Why is everyone so mad at Justice Minister Peter MacKay? Look closely at the comment he made to the Ontario Bar Association. It makes no sense at all.
Asked about the scarcity of women and minorities who are appointed to federal court benches, MacKay replied that women don’t seek to be judges because they’re afraid the job would take them away from their kids.
He later defended his remark by saying: “At early childhood, there’s no question I think that women have a greater bond with their children.”
Why does this make no sense? Well, it’s because women with small children are typically in their 20s and 30s. Ever seen a 30-year-old judge? No? I didn’t think so. Nobody appoints these women judges, because they’re just starting out in their law careers and don’t have enough experience to sit on the bench.
Applicants for judgeships are in their 40s, 50s and 60s, long past the stage of having kids in early childhood. At the youngest end of that range, most women might have children in their teens; the children of the older women in that group would be long since grown up and gone.
Being a judge is the pinnacle of one’s career; it’s not an entry-level position.
Besides, it’s a little late for a woman lawyer to decide to take a pass on a judgeship and stay at home with her kids when she’s 50. They were probably little a quarter of a century ago.
There are pluses though — the kids may be camped out in her basement suffering from failure to launch, but the upside is she doesn’t have to watch Sesame Street with them.
Further, the ire about the sentiment behind MacKay’s comments is puzzling. Everywhere you look these days, some lifestyle article is telling you to de-stress, slow down, spend more time with family, smell the roses, drink tea and seek work-life balance.
Yet, if someone suggests that women may indeed be making those very choices, that individual is pilloried for it. It’s as if all women are simply expected to want to fight their way up that career ladder, hand over hand, rung by rung, shattering glass ceilings as they go. It hasn’t occurred to those lambasting MacKay that breaking through the glass ceiling sometimes means all you end up with is shards of glass in your hair.
Maybe you want something else out of life. That should be OK, too, but apparently it isn’t. Lean in, commands Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg. Lean in, buy in, drive yourself crazy. What if you just don’t want to? According to news reports, some of the attendees at the meeting called MacKay’s statements “disappointing,” “offensive” and “frustrating.” But why are they offended, disappointed and frustrated at the idea that some women might not want to sacrifice their children and their work-life balance for the obsessive striving for success?
Why does seeking a balance in life get such a bad rap? Aiming for the top is never examined for its worthiness as a goal, and remains merely the butt of jokes about stress and triple-bypass surgery.
Maybe for some people, success is defined by something other than the glamour of career achievement and the money and prestige that come with it. Saying so shouldn’t be reason for others to turn up their noses and loudly proclaim they are offended. What are they offended by? That someone else hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid of career success and sacrifice? That someone else has made different choices for her life?
In response to MacKay’s comments, Calgary MP Michelle Rempel said that parliamentarians ought to celebrate women, whatever choices they make. Could we please stop “celebrating” everything? That word should be reserved for an occasion with a birthday cake. A simple acknowledgment that some women might not want to climb to the top because the view from there doesn’t move them would be sufficient.
If there aren’t enough — however many “enough” is — women on the bench, sitting around boardroom tables or running for office, maybe it’s partly due to a systemic chauvinism that edges them out. But maybe it’s also due to the fact that those women are marching to the beat of a different drummer.
More power to them.
