Here's A Shock for Women

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Sarah Fitts, 38, a partner at New York City law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, had planned to do the same. After her husband, Robert, 36, received his Ph.D. from Brown, she figured she would follow him to a college town where he would teach and she'd "hang a shingle and do house closings." Kathleen Holmgren's career was also eclipsed by her husband's. After she and Bob both graduated with honors in industrial engineering, they earned MBAs, he from Berkeley, she from Stanford. Bob got the blue-chip job-in brand management at Clorox-while Kathleen, a high school homecoming queen, went to a little company nobody had heard of: Sun Microsystems.