This is a great piece at The Atlantic by Anne-Marie Slaughter and everyone is talking about it.
“Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” is long and jam-packed with excellent points; it is a sophisticated discussion of women’s lives and the problems we encounter balancing work and family.. and you almost never see a nuanced discussion like this in the public arena. I loved this article, of course I do, it is making many of the same arguments that myself and some other feminist bloggers have been making foreveeeeeeeeeer. And it is getting enormous mainstream attention and with that the opportunity for genuine public debate and change. Hooray.
Here’s the TL;DR version:
- The backlash against women by other career women when those women ‘opt out’ or ‘slow down’ at work. Women are being blamed for not being able to combine a demanding job with family life by other women.
- How the message has changed in the way it is delivered to young women (for better and worse) from ‘you can have it all’ to ‘you can’t have it all’.
- This new message lets workplace change ‘off the hook’.
- Women (and men) who have managed to ‘have it all’ are frequently never forced to confront how much of that achievement has been down to the fortune of having family-friendly working arrangements, elements that are missing from most other jobs in the USA.
- High powered jobs may only be sustainable for parents for a maximum of two years and what cost is there for this loss of experience?
- Women in leadership roles need to be more open to hearing the truth from younger women about the difficulties with combining work and family given the way workplaces are arranged. Less individualism, less personal blame.
- All the unidentified advantages many women in leadership positions have over other mothers and being careful not to over-generalise their experiences.
- The half-truths: it’s possible if you’re just committed enough; it’s possible if you marry the right person; and, it’s possible if you sequence it right.
- How to fix this: changing the culture of face time; revaluing family values; redefining the arc of a successful career; rediscovering the pursuit of happiness; innovation nation; and, enlisting men; .
Like I said, everyone is talking about this article and here are some of the more interesting conversations:
“Why Does the Atlantic Hate Women?” at The American Prospect.
She’s right about this core truth: Being both a good parent and an all-out professional cannot be done the way we currently run our educational and work systems. When I talk to friends who’ve just had children, here’s what I tell them: Being a working parent in our society is structurally impossible. It can’t be done right, so don’t blame yourself when you’re failing. You’ll always be failing at something—as a spouse, as a parent, as a worker. Just get used to that feeling. Slaughter’s entire article is worth reading for her nuanced exploration of that alone. It’s true for people at the top; it’s even more true for people at the bottom, who have no sick leave, no choice in their shifts, no freedom to run over to the school if a child is sick.
“Anne-Marie Slaughter Looks at the Real (and Messy) Balance Between Motherhood and Feminism” at Balancing Jane.
And I know that so much of that earlier debate focused on how women’s “choices” can’t be at the heart of feminism, but I just don’t buy it. I think that it’s valid to want to be a valuable professional, and I think that it’s valid to want to be a competent parent. I don’t think that those choices and wants are somehow outside of the debate of feminism. I think that they are at the very core of that debate.
I also think it’s very important to pay attention to the way that Slaughter frames the importance of role models. Jill’s comment on Feministe was largely about how women need to be in those high-profile jobs to pave the way for the young feminists coming up behind them. But Slaughter’s experience suggest that simply being present in those jobs is not enough. The young women coming up behind her have, time and time again, expressed that they have no interest in following her unless there is a path that allows them a balance between family and work.
“Maybe It Would Help If We Called It Having A Life Instead Of ‘It All'” at Wandering Scientist.
This is why I think you should go read the article, even if it feels like rewarding the editors of The Atlantic for their mother-baiting. The quality of the article makes up for the obnoxiousness of its presentation. It is long, but it is worth the time. I liked seeing someone in a mainstream venue look at the work vs. family issues and conclude that the problem is with the work place, not the women. If there is anything I hate more than writing that inflames the “mommy wars” it is writing that refuses to contemplate the possibility that a work environment that is currently unfriendly to people who want a life outside of work could change without undermining the company involved.
“More Thoughts on Blogging” at Echidne of the Snakes.
That’s an old method of ruling: Telling people that they must all fight over the crumbs under the table of the actual rulers, that the enemy is that other person crawling there next to you, not the guys and gals sitting at the table. The mummy/mommy wars are real but they are also excellent devices to keep women divided and thus easier to control.
We should probably all get anger training. Some of us need to reign our anger in more, others need to let it out albeit in controlled ways. But the kind of anger Wurtzel’s piece provokes is not going to be used for any kind of constructive energy.
