I am glad you brought this article to the fore. The problem of highly-paid female Wall Street investment bankers being oppressed is a big one.

I hope this tale of woe and patent discrimination serves to elevate this problem in the eyes of our leadership. Perhaps investment banks could, under threat of government sanctions, be forced to completely retool their business model to accomodate this patriarchally downtrodden group of women.

Female investment bankers' treatment = clitoridectomy

Get a job wherever LeCastor claims to work. She claims to be making about 3k/week as a summer intern and still has time to post on Salon all freaking day. As they say, good job...if you can get it.

(She doesn't get it.)

I read this article and was struck by Ms. Stroebel's nearly entirely absent husband. Even with the nanny and all, why did she conceive of childrearing as being primarily her responsibility when she clearly had a demanding, high-paying job? I can't imagine a male on Wall Street doing the same.

The clitoridectomy line is perhaps a bit overstated, but your point is well taken. Why in the flying hell do all these articles focus on lawyers and investment bankers? I realize this may come a shock to Broadsheet, but highly-compensated postions like lawyer and investment banker require a commensurately high commitment of time, and it's hardly unreasonable to ask that a laywer or investment banker work long hours and be available to her bosses and clients when she's bringing down $145,000 a year plus the $30,000 bonus you get at the end of the year (and that's right out of law school). If you're getting paid huge sums, be prepared to sacrifice something. What about this is hard to understand? What about it is unfair? These are not the only jobs in the world.

Second shocking revelation: a high percentage, if not the majority, of women lawyers and investment bankers are married to, guess who, other highly compensated professionals such as lawyers and investment bankers. Sure, the women may have to keep working if they want to keep the ski home in Aspen, but that's about all they're sacrificing if they give up their jobs. Are our hearts supposed to bleed for these women? If you choose to be a mother, you can either insist that your husband take up some of the slack by taking a leave of absence if his employer doesn't offer paternity leave, or you can realize that you're damn lucky to even have the option to stop working at all. Duh.

I work with investment bankers at the MD level at Merrill, CSFB, Jefferies, etc., and they pull down at least $300-500K in base salary plus a bonus in the low millions in a decent year. A tasty lifestyle....

See http://www.princetonreview.com/cte/profiles/facts.asp?careerID=84

and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_bank

for an overview if the salary structure.

The Times article was excellent. I even agree with Page Rockwell that "the present-day solution to work/family conflict is not dividing those responsibilities by gender."

But if the answer is greater flex time for everyone, why focus on women at all? Dads can choose to stay home if they like, so why should they be treated any differently from female employees who are moms?

I worry that the strong emphasis on diversity only leads to quotas, and different standards for different groups. While diversity is no doubt valuable, it hardly seems like a good recipe for fair and unbiased hiring practices.

And clearly there are real world limits to how family friendly a highly competitive corporate environment can become. I wonder if this notion that a more balanced workplace is good for the bottom line is true or merely wishful thinking.

Long ago, my husband and I (not investment bankers, by the way) worked out that we needed a wife. The conversation ended when he wanted to know who would sleep with her.

Why not let the second wife choose?

Or share her?

Want flex-time?

Get a job wherever LeCastor claims to work. She claims to be making about 3k/week as a summer intern and still has time to post on Salon all freaking day. As they say, good job...if you can get it.

(She doesn't get it.)

-- Got it.

Oh read more carefully. Yeah, i'm a summer intern AT A BANK. I don't make the $2400/week that people make at LAW FIRMS.

Anyhoo, my favorite part of the article was that Lehman Brothers was instituting a program for their summer associate MBA class in which females would be in female-only teams because "women are more likely to show 'raw talent' with no men around." I found this patronizing and sounding like segregation (see the segregated schools thread that's popular today). So if we have gender-separated schools, maybe Lehman thinks we can have gender-separated banks.

As for me, it's Friday in August. If you think i have a lot of free time, half of our lawyers aren't here today. And they have permanent jobs that pay much more than I am paid. But we're not bankers, and it's August.

As a (very poorly compensated municipal lawyer) I count myself among the lucky few who has a schedule that allows me to pick up my kid from day care and work four days a week. Why do articles focus on lawyers and investment bankers? The sad truth is, it is women in professional careers who have (1) the income and (2) the professional background that allows them, to a very limited extent, to dictate some of the terms and conditions of their own employment. Women in careers that require less specialized training, and that pay less, are in no position to demand that employers give them better schedules and better hours. Not to say that's how it should be, but that's how it is.

On the other hand, change must come incrementally. Once it is an accepted practice to allow women (and men! and men too!) to adjust their work schedules to take children into account, that practice will, hopefully, extend not only to the highly compensated and highly skilled, but to all eschelons of working women.