Among the candidates President Obama may nominate for the next defense secretary is Michele Flournoy, formerly the highest-ranking woman in the Pentagon.

Flournoy is a mother of three, and in February, she stunned her colleagues when she stepped down from her job as undersecretary of defense for policy to spend more time with her children.

It wasn't an easy decision, but it's a dilemma that many working mothers face. While some call for changes in workplace policy to make caring for families and working easier, others argue women ultimately have to make a choice.

Choosing Family Over Career

When Flournoy was working at the Pentagon, she says her hours were long and intense. She would work starting at 7 a.m. for about 12 hours, "pretty much non-stop." Then she would have maybe two hours with her family at home before being available to work again around 9 p.m.

She did that for three years. During that time, both she and her husband were in senior government positions (her husband, W. Scott Gould, is deputy secretary of Veterans Affairs).

"There was a point in time, when my older kids were reaching the teenage years, that they really needed more of a parent," she tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered.

So after a number of long discussions with her husband, Flournoy says, they decided it was time for one of them to step out.

It was an agonizing decision for Flournoy, in part because she didn't want to let down the younger women who looked to her to open doors for them. The reaction she actually received surprised her.

Her decision resonated with women around the country — and it prompted a new national discussion about whether mothers can reach the highest levels of government or corporate America as easily as men.

Glass Ceilings Left Unbroken

Though many industries in this country are increasingly dominated by women, there is no evidence that things at the top are changing. Kay Hymowitz, a scholar with the Manhattan Institute, says only 4 percent of the CEOs at Fortune 500 companies are female. Why the disparity?

Hymowitz says it's children — "though we have to always make the caveat that yes, there is discrimination. But the major factor in the gap — both the ... wage gap and the gap at the very top ... is due to children."

Both the public and private sectors are adapting in some ways to change that, particularly by offering flextime. "But at a certain point — and this is particularly true at the top — the competition is so keen to get ahead that if you have a young baby at home [and] you're a woman — or, for that matter, a man — who wants to be quite involved with raising that baby, it's just a matter of physics," she says. "You cannot be doing both things."

So women work fewer hours, take off more time for maternity leave and are more likely to work part time than men. Hymowitz says they seem to want it that way, too.

"The presumption that this is really what women want — they want this absolute parity with men in the workplace — it really remains to be proven," she says.

Not Exactly A Choice

Karen Kornbluh spent three years looking for ways to close the gender gap as an ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. She worries there's too much focus on the "alpha females" who could run companies or governments.

Diversifying leadership is important, she says, "but what I also want to pay attention to is the middle-class family, the lower-income family, where the mother doesn't even have the choice of stepping out."

Choice is a funny word, though. Kornbluh says inequality in the workplace in this country is not about women — of any socioeconomic status — choosing family over work.

"I wouldn't call it a 'choice' in the classic sense, because I don't think they have a lot of options," she says.

"You're expected to give 100 percent on the home front and 100 percent at the work front and 100 percent to your friends and your community," she says, "and you feel like a complete failure."

Unrealistic Expectations

Before serving as ambassador, Kornbluh rose to deputy chief of staff at the Treasury. After the birth of her second child, she quit.

We simply haven't yet adjusted to contemporary family life, she says, which often requires all adults to juggle work and home.

"We still have this idea in our head that the ideal worker is the breadwinner with no [domestic] responsibilities and the ideal parent is the homemaker with no workplace responsibilities," she says. "And we haven't changed our expectations enough."

Beyond flextime and health insurance, Kornbluh says, quality, affordable child care would make a significant impact, particularly for lower-income and single-parent families. That and economic growth. Lower wages have meant more hours for both parents — and more time away from home.

"If we could get growth again — but broadly shared growth," she says, "that would make a huge difference."

Having It All: It's Possible

When Flournoy stepped down from the Pentagon, a number of women thanked her for making it OK to have times in life to "rebalance in favor of family." For Flournoy, that shift happens in waves. She believes it is possible to be a working mom at the highest levels of the workplace.

"I just think ... there's a sequencing," she says. "I mean, I'm one who believes that you can have it all — you just can't always have it at exactly the same time with equal intensity."

"My career has looked like a sine curve in terms of balancing and rebalancing," Flournoy adds. "Different periods where I've had more intense career focus versus more of a family focus." That's not possible for everyone, she admits, as many women don't have the support they need to rebalance while staying competitive.

At this point in her career, Flournoy says, either she or her husband still needs to be out of government service, for their teenagers.

"But I have certainly had a chance to recharge my batteries, and I am eager for public service in the future," she says. "That said, it would be very hard to miss these very precious years where I have ... the last years with my teenagers at home."

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