Pamela Stone

In this book Stone explores the reasons why high-achieving women with children interrupt their professional careers. This qualitative study, using the life history interview, shows that women are not opting out, but are being shut out by inflexible employers.

Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home

Opting Out?

Meg Lovejoy

Taking a career break is a conflicted and risky decision for high-achieving professional women. Yet many do so, usually planning, even as they quit, to return to work eventually. But can they? And if so, how? In Opting Back In, Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy revisit women first interviewed a decade earlier in Stone’s book Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home to answer these questions. In frank and intimate accounts, women lay bare the dilemmas they face upon reentry. Most succeed but not by returning to their former high-paying, still family-inhospitable jobs. Instead, women strike out in new directions, finding personally gratifying but lower-paid jobs in the gig economy or predominantly female nonprofit sector. Opting Back In uncovers a paradox of privilege by which the very women best positioned to achieve leadership and close gender gaps use strategies to resume their careers that inadvertently reinforce gender inequality. The authors advocate gender equitable policies that will allow women—and all parents—to combine the intense demands of work and family life in the twenty-first century.

What Really Happens When Mothers Go Back to Work

Opting Back In

When Blake Ryann receives a call notifying him of his father's death he rushes to the funeral only to find himself among total strangers. Even more shocking than his father's death is that the man had an entire second family in a small Napa winery, including a beautiful grieving widow and grown son. Furious and betrayed, he sets out to unravel his father's mysterious double life, and vows to make the illegitimate family go away. But then he meets a woman at the winery whose sensual nature calls to the emotions he's repressed all his life. Can this fiery, dark-haired beauty make him surrender his quest for vengeance? All her life Mikaela Dulcinea has longed to escape her sheltered world. The winery where she works has employed her family for generations, and her traditional father thinks she should want nothing more than to marry and grow the family tree. Mikaela wants to go to college, see the world, and make her own life. Dashing and worldly, Blake Ryann epitomizes everything she yearns for, and she's instantly attracted. But can she melt the icy heart of this arrogant executive? Or will he be as inflexible as her controlling family?

Hayden's Dynasty - Book 1

Blake

Rafael Ryann's duty has always been to his family and the winery. He's even prepared to propose to the woman his family expects him to marry. Until he meets a quirky barista at his favorite café. The mischievous redhead lives a carefree life that Rafe envies. She tempts him to buck the system and break with tradition. But with his life at the winery crashing down around him and her careless lifestyle tempting him more each day, he realizes having the life he desires hurts too many people. But what would he sacrifice to be with the woman he loves? Keeley Rose has crushed on Rafe since the first day he ordered a café latte. But he's never hidden the fact that he has a girlfriend. Then, concerned for her safety, he starts driving her home each night from her bartending job and they end up almost making love. Nobody has looked out for Keeley in years. For a few wondrous weeks Rafe loses his Mr. Responsibility scowl and they become intimate while following clues about his father's death. But when the real world catches up to them, Keeley is the one left alone. Again. Having grown up being shuffled from one friend to another by her carefree mom, Keeley doesn't believe everlasting love is in the cards for her.

Hayden's Dynasty - Book 3

Rafael

Brody Ryann's laid-back life running a beachfront Bed & Breakfast and surfing is turned upside down when he learns his father died and he has two brothers he never knew existed. But the worst part is there are millions missing from his father's bank accounts and his tight-ass brother sends a stuffy accountant to pour over every row and column of his books. Except, the longer she's there, the less stuffy she seems. As he slowly falls in love with the quiet, responsible woman, he realizes he wants to keep her in his life. But will that mean an end to his free and easy, carefree days?Ever since her ex-husband deserted her, Jade Zimmerman trusts men about as far as she can throw them. She copes by making sure her life has structure and stability. When her boss sends her on an out of town assignment to find missing money, she takes it seriously, even if the charming surfer whose books she's auditing doesn't. The blond beach god thinks life is all about surfing and having fun, and soon, he's charmed his way into her heart. Walking away is going to hurt. But after being deserted by her own father and her ex-husband, she knows better than to trust another man. Or does she?

Hayden's Dynasty - Book 2

Brody

Noting a phenomenon that might seem to recall a previous era, The New York Times Magazine recently portrayed women who leave their careers in order to become full-time mothers as "opting out." But, are high-achieving professional women really choosing to abandon their careers in order to return home? This provocative study is the first to tackle this issue from the perspective of the women themselves. Based on a series of candid, in-depth interviews with women who returned home after working as doctors, lawyers, bankers, scientists, and other professions, Pamela Stone explores the role that their husbands, children, and coworkers play in their decision; how women’s efforts to construct new lives and new identities unfold once they are home; and where their aspirations and plans for the future lie. What we learn—contrary to many media perceptions—is that these high-flying women are not opting out but are instead being pushed out of the workplace. Drawing on their experiences, Stone outlines concrete ideas for redesigning workplaces to make it easier for women—and men—to attain their goal of living rewarding lives that combine both families and careers.

"...Practical advice and personal stories to help women successfully ease into a new and full lifestyle after the termination of a marriage, the end of a relationship, or the loss of a loved one."--Cover.

10 Ways to Survive Grief and Be Happy

A Woman's Guide to Living Alone

Desperate times call for…a quickie wedding! And desperation is the only reason Charlotte Harrington would even consider marrying local playboy Aaron Brody. Even if he is the most irresistible man she's ever laid eyes on. Charlie's proposition could be a win-win for both of them. Aaron keeps his charter business afloat and the gorgeous, cool-as-ice hotel heiress keeps her grandfather from selling her hotel out from under her. Besides, it's temporary. Isn't it? It was supposed to be strictly a business arrangement. Falling in love with her husband wasn't part of the deal. So when the time comes, will Charlie be able to just shake hands with Aaron and part ways forever?

Last Resort: Marriage

"Interrupting a professional career is, for women who opt out, a conflicted decision of last resort. Most women envision returning to the labor force even as they leave it. But can they? Drawing on unique research that follows up women first interviewed for Opting Out?, Career, Interrupted profiles the efforts of a group of high-achieving women to go back to work. The good news is that these women, who are able to draw on considerable resources, are successful. The bad news is that they face cross pressures of class and gender that create what we call the paradox of privilege, which reinforces gender inequality in the family and workplace and results in re-entry strategies that either marginalize them as contingent workers or, for the sizeable fraction who radically reinvent themselves, segregate them in female-dominated fields. The book offers an in-depth look at the pressures high potential women face as they struggle with the mixed signals of their class privilege--promise compromised by patriarchy--and offers up-close and personal insights in to how the twin pillars of gender inequality--the leadership and wage gaps--are created and maintained by the very women expected to transcend them"--Provided by publisher.

Pamela Stone

Books

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