Donna Shirley Interview (page: 3 / 7) Mars Exploration Program	Print Interview

Although you seem incredibly positive and confident, there must have been obstacles that really gave you pause?

Donna Shirley: There are an enormous number of obstacles in anybody's life, particularly when you're trying to do something that nobody's done before. Being a woman in a primarily male field was very difficult sometimes. When I first came to JPL, I got a lot of kidding about being a girl, but JPL is kind of the place where excellence is premier. It's all about doing the work and proving yourself.

I was 35 when I had my daughter, and I stayed away from work for six weeks. Then I went back to work half-time, because I was nursing her. I would feed her, take her to the baby-sitter, dash in and work in the afternoon for four hours. I knew if I worked in the morning I would never get out of there, so I'd work in the afternoon, dash home, feed her again, and it worked just fine. When she was 10 months old, I weaned her to a cup and was ready to go back to work full time. We had a really good baby-sitter situation. I had been a manager before I took off, but when I went back I wasn't getting any really good jobs, just a little job here and there, and not a lot of responsibility.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I said to my boss, I said, "What's going on here? Why aren't I getting any good assignments?" He said, "I don't know. I can't figure it out. I'll go talk to the people who have the money and have the projects and see what's going on." And he came back and he said, "Well," he said, "What's the matter is that they all assume that you are now fulfilled as a mother, and don't want a responsible job." And I said, "Good Lord," so we went in and informed these people that, "Yes, I'm not fulfilled as a mother, I do want a responsible job," and so on. And, it wasn't that these guys were against me or anything like that, or anti-female or anything, in fact they were friends of mine. But, it just never occurred to them. They were from the Depression Era, you know, they grew up during the Depression Era, World War II, and their picture of women was, okay, you stay home and take care of your kids and that's how you become fulfilled. And, it never occurred to them that that wasn't my picture.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

Once I enlightened them they were fine, and then I could get a job. There are all kinds of unquestioned expectations. You have to say, "Here's what I want." A lot of times things just fall down when you do that. You also run into people who don't like you for one reason or another, people who don't like your style. I have a terrible reputation as a pushy broad, and some people don't like that, but they don't like pushy men either. You shouldn't make the assumption that it's because you're a woman.

You must have had quite a time balancing motherhood with your extremely demanding career.

Donna Shirley: Yes, and the thing that allowed me to become successful in my career was having high quality child care. When I first had my daughter, my secretary had a blood disease. She couldn't work in a stressful environment, but she wasn't incapacitated. She said, "I'd love to take care of your daughter." She took care of Laura in her home and she's a wonderful mother, so I was very comfortable having that relationship. Then she got well and wanted to go back to work, and we were struggling to find that quality of loving care. The Director of JPL, Bruce Murray, decided to start an Advisory Counsel for Women at JPL, to address employee issues.

JPL and Cal Tech invested a small amount of money and started this child care center. Laura was one of the first denizens of the child care center; she started when she was two-and-a-half. They're only two blocks away, so even nursing mothers can go down at lunch and feed the kids, or take breaks during the day. They have a van that goes back and forth. Or people can walk, and get a little exercise. But it's very handy. If a child gets sick, a father can go pick up the child and take her home. You see the fathers in there, just like the mothers, picking up the kids and doing projects at the school.

Child care is extremely important in empowering people to work, particularly when you're trying to get welfare mothers to go to work. They can't go to work if they don't have someone to take care of their children. I think it's incumbent on the government to finance child care for women getting off of welfare, and they're almost all mothers.

Have there been sacrifices in your own family situation because of your work? It's very difficult to have it all.

Donna Shirley: The idea that you have to have it all is really tough. To have it all, you have to have a husband or a mate who is very supportive of what you're doing. I was from a generation where that really wasn't true.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The men my age were not used to having high powered working women, and my marriage didn't survive. My husband was born during the Depression and went through World War II and his mother worked. It was very interesting because his mother worked all her life and kept up the house and everything like that, but she was a textile worker. You know, she was not a powerful professional kind of a person. And so, his model was that women are supposed to do the housework and all that sort of stuff, and men are the breadwinners, even though he knew when we met. I mean, we didn't get married till I was 34 and we had talked about it and we'd worked it all out. And, when it really came down to it, it was just too much against his upbringing and beliefs. I didn't handle it well either.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

Did he want you to be home more?

Donna Shirley: He wasn't sure what he wanted. I was doing all the housework, and he really didn't help with the housework. The relationship just went bad. We were both operating on belief systems from childhood and we were not communicating well. We worked on it, but we never could get over the different paradigms that we were operating under, so we ended up getting divorced, which was hard on Laura.

If I hadn't had the Child Educational Center as a support structure, I probably wouldn't have been as successful in my career as I am. I knew she was well taken care of. She was close, I could go pick her up if she was sick, I could go visit here. In fact, I taught science at her nursery school three days a week for a couple of years. They'd slide down the slide yelling, "Gravity!" And we did leverage experiments, and we did solids, liquids and gases for three and four year-olds. It was really fun.

I felt like I was spending adequate time with her, maybe not as much as I should have, but it was workable. What came apart was the relationship with my husband. I see a lot of remarkable couples, who are obviously both extremely successful and supportive of each other, so it's possible. In the generation younger than me I see a lot more men accept women working and being successful. I think the situation is actually a lot better now than it was for me, but in any marriage you have to work like crazy. If you neglect it, it's going to fall apart.

Was there any moral dilemma about resuming your career, when Laura was very small?

Donna Shirley: Of course there was a moral dilemma. You know that cartoon Sally Forth? She was having a baby at the same time that I was having a baby, so I had all her cartoons posted on my door at work. There was one cartoon where a woman has just turned her child over to a day care person and the child's screaming, and the day care person's waving and the woman is going away with this crinkly little smile and she says, "And my mother said I would feel so guilty," but she's actually kind of relieved.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. What I was not cut out to do was to spend full time with a very small child. I mean, it wasn't that I didn't love her and all that, but I just had been in an adult world with a lot of stimulation and a lot of mental stimulation for so long that I couldn't make the transition. I stayed home for six weeks and nearly went bananas just taking care of this little child. And so, it was really much better for me to have someone who really likes taking care of small children. I mean, I like small children, but not all the time. And so, it just worked out better. I mean, I think if I hadn't gone back to work I would have been resentful and probably a terrible mother.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

She turned out well, in spite of my shortcomings as a mother. She's a living example that the way I did it can really work. She's successful in college, in spite of being an attention deficit disorder child, which was really tough for her.

Donna Shirley Interview, Page: 1   2   3   4   5   6   7