德国女高管敦促女性勿因孩子弃事业

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 E.ON, 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 E.ON 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 2017 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 E.ON. 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 E.ON 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•施塔赫尔豪斯是德国一家重要公司董事会中少数女性之一，她希望德国女性同胞不要因为有孩子而放弃自己的事业。

在一个灰暗的星期天下午，雷吉娜•施塔赫尔豪斯出现在斯图加特飞机场。因为多年来的工作旅行，她对这里很熟悉，包括如何从位于德国西南部附近一个村庄的家转车去杜塞尔多夫（她最近经常工作的地方）。但今天这一趟不是公差，她的穿着非常随意，仅仅穿了一条牛仔裤和一件跟她眼影相称的天蓝色毛衣。她急匆匆地走进了候机服务台上方的一个热闹的全景餐厅里，并为她迟到了一小时表示了深深的歉意——她的丈夫出了点意外，她得先送他去医院。

施塔赫尔豪斯是一位58岁的成熟女性，也是公司董事会的一员。她点了一杯咖啡，然后向我们诉说她27年前怀有第一个儿子的时候是如何坚持自己的事业的。在她和丈夫五年前收养了第二个儿子——一个16岁的厄立特里亚难民后，她也没有停下一天12个小时的工作。她并不后悔错过了自己大儿子第一次学会走路和因为一场国际公差而错过儿子上幼儿园的第一天。当她在公司职位稳步上升时，她身为摇滚音乐家的丈夫在屋里陪伴孩子。

她对工作的付出与专注最终得到了回报，现在，她已经成为德国女性成就难得一见的一个典范。这个国家女性在工作岗位的成就让美国在此方面绞尽脑汁挤出的一点成绩显得不值一提。2010年，她成为世界上最大的私营电力公司意昂的人力资源总监，为此也成为了第三个成功进入DAX前30公司（法兰克福证券交易所列出的德国前30大公司）高层管理界的女性。据德勤的研究，美国女性占财富榜500强公司的董事会的15.7%，相比之下，德国女性只占财富榜600强公司董事会的8.2%。

不过，如今的施塔赫尔豪斯决定将这些抛之脑后。她宣称今年的3月份将全心全意照顾被诊断出肺病的丈夫，不理公司事务。

高管职位的流动率一直很高。根据美国年会董事会的3月报告，美国首席执行官的平均任期相比于2010年的十年，于2017年降至八年。这导致了大西洋两岸女性在上升的管理位置排行上取得的地位越来越少，但是女性高层执行官的决定却越来越令人侧目。雅虎首席执行官梅丽莎•梅耶缩短了她的产假，而普利斯顿的教授安妮-玛丽•斯劳特则离开了她的美国政府部门工作，高层工作的女性通常会因她们的私人决定而受到公众严密的关注。

在德国，没有一个单独的女性可以领导一个重要公司，施塔赫尔豪斯决定离开她的工作无疑把她推上了工作妇女辩论的风口浪尖。为工作而奉献的德国女性把她的这一行为视为德国女性执行官的一次退步，同时这也给了认为女性无法领导商业界的人们一个抨击的“弹药”。

德国的一个商业主导杂志甚至在内容里宣称：施塔赫尔豪斯离开她的工作实际上是由于她无法承受这份工作，而不是由于她的丈夫生病。

“当然，我也想到过我的离开可能发出一些‘信号’，”施塔赫尔豪斯和另一德国杂志谈到，“但是现在我无法考虑那么多，我知道我生命中更重要的是什么，我很明白孰轻孰重。”

施塔赫尔豪斯的一生和她的事业与德国传统社会格格不入。她17岁的时候在一次青年营活动中遇见了她现在的丈夫威利，他学习音乐而她学习法律。当他们有第一个儿子的时候，威利同意照看孩子，这样他就可以有充分的自由追求他的艺术造诣而不需要承受赚钱的压力。每个人，甚至是他的理发师和医生都告诉他，他在犯一个致命的错误——他不该如此依赖他的妻子。

尽管施塔赫尔豪斯承认在30年的工作中也曾感到困惑，但她并没有理会那些评判声，她知道自己想要的是一份高层工作。她第一次上榜是作为一家科技公司（惠普）的操作人员，然后又在联合国儿童基金会（UNICEF）做了18个月的定额工作，而后来到了意昂公司工作了三年。在那些漫长的日子里，她丈夫经常带着孩子去办公室看她。

后来，在同时拥有一份吃力的工作和两个孩子的挑战下，她也表示在家呆着并不能使她高兴，也后悔没有再要孩子。和脸谱网首席运营官谢丽尔•桑德伯格赞成的观点类似，施塔赫尔豪斯也希望看到德国更多的母亲在有孩子以后的艰难时期不要放弃工作。

“我劝告过很多不想要孩子的女性，她们这样是不明智的，”她说：“她们可以勇敢的选择两者兼顾”。她还补充道：“事实是许多女性在她们的孩子开始遇到问题的时候选择了缩短工作时间，或者放弃工作。其实每个孩子都会遇到问题，但母亲们总是认为是她们的问题。”

施塔赫尔豪斯坚信现在离开一个高层管理工作和她一贯的坚持工作理念并不矛盾。尽管她将花费大部分的时间照顾她的丈夫，她仍然会为意昂出谋划策，而且近来还参加了英国科技公司Computacenter的监事会。

与民众意见相反，她相信她的决定为那些进退两难的人们指出了一条明路——怎样解决照顾上了年纪的父母、配偶和工作之间的紧张关系。这是每一个事业在走上坡路的男性和女性都会面临的艰难抉择，此时家人年纪大了，更加需要照顾。

在这场辩论中，施塔赫尔豪斯希望她传达了正面的信息，为那些无法权衡家庭和工作的人们做出了表率。

“我正在为职场的男人树立一个好榜样”施塔赫尔豪斯说，“如果他们的爱人病了，希望他们也能像我这么做。”