Even at progressive companies that say they value hiring and promoting women, the default assumption is still that a woman will want to downshift her career once she becomes a mother, if she can afford it.
Considering that men who talk about work, make use of small amounts of available flexibility, or downshift their careers for family reasons are subject to harassment and negative career consequences (see here for details), Levs' very public legal battle will make him no friends at Time Warner.
Ms. Millen and Ms. Frank were also imaginative when the time came to downshift their careers.
But Dr. Alexiades-Armenakas is also among the doctors serving a relatively new niche: high-powered New York professional women of a certain age who do not want to be forced to downshift their careers because of a perception that they are too old.
On the face of it, this would have been a career downshift, a signal that a driver was no longer wanted at the highest level of the sport.
We are living longer, downshifting from the career climb, relocating, watching our families grow and move away, drifting away from lifelong partners (literally or figuratively).
For some, it can be a way to downshift from an on-screen career.
One person who downshifted from a white-collar career is Monty Wilson, 44, who had earned an economics degree and raced up the ladder into a job in finance for one of the world's largest banks, which he declined to name.
Weissglass had already downshifted from a Wall Street law career to a job in community-development banking in Chicago.
"You had to double-clutch to downshift".
