It’s graduation time and in most places as many women as men will be handed college degrees.

In a survey of close to 62,000 people, fashion magazine Elle suggests that men and women are becoming a lot alike in the workplace. Men and women are similarly talented and competitive as well as equally honest.

But there is an essential difference: Women are twice as likely as men to interrupt the business day to take care of a child.

Do we as a culture facilitate the additional and vital role women continue to play as primary caregiver?

It’s doubtful. This seems decidedly shortsighted in a world that knows well that a stable home life is essential – for the civic good, the health of children and their education, even the redirection of violent personalities a la Virginia Tech.

Twenty-six years ago, Pope John Paul II published a thoughtful reflection called “The Christian Family in the Modern World.” In this apostolic exhortation, “Familiaris Consortio,” the pope wrote: “The mentality which honors women more for their work outside the home than for their work within the family must be overcome.” The phraseology gives priority to family.

The survey in Elle and the government’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that close to half the workforce (46%) is female, with 75% of women working full time.

Thirty-eight percent of employed women are in highly demanding management and professional positions, from lawyers to business executives to pharmacists and human resource directors.

These folks deserve a little special attention.

For a while, a few companies talked of flextime and job sharing, but increasingly this is more illusion than reality.

Why?

The Conference Board Review attributes it to demands for increased corporate performance (profits) and the advent of new technology (cell phones, laptops and BlackBerries) which raise the expectation that one will be in the office – at least virtually – at all times.

These increased demands are made on men and women who are fathers and mothers. But if somebody’s mom is going to work in the next office, we say, “Well, she better be putting in the same time as the next guy” finding new clients, closing deals and making sales.

Our sense of equality is premised on scorekeeping. We tend to ignore the papal admonition to honor women who simultaneously fulfill commitments to office and home.

And if we are honest, some men and even some women who chose not to raise children might actually resent making allowances for those contributing to the dual communities of work and family.

How might we change things?

First off, ask chief executives to take a closer look at reality. Top executives with ample resources for full-time childcare may be unwittingly blind.

Second, we might press all those folks running for president to creatively think how the laws might be rewritten to favor the economic compensation of those who are working and nurturing family at the same time. Family tax-code allowances and credits used to do this, but they have effectively disappeared.

Third, we can adjust our own attitudes. We can recognize that the daughters we are sending to college and graduate school yearn for “life to the full,” in the business and family sense, and incredibly often manage to do reasonably well.

In 2007, the papal instruction may warrant a respectful update. Neither women nor men should be honored more for their work outside the home, but then again, women alone should not have to keep demonstrating against an unbending culture how extraordinary love can accomplish both.

Douglas W. Kmiec is a law professor, who writes a syndicated column for Catholic News Service. It occasionally appears in The Tablet.