This is why I don’t want to join in the debates as such although the basic theoretical reasons why the debates exist need to be analyzed. And that is why I want the anger aimed at the real culprit: The system and its myths and how they manage us, not on other women.
“Elite Women Put A New Spin On An Old Debate” in The New York Times.
When Ms. Sandberg confessed in a recent interviewthat, contrary to her work-hound reputation, she leaves work at 5:30 p.m. to eat dinner with her children, and returns to a computer later, she earned yet another round of attention, and her words were taken as the working-mom equivalent of a papal ruling.
But her advice also spurred quiet skepticism: by putting even more pressure on women to succeed, was she, even unintentionally, blaming the victim if they did not?
Enter Ms. Slaughter’s article, posted Wednesday night, in which she described a life that looked like a feminist diorama from the outside (a mother and top policy adviser for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton) but was accompanied by domestic meltdown (workweeks spent in a different state than her family, a rebellious teenage son to whom she had little time to attend). As she questioned whether her job in Washington was doable and at what cost, she began hearing from younger women who complained about advice like Ms. Sandberg’s.
“Anne-Marie Slaughter in The Atlantic” at Bitch Magazine.
As a childfree young-ish person, I found Slaughter’s arguments both interesting and depressing. Slaughter herself mentions a generational shift she’s noticed in women’s expectations, and I have to anecdotally agree. Women of my generation don’t, in my experience, expect to “have it all” (which in this case means a successful career and kids) without making big sacrifices. The very notion of having “it all” sounds so ludicrous to me that I can’t help but put it in quotes.
And here’s a good interview with Anne-Marie Slaughter at the fabulous The Hairpin.
If Women’s Liberation meant anything, it meant giving women a full range of choices, so that if a woman thinks that that’s what she’s best at, and that’s what she’s happiest doing, then we absolutely need to validate that choice. And many women have written about that. About the importance of not buying into the idea that going to work is only done outside the home. At the same time, the whole reason there was a feminist movement in the first place was that overwhelming numbers of women found that they wanted to have more choices, so it’s not like we haven’t tried a world in which women stayed home. And I think some will, and great. I would go crazy. If I stayed home. I would go ab. Solutely. Crazy. I think my own mother, who became a professional artist, would have been happier in many ways if she’d had both a career and children when we were young, because she’s a very creative person and I think she needed an outlet other than in the house.
It’s a question of following your own instincts. But I’m pretty confident that given the right conditions, a huge number will choose to do both. But they’re not going to choose to do both if it keeps coming down to a choice between one or the other. And that’s what I meant by as long as you give me flexibility, I can do just abut anything. I can work and then go home to be with my kids, and then go back to work later, or take a business trip and work like crazy, but then spend a couple days being a mom. And many women — I think virtually all women — can manage that. The problem is where they work.
It’s such a great article and I linked to it too! Being a working parent is still structurally impossible in Germany. The school day for grade school kids ends before lunch – which is why I spend 12 years freelancing and working from home. I have just succeeded in going back to work fulltime and only because I send my kids to an all-day private school – which is not optimal, not for me nor for other women. I work in the software industry, which offers a lot of workplace flexibility, but the middle and top level management layers are almost exclusively male – people who didn’t take a decade out of their careers to look after the kids. There is still a long, long way to go to achieve real workplace equality and I am grateful that people like Anne-Marie Slaughter are being frank about it and generating discussions like these.
When I read this again just now it made me think that by trying to have it all we are all trying to be the person on top of the human pyramid. Highflyers, often men, have a whole heap of people underneath them working to keep the pyramid going, usually most notably a wife/girlfriend/partner. When women try to do this the pyramid isn’t there so it all falls down.
What I thought was that this woman really needed a ‘wife’ someone to pick up the drycleaning, do the washing/housework/cooking and remember all those little housekeeping details. Like Alice on the Brady Bunch. Or servants in Edwardian England. Until our partners are willing to take on their share of all the unseen housework then we can’t have it all.
I don’t disagree AT ALL, but I feel compelled to mention- she could have bought her way out of some of the logistical issues, too, without resorting to Edwardian style servants. There are services that will pick up your dry cleaning for you, for instance. I also know of some high powered women who have hired college students to help out with this sort of thing- and I actually know one of the former helpers who speaks about how much she got from that interaction, because in addition to paying for the help, the high flyer was also offering some mentoring.
