德國女高管敦促女性勿因孩子棄事業

As one of the few German women who has been on the board of a major company, Regine Stachelhaus wants the country’s women to stop leaving work when they have kids.

It’s a gray Sunday afternoon and Regine Stachelhaus is at the Stuttgart airport, a place that she knows well after years of work travel, including commuting to Düsseldorf for her most recent job from her home in a nearby Southwestern German village. Instead of a business suit, Stachelhaus is dressed casually in jeans and a sky-blue sweater set that matches her eye shadow. She rushes into the noisy Panorama restaurant above the main departures desk and apologizes profusely for being an hour late—her husband had an emergency and she had to drop him off at the hospital.

Stachelhaus, 58, settles into a table, orders a coffee and explains that she didn’t leave her career when her first son was born 27 years ago. She didn’t slow down her 12-hour days after she and her husband adopted their second son—then a 16-year-old refugee from Eritrea—five years ago. She doesn’t regret missing her first son’s first steps or being on an international work trip during his first day of kindergarten. While she climbed the corporate ranks, her rock musician husband stayed at home with the kids.

The intense focus on her career paid off. Stachelhaus became a rare paragon of female achievement in Germany, a country whose record of women in the workplace makes America’s hand-wringing over the issue seem unwarranted. By 2010 she became only the third woman to break into the top management circle of a DAX 30 company (the top 30 German biggest companies listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange) when she took a job as Chief Human Resources Officer at , the world’s largest investor-owned electric utility. In the U.S., women make up 15.7 percent of Fortune 500 company boards, according to a Deloitte study, compared with 8.2 percent of a sample of 600 listed companies in Germany.

Now Stachelhaus is leaving the boardroom behind. She announced in May that she wouldn’t renew her contract at so that she could care for her husband, who was diagnosed with a severe lung disease.

Churn is often high in top executive positions. Average CEO tenure in the U.S. fell to eight years in 2012 from 10 years in 2010 according to a May report from the U.S. Conference Board. Given the thin ranks of women in upper management on both sides of the Atlantic, however, the personal decisions of female top executives tend to raise eyebrows. Whether it is Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer cutting her maternity leave short or Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter leaving her U.S. State department job, women in high places often endure heavy scrutiny for their personal choices.

In Germany, where not a single women heads a major company, Stachelhaus’ decision to leave has put her in the center of the working-women debate. Advocates of women in the workplace here saw her decision as a setback for German female executives, but it also gave ammunition to those who say that women are not rising to the challenge of taking leadership in the business world.

One leading German business magazine contended that Stachelhaus actually left her high profile position because it was too overwhelming for her and not because of her husband’s illness.

“Of course I thought about the signal it would send,” Stachelhaus told another German magazine. “But I can’t think about that now. I know what’s important in my life, and my priorities are clear.”

Stachelhaus’s life and career have always been out of the ordinary in traditional German society. She met her husband, Willie, at the age of 17 at a youth camp. He studied music and she studied law. When they had their first son, her husband agreed to take care of him so he could have the freedom to pursue an artistic career without the pressure of earning a salary. Everyone from his barber to his doctor told Willie that he was making a mistake—he shouldn’t be so reliant on his wife.

Though she admits she felt doubtful at times throughout her three-decade career, Stachelhaus ignored the critics because she knew she wanted to have a high-profile job. She first rose through the ranks at technology company Hewlett Packard’s German operations, then did an 18-month stint at UNICEF, followed by three years at . Her husband would often bring her son by the office during her long days.

Even with the challenges of juggling both a demanding career and two sons, she said that she would have been unhappier staying at home, and would have regretted not having children even more. Much like the viewpoint espoused by Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, Stachelhaus wants to see more mothers in Germany continue to work after they have kids and not giving up when things get hard.

“I counsel many women who decide against kids that they are making a mistake,” she said. “They should have the courage to do both.” The issue, she continues, “is that many women cut back their work hours or quit if their kids start to have problems. Every kid has problems and somehow women always think it’s them.”

Stachelhaus insists that stepping away from a top management job now does not contradict her Lean-In-esque philosophy. Though she spends most of her day caring for her husband, she still serves as a consultant to and recently joined the supervisory board of U.K. technology firm Computacenter.

Instead, she believes her decision highlights a very different dilemma—the tension that comes with caring for aging parents and spouses. It’s an issue that both men and women at the prime of their careers will face as the workforce ages and demand for caregivers grows.

In that debate, Stachelhaus hopes she is sending a positive message to anyone facing the hard choice that comes with balancing family and work.

