When Work Doesn't Work Anymore: Women, Work and Identity

McKenna would have career women downsize themselves and sever the dominance of their jobs over their self-worth, whether they are married, single or mothers, to find a balance between their work and the rest of life. Balance is a word she uses repeatedly to effect an impact as she engages readers to take stock of their discontents and to ponder the differences between recognizable success and work that is individually rewarding. Life, she stresses, can be rich without a business card. Frequently quoting from her talks with Gloria Steinem, Anna Quindlen and Letty Cottin Pogrebin, McKenna, a former book publishing executive, joins their prominence as a voice worth listening to; this study, her first book, will likely become influential. Having interviewed 200 women and surveyed thousands of others--as well as writing out of her own experiences--the author argues that waged time takes priority in the lives of career women, who believe that the more important their work, the more important they are. The women's movement, McKenna maintains, didn't change the values of the success culture but only made a place for women within it, and she would have them devote more time to their personal lives to diminish the thrall of the marathon work schedule. Learn to fail, sacrifice money for time: these are some of McKenna's admonitions that readers may find startling. But so provocative and convincing is her book that it is likely to motivate many women to move from a culturally approved value system to a more personal one. (Sept.) FYI: Before becoming a full-time writer, McKenna was variously an associate publisher at Bantam and publisher at Prentice Hall, Addison-Wesley and Morrow.