I don’t for a minute argue that our work environment shouldn’t change- in fact I argue for that change frequently on my blog, albeit more from the “these long hours are actually hurting our projects” viewpoint. (I agree with the “it sucks and penalizes parents” viewpoint, too, for the record.) But, I was in the group that mostly liked Slaughter’s piece while hating the cover/headline, and still I found myself thinking “damn, you and your husband make really good money. Pay for some more help!” Not that doing so would have changed her outcome, but because I can’t help myself from thinking that sort of thing.
The women I think are really screwed by our current system aren’t so much the ones on the top as the ones on the bottom, who have no option to buy their way out of problems and certainly can’t “opt out” of the workforce. Sure, there is A LOT I’d change about our work environment to make my life easier/happier/less sexism-infused. But on the whole, I’m pretty damn lucky and my life is pretty damn good.
And thanks, Blue Milk, for including my post in your roundup. Will sit back and watch my stats soar now. 🙂
Thanks Cloud, I wasn’t aware that there were those sort of services available, although it makes sense that there are in big cities at least. The part pay/part mentoring is interesting too. Yes, I would have thought that they could have paid for more help, but I guess until you are in someone’s shoes you can’t really judge how they spend their pay. I did wonder if it had been her husband working in Washington if he would have blinked an eye about moving them all for the two years.
[…] Why women can’t have it all, why they’re not to blame and how we can make it better by lovely Aussie feminist blogger Bluemilk […]
I love the “have a life” one. Because when I’ve worked part time there have been two kinds of people: parents of young children, and people with serious lives outside of work – high-level amateur athletes, political activists, students, artists, writers, dancers, musicians (maybe there’s less of this in places with universal health care?), caregivers of dependents who aren’t children, people with chronic illnesses. They all did excellent work but would have been crappy full-time employees because they put most of their time outside of work.
I actually had some issues with this article. Though I agree that it is WAY more nuanced than most articles discussing this topic, it still felt like there was too much generalization and gender-specificity going on for my liking. Primarily, I think that her issue with working hours is not a WOMEN’s issue but a PEOPLE’s issue. Then, I’m not a fan of her opinion that women sometimes need to be there. Sure, sometimes both parents need to be present. But otherwise, give your partner a chance to handle it. I refuse to believe that, once babies are weaned, mothers are sooo much more special than fathers that fathers can’t handle these issues too.
Boston Globe reported Sat., June 23, that the Slaughter was the most visited article in the history of Atlantic Monthly’s web site.
What do you think about the idea that this article espouses “trickle-down” feminism?
http://www.racialicious.com/2012/06/27/the-atlantic-article-trickle-down-feminism-and-my-twitter-mentions-god-help-us-all/
Great article Karen L. For trickle down feminism to work you have to assume that there is enough to actually trickle down to the lowest levels (and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good thing that gets that far, it gets all soaked up) and that what is trickling down is actually going to meet the needs of those it is trickling down too. As the article says, if it is done by powerful women for powerful women is it really going to be applicable to a low socioeconomic woman and is she going to be allowed to take advantage of it.
[…] Why women can’t have it all, how they’re not to blame, and how we can make it better(bluemilk.wordpress.com) […]
[…] Three posts, all looking at different aspects of women and work. Penguin Unearthed gives us an update on women on boards and some recent research and studies in Europe to promote equal opportunity in higher-up positions. Deborah at A Bee of a Certain Age writes about working mothers, and how policies aimed only at making sure sole parents are working do nothing to actually address working mothers’ problems. And you know how we’re always talking about having it all? Blue Milk reviews an article about why women can’t have it all, and discusses how they’re not to blame, and how we can make…. […]
When did women as individuals get entitled to what men never had? Reaping the benefits of being part of a family always meant the sacrifice of taking responsibility for whatever logistics and their skills and abilities best equip each family member to do. Whether talking about material possessions, leisure pursuits, or love and care, only the family as a unit “has it all” because each member in the family shares what they have. If women “have it all” is any left for men?
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2012/11/16/the-missing-ingredient-to-womens-happiness/
Way to miss the point.
What did men never have? Men have it all now, is that what you are worried about losing?
“Men have it all now, is that what you are worried about losing?”
