals, to slide into a second tier in their profession that offers fewer hours, less pay, lower prestige, and limited upward mobility. Men who did likewise — entered the career world with high aspirations and then started families while working — not only did not show the same trend, they reached even higher levels of professional success than men who had no families at all.

Along with her daughter, an aspiring journalist, Mason has written a guide for young
women who are facing the tough decision of when — and if — to start a family and how to stay in the game. It is also a guide for older women seeking a second chance to break through to the next level, beyond the “second glass ceiling” as Mason herself did in academia.

Mothers on the Fast Track: How the New Generation Can Balance Career and Family features not only a wealth of telling statistical data based on Mason’s research, but also anecdotes and strategies from dozens of the women they interviewed. Advice ranges from the personal (know when to say “no,” how to re-enter the fast track after a baby-break) to the institutional with suggestions for how the workplace itself can be changed to make it easier for ambitious working mothers to reach the top levels and why this makes competitive sense. The result is a roadmap of new choices for women facing the sobering question of how to balance a successful career with family.