Elite Women Put a New Spin on an Old Debate
June 22, 2012 1:04 pm
If a woman has a sterling résumé, a supportive husband who
speaks fluent car pool and a nurturing boss who just happens to be one
of the most powerful women in the world herself, who or what is to blame
if Ms. Supposed-to-Have-It-All still cannot balance work and family?A magazine article by a former Obama administration official has blown up into an instant debate about a new conundrum of female success: women have greater status than ever before in human history, even outpacing men in education, yet the lineup at the top of most fields is still stubbornly male. Is that new gender gap caused by women who give up too easily, unsympathetic employers or just nature itself?
The article in The Atlantic, by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton professor who recently left a job at the State Department, added to a renewed feminist conversation that is bringing fresh twists to bear on longstanding concerns about status, opportunity and family. Unlike earlier iterations, it is being led not by agitators who are out of power, but by elite women at the top of their fields, like the comedian Tina Fey, the Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and now Ms. Slaughter. In contrast to some earlier barrier-breakers from Gloria Steinem to Condoleezza Rice, these women have children, along with husbands who do as much child-rearing as they do, or more.
The conversation came to life in part because of a compelling face-off of issues and personalities: Ms. Slaughter, who urged workplaces to change and women to stop blaming themselves, took on Ms. Sandberg, who has somewhat unintentionally come to epitomize the higher-harder-faster school of female achievement.
Starting a year and a half ago, Ms. Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, injected new energy into the often circular work-or-home debate with videotaped talks that became Internet sensations. After bemoaning the lack of women in top business positions, she instructed them to change their lot themselves by following three rules: require your partner to do half the work at home, don't underestimate your own abilities, and don't cut back on ambition out of fear that you won't be able to balance work and children.
The talks transformed Ms. Sandberg from little-known executive to the new face of female achievement, earning her untold letters and speaking invitations, along with micro-inspection of her life for clues to career success. She hired a sociologist, Marianne Cooper, to help her get the research and data right. When Ms. Sandberg confessed in a recent interview that, 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.
"Women of my generation have clung to the feminist credo we were raised with ... because we are determined not to drop the flag for the next generation," Ms. Slaughter wrote. "But when many members of the younger generation have stopped listening, on the grounds that glibly repeating 'you can have it all' is simply airbrushing reality, it is time to talk."
"Although couched in terms of encouragement, Sandberg's exhortation contains more than a note of reproach," Ms. Slaughter continued, an insinuation of "What's the matter with you?'"
Instead, Ms. Slaughter said, the workplace needs to adapt, and women who opt out have no need to apologize.
In an interview, Ms. Slaughter added that she was motivated to write in part by her concern about the number of women serving in high posts under President Obama -- and now that the first round of female appointees is leaving, she said, they are mostly being replaced by men. "I don't think there is sufficient appreciation across the administration as a whole of the different circumstances facing women and men," she said.
Unlike in earlier eras, when Germaine Greer would publish one book and then Betty Friedan would weigh in months later, a new crop of feminist bloggers and writers now respond instantaneously. The women they were writing about followed along in real time on Thursday as well, reading the debate as they were living it, inhaling Ms. Slaughter's article and the responses as they stole a few minutes from work or raced off to pick up their children. By Thursday afternoon, Ms. Slaughter's confession-slash-manifesto was breaking readership records for The Atlantic's Web site, according to a magazine representative.
Many responded with enthusiasm for Ms. Slaughter's recommendations (more latitude to work at home, career breaks, matching work schedules to school schedules, even freezing eggs). Some defended Ms. Sandberg or expressed solidarity with their husbands, who they said feel just as much work-life agita as they do. More than a few said they were irritated by what they called outdated language ("having it all") and a clichéd cover illustration (Baby, check. Briefcase, check).
"Irresponsibly conflating liberation with satisfaction, the 'have it all' formulation sets an impossible bar for female success and then ensures that when women fail to clear it, it's feminism -- as opposed to persistent gender inequity -- that's to blame," Rebecca Traister wrote in an article on Salon.com.
For her part, Ms. Sandberg remained silent, declining a request to address the Atlantic article. But Ms. Slaughter said in an interview that the Silicon Valley executive was one of the many readers who e-mailed her as soon as the article came out. Her message: they had to talk more about this, and soon.
much of what might make things easier are social programs/supports that we Americans are not likely to pass or pay for.
so it seems that women still have a dilemma and that it is absurd for those who are aggressive and successful to disparage less agressive and more family oriented lifestyles.
My husband and I were fighting this battle 20 years ago. Divvying up a hectic schedule of daycare/preschool drop-offs and pick-ups, having kids nap under our desks after school when there was no other alternative, etc. Workplaces were supposed to become family-friendly back then too. It was all a pipe dream. Here's a newsflash. The women bosses I've had in the past and the women running the company I work at now are the least likely to support flexibility in the workplace. Explain that? Those times I was able to fight for and win a job-share or a work-at-home arrangement (usually granted with conditions) male bosses were most supportive.
You mean to tell me that the modern six-figure husbands of today still expect their driven, seven-figure wives to iron their shirts?
We need perspective here. The women profiled in this article are laughable. These are the women who make hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year. We're supposed to believe that they're cleaning their own toilets and helping little Brandon with his homework. This is the crowd that overschedules their children and has live-in help. They ALREADY have it all. What more could they possibly want?
They should be advocating for regular women who hold done one, two, or three low-five-figure jobs and work in hostile, inflexible workplaces.