The fact that public policy is based on misinformation like what you just said is part of the issue. The statistic that women earn 3/4 of men’s wages has long been proven false (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb_6v-JQ13Q). Women under 30 now earn 8% more than men do. That gap is growing rapidly as young men are falling behind. Men are graduating from university in some cases at only 30% of the graduating class and still education departments reject programs for struggling boys while encouraging ones for already excelling girls. A number of judges and lawyers have gone on record to say that divorce laws being so anti-male is part of the reason men’s suicide rate after divorce is 10X that of women. This misinformation persists because women so strongly tend to object to any male disagreeing with a woman on gender issues that publishing male opinions on such issues can affect the profitability of media companies, while men have no preference for the opinions of other men and if anything will tend to act in the interests of women as well. As a result editorial staff on all popular western media uniformly ban men from raising addressing any gender issues that also deeply impact men. Feminist censorship in the popular media is now so pervasive that men have no public say in anything perceived to be gender issues even where the resulting policies concern men heavily as well. Isn’t being only allowed to publicly discuss rights for women and responsibility for men is just the pendulum of inequality swinging the other way? If feminism is for equality where do its responsibilities lie when women become “more equal”?
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2012/11/21/feminist-censorship/
Bluemilk I’m sorry I fed the troll. If you need me to send massage vouchers let me know okay. For serious. Or wine, I can send wine too.
Mindy
… way to suppress any possibility of intelligent discussion.
thinking + motherhoodridicule + censorship = feministBut sure … I could use the massage vouchers and wine.
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2012/11/21/feminist-censorship/
Censorship? Did feminists take control of the internet and no one told me? Really can someone PLEASE send a memo next time? Or a text that would be fine. Hell tweet me. Come on people!
It would only be possible to interpret my words that way if you skipped reading the entire essay I forwarded you to. When you reply without reading what you’re replying to don’t you find that a little embarrassing? If you do take the time to read it I’ll certainly take a little time in turn for a discussion with you if there are any issues you’d like to clarify. But if you have merely uninformed sarcasm I’d be too bored to work up the motivation. Here’s the link again. Take a look if you’re intellectually curious. You never know you might see things a different way. After all I’m sure you’re in favor of equal rights for men too right?
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2012/11/21/feminist-censorship/
Ethical, I am not going to read your essay. I am not going to engage in any more discussion with you. I have no interest in your views as I am confident you have no interest in mine. I suggest that you look up the definition of censorship if you think you are being censored. I think you are being a bit precious actually. Equality is not a zero sum game and women are still being paid less than men no matter how you wrangle the statistics. Men are still responsible for the majority of violence perpetrated in society – against women and other men. Women are not responsible for the crap done by men. Take some responsibility for yourselves for once.
You’d be wrong on all counts. Firstly if you had an argument I would have listened to it. That’s how thoughtful and intelligent people become that way. Secondly when equality is reached woman can only gain more rights by taking them away from men so it does become a zero sum game, thirdly women are being paid slightly MORE than men (but if you have no interest in the evidence you can of course believe anything you choose), and lastly women actually initiate the MAJORITY of domestic abuse, both against their husbands and against their children. You asked that someone “send you a memo”. There it is.
What an unmitigated load of crap and victim blaming. I don’t want your whiny self important blinkered memos. Please fuck off.
These articles are so very pertinent to my workplace right now. I wanted to highlight the political atmosphere, even with policies that are much more progressive and family friendly than the majority of workplaces in Australia… I work in allied health and have the enormous advantage of being able to request two years maternity leave, (unpaid after leave entitlements which ended long ago)… which I have done, without fear of being permanently replaced or sidelined when I return – also with the knowledge that another worker will have the opportunity to work in my role for a good length of time, gain experience and enhance her value as a worker.
This has been invaluable and something I am forever grateful for – my son has a number of conditions which would make child-care a nightmare for him and myself…. However my manager, a highly dynamic and intelligent woman (who is child-free) spent two hours with me (I was 6 months pregnant) trying to establish that I was not entitled to the Parental Leave payment, discussing how the maternity leave laws in this country are way too generous, putting child free women at a disadvantage, and then giving me misleading information about my choices when I do return to work. I contacted HR once on maternity leave and dealt directly with them to alter my arrangements as it was so stressful dealing with her.
I have two friends also on maternity leave, in a different section with a different manager, given similar treatment and false information about when they had to return and in what capacity, who did not follow it up as they were afraid of upsetting management. I am dreading returning despite loving my work as I know I will be dealing with major backlash and having to spend energy defending my completely legal and sanctioned decision and that is before we even get to the work/family balance issue!!! I work in a middle-class industry with protected permanent emplyment conditions! How must it be for people working casually/seasonally/on contract or for an unsympathetic business owner??