I speak to you from my position in the trenches, as a woman who has been in the business world since 1972, the early days of the feminist movement in the United States. My career, except for some post-graduate work in education, has been in magazine publishing, first as an editor and writer, then moving into marketing and advertising sales and management, which has encompassed the majority of my professional life.

Being in ad sales over the years for several different major magazines has given me exposure to, and interaction with, a wide spectrum of business and industry in the US; being a woman, a single woman, throughout all this has brought its own perspectives and experiences.

In talking about women in the workplace, then, I offer you not only my own testimony, but also that of all the other American working women I've met and with whom I've interacted over the years: married, single, divorced, with or without children, entry-level, executive-level, blue-collar, professional, struggling just to get by or enjoying all the "perks" and stresses of a top job and salaryÃ???Ã???all of us operating against a backdrop of shifting cultural and economic forces, many of which have been hostile to our very identity as women. For Catholic women in the workplace, these forces can represent an even greater and suppressive opposition.

So what we're dealing with here is (a) the culture; (b) the workplace; and (c) who we are as women. Though today's cultural and societal imperatives as they affect the workplace aren't all negative, clearly something is amiss.

In the States over the last 30 years, the rise of relativism and a misdirected pluralism and tolerance has put those with religious beliefs on the defensive and promoted a culture of intolerance for free religious expression that has affected even the workplace. Employees with strong religious, moral and family convictions that run counter to what is "politically correct" or prevelant feel pressure to acquiesce in the marginalization of faith and principles from their public life.

To complicate matters, the workplace today is a more intense, competitive environment than it was even a generation ago. Professionals across industry lines live fragmented existences, juggling their careers, families, personal, civic and religious (if that) dimensions, one often in conflict with others. Workplace requirements and realities frequently clash with personal needs and, at times, value systems. More often than not, it is the personal needs and value systems that go by the wayside.

With women this situation is exacerbated.

The cultural emphasis in the US is on Ã???empowermentÃ??? and most US women, influenced by certain feminists currents have been taught since childhood that it is success in the workplace that will give them true and lasting power and autonomy. The net effect is to measure the value of women by their financial and political power, and only to the degree that they compete with men, thus reducing them to something less than what they are. Family is important, more or less, but has taken a definite second place to personal fulfillment via career.

A backlash has already begun against this imperative, with a number of professional women opting out of corporate America for entrepreneurial opportunities, or deciding to stay at home full-time (or at least part-time) and involving themselves in volunteer activities. However, for most women this is not an option, and many women who work continue to remain in conflict over their choices, priorities and situations.

So, raised on promises of equality and Ã???having it allÃ???, women today are trying hard to do it allÃ???about 60% of American women are in the workforce, and over two-thirds of these women have children. Among married women with school-age children, 77% work and 48% provide half or more of their family's income. As their economic power has grown, American women are marrying later, having fewer children and are more likely than ever to remain single or childless. Speak to many of the under-35 crowd, and you'll find women feeling ambivalent about whether to have children or not, unsure of the impact it would have on marriage and career.

In 1997 there were a series of articles in both business magazines and newsweeklies asking the question: Is your family wrecking your career? The flip side of this were articles on the Myth of Quality Time: dual-career parents, each with demanding careers, may be shortchanging their children. Child care was cited as the biggest job at home for both men and women, but women were spending more than three times as many hours tending the kids, a fact that feminist groups deploredÃ???.women shouldn't be the ones who sacrifice their work for their children and not fathers equally. Indeed, it is Ã???sexistÃ??? to say that women are Ã???betterÃ??? at caring for infants and small children, or more suited to it, than men! Thus went (and still goes) the rhetoric, and the message is clear: better to be in the office than stuck at home with the children.

This is not meant to trivialize the problem of child care, which is very real, and in the last decade, hundreds of businesses around the U.S. have responded to the needs of working parents by offering alternatives like job sharing, flexible hours and telecommuting. But many employees are reluctant to take advantage of these options because they think that putting family before work, even with management approval, will mean a permanent switch to the slow lane. Downsizing has only added to their anxiety.

This brings up another phenomenon impacting women in the workplace that bears examining, and it concerns an intriguing opinion voiced by the writer Danielle Crittenden in her 1999 book What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us (Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman). She argues that the fundamental reason why mothers of small children cannot afford to stay home today, even though they would prefer to and even if it's just for the few short years before they are in school, is the greater prospect of divorce. The fear a woman has of having to fend for herself and her children at some point underlies why even happily married women often feel obliged to work when there's no immediate financial reason for them to do so. And they are not happy about this. One can only imagine the turmoil and conflict within women who have to work to support themselves and their families.

Clearly, any discussion of women in the workplace, especially women with children, quickly gets complicated and can easily veer off into side issues. It is not a black and white, either/or situation. However, a similar thread weaves its way throughout. It is that of an underlying agnst, a dissatisfaction, a restlessness, that cuts across all industries and job levels. This is not the way it was supposed to be! I can't tell you the number of conversations I've had recently with colleagues who jokingly admit that they fantasize about winning the lottery so that they could quit their jobs!

Many women, whether they have entered the working world out of necessity or with specific career goals, discover that their work does not fulfill them (as they were promised it would), and the typical reaction has been to blame men, or the system or the state for not giving them the opportunities to realize their potential. And truth be told, in some cases they are right. In any event, a demanding and sometimes hostile atmosphere in the workplace can put a woman under pressure and nervous strain (I've been there!). The reaction more often than not is the belief that in order to survive she has to behave just like those who are already successful and are completely at ease in this environment, that she has to imitate the man's way of working. After all, isn't this what equality and a level playing field are all about?

Something is clearly amissÃ???and it is not that women are in the workplace. Today there are women in all kinds of jobs and professions, and they have proven themselves extremely capable. Women now choose their careers according to their interests, whether academic or economic; they study chemical engineering, telecommunications, computer science, economics, architecture and design, public service, etc. It is difficult to find a profession that is not open to both men and women. Women belong in this milieu! It's how they operate within it, the impact they can and should have on the workplace instead of the impact the workplace has been having on them, that should be the subject of discussion.