“I am trying to be a good example for men,” Stachelhaus says. “If their wives get sick they should do the same.”雷吉娜•施塔赫爾豪斯是德國一家重要公司董事會中少數女性之一，她希望德國女性同胞不要因爲有孩子而放棄自己的事業。

在一個灰暗的星期天下午，雷吉娜•施塔赫爾豪斯出現在斯圖加特飛機場。因爲多年來的工作旅行，她對這裏很熟悉，包括如何從位於德國西南部附近一個村莊的家轉車去杜塞爾多夫（她最近經常工作的地方）。但今天這一趟不是公差，她的穿着非常隨意，僅僅穿了一條牛仔褲和一件跟她眼影相稱的天藍色毛衣。她急匆匆地走進了候機服務臺上方的一個熱鬧的全景餐廳裏，併爲她遲到了一小時表示了深深的歉意——她的丈夫出了點意外，她得先送他去醫院。

施塔赫爾豪斯是一位58歲的成熟女性，也是公司董事會的一員。她點了一杯咖啡，然後向我們訴說她27年前懷有第一個兒子的時候是如何堅持自己的事業的。在她和丈夫五年前收養了第二個兒子——一個16歲的厄立特里亞難民後，她也沒有停下一天12個小時的工作。她並不後悔錯過了自己大兒子第一次學會走路和因爲一場國際公差而錯過兒子上幼兒園的第一天。當她在公司職位穩步上升時，她身爲搖滾音樂家的丈夫在屋裏陪伴孩子。

她對工作的付出與專注最終得到了回報，現在，她已經成爲德國女性成就難得一見的一個典範。這個國家女性在工作崗位的成就讓美國在此方面絞盡腦汁擠出的一點成績顯得不值一提。2010年，她成爲世界上最大的私營電力公司意昂的人力資源總監，爲此也成爲了第三個成功進入DAX前30公司（法蘭克福證券交易所列出的德國前30大公司）高層管理界的女性。據德勤的研究，美國女性佔財富榜500強公司的董事會的15.7%，相比之下，德國女性只佔財富榜600強公司董事會的8.2%。

不過，如今的施塔赫爾豪斯決定將這些拋之腦後。她宣稱今年的3月份將全心全意照顧被診斷出肺病的丈夫，不理公司事務。

高管職位的流動率一直很高。根據美國年會董事會的3月報告，美國首席執行官的平均任期相比於2010年的十年，於2012年降至八年。這導致了大西洋兩岸女性在上升的管理位置排行上取得的地位越來越少，但是女性高層執行官的決定卻越來越令人側目。雅虎首席執行官梅麗莎•梅耶縮短了她的產假，而普利斯頓的教授安妮-瑪麗•斯勞特則離開了她的美國政府部門工作，高層工作的女性通常會因她們的私人決定而受到公衆嚴密的關注。

在德國，沒有一個單獨的女性可以領導一個重要公司，施塔赫爾豪斯決定離開她的工作無疑把她推上了工作婦女辯論的風口浪尖。爲工作而奉獻的德國女性把她的這一行爲視爲德國女性執行官的一次退步，同時這也給了認爲女性無法領導商業界的人們一個抨擊的“彈藥”。

德國的一個商業主導雜誌甚至在內容裏宣稱：施塔赫爾豪斯離開她的工作實際上是由於她無法承受這份工作，而不是由於她的丈夫生病。

“當然，我也想到過我的離開可能發出一些‘信號’，”施塔赫爾豪斯和另一德國雜誌談到，“但是現在我無法考慮那麼多，我知道我生命中更重要的是什麼，我很明白孰輕孰重。”

施塔赫爾豪斯的一生和她的事業與德國傳統社會格格不入。她17歲的時候在一次青年營活動中遇見了她現在的丈夫威利，他學習音樂而她學習法律。當他們有第一個兒子的時候，威利同意照看孩子，這樣他就可以有充分的自由追求他的藝術造詣而不需要承受賺錢的壓力。每個人，甚至是他的理髮師和醫生都告訴他，他在犯一個致命的錯誤——他不該如此依賴他的妻子。

儘管施塔赫爾豪斯承認在30年的工作中也曾感到困惑，但她並沒有理會那些評判聲，她知道自己想要的是一份高層工作。她第一次上榜是作爲一家科技公司（惠普）的操作人員，然後又在聯合國兒童基金會（UNICEF）做了18個月的定額工作，而後來到了意昂公司工作了三年。在那些漫長的日子裏，她丈夫經常帶着孩子去辦公室看她。

後來，在同時擁有一份吃力的工作和兩個孩子的挑戰下，她也表示在家呆着並不能使她高興，也後悔沒有再要孩子。和臉譜網首席運營官謝麗爾•桑德伯格贊成的觀點類似，施塔赫爾豪斯也希望看到德國更多的母親在有孩子以後的艱難時期不要放棄工作。

“我勸告過很多不想要孩子的女性，她們這樣是不明智的，”她說：“她們可以勇敢的選擇兩者兼顧”。她還補充道：“事實是許多女性在她們的孩子開始遇到問題的時候選擇了縮短工作時間，或者放棄工作。其實每個孩子都會遇到問題，但母親們總是認爲是她們的問題。”

施塔赫爾豪斯堅信現在離開一個高層管理工作和她一貫的堅持工作理念並不矛盾。儘管她將花費大部分的時間照顧她的丈夫，她仍然會爲意昂出謀劃策，而且近來還參加了英國科技公司Computacenter的監事會。

與民衆意見相反，她相信她的決定爲那些進退兩難的人們指出了一條明路——怎樣解決照顧上了年紀的父母、配偶和工作之間的緊張關係。這是每一個事業在走上坡路的男性和女性都會面臨的艱難抉擇，此時家人年紀大了，更加需要照顧。

在這場辯論中，施塔赫爾豪斯希望她傳達了正面的信息，爲那些無法權衡家庭和工作的人們做出了表率。

“我正在爲職場的男人樹立一個好榜樣”施塔赫爾豪斯說，“如果他們的愛人病了，希望他們也能像我這麼做。”