Vargas’ move a step aside or backward?

Like many women, Suzanne Holstein, a New York City schoolteacher and mother of two, has had her struggles balancing motherhood and career.

So she was sympathetic when she heard that ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas, a woman she admires, was stepping down from her prestigious evening-news perch to focus on her growing family.

And yet, like many women across the country, Holstein is not only a little disappointed by Vargas’ move but a little suspicious.

“I can’t believe that a woman who’s worked so hard to get where she is would just resign like that,” says Holstein, 39. “I think they pushed her out.”

Vargas, 43, is hardly a household name like Katie Couric, whose upcoming ascension to the sole anchor chair at CBS has been hailed by many as a breakthrough for women. Yet when Vargas was named ABC co-anchor along with Bob Woodruff last December, she became one of the most visible women in America.

In January, Woodruff was gravely wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, forcing Vargas to go solo. The following month, she announced her pregnancy, which she says was unexpected.

With ratings falling, she was permanently replaced on the evening news last week by 63-year-old Charles Gibson. (She’ll return from maternity leave to co-anchor “20/20.”)

Vargas, who has a 3-year-old son, insists she felt no pressure from above to step down.

“I am not a pregnant working mother wronged,” she told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I played a crucial and active role in this decision. It’s the best thing for me and my family and my career right now. … I have no complaints.

“I don’t feel I’m off this career track permanently in any way, shape or form,” she added. “I have no reason to believe this is anything but a small blip. I’ve been assured from the highest levels that I will have a long career here.”

Feminist groups claim Vargas is just being publicly graceful about what was really her abrupt removal from the job.

“We see it as a demotion,” says Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. “We’re worried. Is this a return to the days when it was tougher for women to get ahead?”

Smeal was one of three feminist leaders to sign a letter to the heads of ABC, along with Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, and Susan Scanlan, chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, asking them to reinstate Vargas.

Whether Vargas was forced out may not be the real issue, says Geneva Overholser, a former ombudsman for The Washington Post.

“Whether it was her choice or not, she certainly speaks the truth – it’s hard to make it work,” Overholser, now at the Washington bureau of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, says of the mommy-work conundrum.

Two decades ago, when faced with the possibility of a big new job, Overholser passed it up; like Vargas, she had one child and was pregnant with another.

Later, she became editor of The Des Moines Register and, she says, “I know I was a much better editor because I was a mother.”

The message to take from the Vargas story, Overholser says, is that while some women manage to combine work and parenthood well, “we mustn’t ever think it’s easy. And yet, we must never think it’s impossible.”