Womens Career: Feminist Issue or Personal Choice - Essay Example

Flanagan and Story concur that motherhood is a crucial aspect of a woman’s life. Again, both authors agree that a woman’s personal fulfillment may require the satisfaction of both motherhood and a career. While Story confines her study to women at elite colleges, Flanagan goes on to examine the case of those women whose choice of a career is dictated by economic necessity. One particular aspect that emerges from a comparison of their ideas is that the question of a woman’s career has moved away from the realm of feminism to one of personal choice.

Flanagan and Story agree that motherhood is an essential part of a woman’s life. Flanagan concedes that “ when a mother works, something is lost --- she cant have as deep and connected a relationship with her child as she would if she stayed home and raised him” (2004, p.23). Likewise, Story’s subjects categorically state that stay at home mothers make a positive difference to their children. However, while Flanagan writes from the perspective of a time when the women’s movement was bent on establishing the equitable distribution of housework between the husband and wife, and rebelling against accepting a woman’s “preordained place in the hierarchy of class and gender” (Flanagan, 2004, p. 21), Story’s subjects are “unbothered --- by the strictures of traditional roles” (Story, 2005, p.5). The status quo which was sought to be changed in Flanagan’s age has been accepted by Story’s women.

Both Flanagan and Story accept that a career is also integral to a woman’s personal fulfillment. Flanagan identifies with the women who are “fed up with housework and eager for the challenge, the respite, the intellectual engagement, of work” (Flanagan, 2004, p.9).