There is anecdotal evidence that many women who make it to the top in the competitive business world find the rewards not all that worth it. A kind of "Is this all there is?" feeling. The rewards of family and friends should not have to take second place to being succussful. People who are narcissitic and highly competitive don't find ignoring family and friends a sacrafice at all. Let's not sink to the lowest common denominator and confuse greed with being truly succussful in life.
What's more, the rest of the country is working for lower and lower paying jobs that leave less and less time for almost any humane and decent aspect of life.
Something has to break. We have to find a new way of doing things. The old recidivist answers of a return to family values and all that palp are just reinscriptions of the same old prison bars.
In a phone conversation recently, my older son commented: "I love being a husband. I love being a father. I love the science I do. I love the management role I have and helping people develop their skills and further their projects. I have even come to love the business aspect of what I do. I just can't seem to make it all fit."
My son and his wife both work for their living, and both have positions of significant responsibility. They live simply, by choice. They share household and maintenance chores and the care and fun of their daughter equally. They each attend work days at their daughter's school. and PTA meetings.I have watched them, with apparent good humor, juggle a myriad of responsibilities.
If an extremely well-educated couple with one child, with a seemingly endless capacity for hard work, and with a tested willingness to share the labor has such feelings, then we, as a society are doing something wrong. It is time for a change, time for us to be specific and clear about what we need and want.
The women you cite in your article are all successful to a degree to which few men attain. One assumes that they also enjoy a level of compensation appropriate to that status (ok the State Dept doesn't pay all that well, but still). So, under the premise that money can't buy you everything but you can pick your own misery, we should question how that affects the vast majority of women who will never reach that rarefied level of success and financial resources.
To what degree is this an issue with all women, as opposed to pertaining to a subset of high achievers hitting the same constraints which always existed for men in those positions, but who feel guiltier about it? Yes, wives make it possible for male executives, but they don't spend all that much time with their families either. If these women had the male equivalents of those wives, would that change the situation or is this being driven by something else, something perhaps more personal or primal?
Thing is, no one has the right to tell a woman what she is supposed to do or feel. Everyone has to figure out their own priorities and live with the implications. We can't have it all.
Not everyone wants or needs to be CEO and I think it's most unfair make stay-at-home mothers feel somehow inferior to those who strive to lead.
To my view, Ms. Slaughter has it all now, and did before moving to Washington. She (and I) are both lucky enough to have an interesting, full-time, profession which she enjoys, and a family, including a wonderful supportive husband. Where we disagree is the expectation that she could commute, only see her kids on weekends but still feel satisfied. When did feminism say you could be a long-distance parent?
Ms. Slaughter had it all but had the opportunity to do something extraordinary, so sacrificed family for 2 years in service to our country. Just as a member of the armed service has to sacrifice family while deployed, so did Ms. Slaughter. To exaggerate, an astronaut can't be a good parent while away but I doubt we would use that example as a slam on feminist expectations and feminism itself.
You can't achieve work/life balance with every job without any compromises. The nature of the job and the compromises change, depending on the circumstances. This is not specific to women.
I think a meaningful yardstick is to compare the work/life balance of women and men in similar, 80+ hr/wk high-pressure jobs, especially out of town. There is none, for either gender. Why would women expect something which has never been available to our male colleagues?
Both women and men can have careers and families. There are always compromises involved. Feminism is neither to blame for the compromises nor the unrealistic expectations.
The feminist mantra that I'm tired of is the one that notes that if you make the conscious decision not to try and "have it all," you are somehow incredibly selfish. I would call it rational prioritizing. Raising children is a huge commitment and requires investments of time, energy, and enthusiasm that will have to be shared across the parenting partnership. Even with a supportive partner, I recognize that my work and my lifestyle would leave a child shortchanged.
We have to stop the nonsense that accompanies the "having it all" mindset - it doesn't apply to either females or males. We all have to make choices about what is important to who we are and want to be as individuals.
There is lots of cognitive dissonance for women who are working and raising a family, much more if you have to do it on minimum/low wages, by yourself or with an uncooperative partner. According to cognitive dissonance theory, you can't have it both ways--eventually you are doing to have to choose when you are between a rock and a hard place. Which I did at one point in my career, and then I breathed much easier. The choice is personal one.
BUT, while we women are flailing away at each other about 'having it all," we should be directing our energy at creating a healthier workplace for everyone. Americans are highly productive and killing themselves (afraid to take a day off or vacation for fear it may hurt us--and in our business environment it will, unfortunately). Take a look at how the Scandinavian countries handled work and family. There is a balance, but the business culture and right-wing political trend in the US works against women, families, and simple kindness--really not your "family values" people, despite what they say.
So when women are in positions of authority at work they can push to make it happen--but most don't/won't.
Society can and should change and offer more help to both women and men, such as affordable, safe day care for parents and more employment opportunities with flexibility, but there will always be situations and jobs which will require decisions and trade-offs to be made. I made choices and trade-offs on the way to becoming a partner at an accounting firm while raising two sons. I had a wonderful male boss/mentor who was a parent himself and he allowed me some flexibility. But my husband had his own job and did not do much at home, which meant I killed myself at times working 60 to 80 hour work weeks while raising my sons and keeping the household afloat. Flexibility at work only goes so far, but I was lucky to have choices and I made them.
I retired last year. Shortly afterwards, while cleaning a closet, I found some high school papers my sons had saved. I cried when I read in my son's autobiographic essay that his mother was "a nice lady, and she's always there, but she's never really there, if you know what I mean." Choices were made.