Why Women Still Can’t Have It All

In 2012, Princeton University professor Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote an article that drew worldwide attention. Why did her article attract so much attention? Rather than spread the falsehood that women can have it all, Slaughter boldly spoke the truth. she said women can not Having it all.

As women, we tell ourselves that we can have both a family and a career if we are committed enough, dedicated enough, hardworking enough, have a partner to help us around the house, or delay having children. Slaughter says that while they are not lies, they are partial truths at best. They are skewed truths because there are barriers and flaws in our world that continue to prevent women from achieving impossible so that women have it all.

Slaughter believes that we need to remove stories like these to make room for more honest and productive discussions. Instead of spreading myths that keep barriers and flaws intact, we need to talk about real solutions to the problems facing working women today.

As women, we are lucky to have been born when we were. Our mothers and grandmothers were expected to marry, stay at home, and raise their children. Those who wanted a career outside the home faced many challenges, including overt sexism. These women knew that the only way to succeed in their career was to act like a man and never talk about their children at work.

While we have seen many improvements since these early days of feminism, we still have many challenges ahead. While women today are paid more than in previous generations, are graduating from college in record numbers, holding more leadership positions, and enjoying more prestige than ever before, men continue to dominate the highest-paying jobs and the majority of senior leadership positions. Many women today are single mothers and others are struggling to find work. Some support husbands who can’t find work, and others struggle to find quality childcare that they can afford. The very few women who make it to the top of their organizations have to be Super women to get there they make enormous personal sacrifices and work extremely hard to overcome the barriers and ceilings that stand in their way.

Companies are beginning to realize that when they make changes to improve women’s work lives, these changes actually improve women’s work lives. everyone staff. Studies show that when companies have good family-friendly policies, such as flexible work hours, job sharing, on-site childcare, and the ability to occasionally work from home, they can attract better talent, and this increases productivity. Creativity experts say that connecting play and imagination in the workplace is also important for unleashing creativity in employees. Companies like Google have embraced this idea. They encourage play with ping-pong tables, lightsabers, and policies that allow employees to work on whatever they want one day a week.

Economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson report that women are less happy today than they were in 1972. They call this the paradox of diminishing female happiness. They say this “unhappiness difference” creates a new gender gap that is not measured by salary but by well-being and happiness. They believe that the best way to improve the lot of all women is to close the leadership gap. They say that only when women are in power in large numbers will we create a society that works authentically for all women. And a society that genuinely works for all women, they insist, will genuinely work for all the world.

We are all out of balance between work and life. We are busy and stressed beyond belief. There are never enough hours in the day and we find it impossible to do all the things we know we should. We don’t get enough sleep or exercise, our jobs are demanding, we feel the pressure that comes with parenting, and our own children lead increasingly busy lives. We know this lifestyle has huge emotional and health costs, but we keep running hard because we don’t know how to stop.

In an article called The Great Burnout, author Maryam Sanati writes that the 12-hour workday used to be the exception, but is now the norm. Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce, both of Columbia University, say we’ve become “hard workers.” Jeff Muzzerall, former director of the MBA Corporate Connections Center at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, says the devotion to endless work days has become culturally ingrained.

Because us are unbalanced, our world it is also unbalanced. The gaps continue to grow between rich and poor, and the food and water crises are increasing. More than a billion people are starving, yet a billion and a half adults are overweight, and half of the food produced in the United States goes to waste. Our current methods of mass food production through factory farming, coupled with excessive use of antibiotics and pesticides, are making people and the environment sick. We are in a moment of global economic collapse. We are increasingly dependent on oil, we have experienced a massive erosion of public trust, and our planet is ecologically endangered. Our weather patterns are intensifying as we experience hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, snow, ice storms, and floods of incredible severity. Violence, war and terrorism are “normal” ways of life.

Slaughter tells us that seeking a more balanced life is not a women’s problem, it’s a women’s problem. everyone of us. Change is possible, but we must rethink how we live, work, and even play. We need to create new structures and systems that are balanced, practical and grounded, empowering and empowering. For example, Deborah Epstein Henry, a former litigator for a large law firm, says billable hour, the way the legal system charges for its services, has “perverted” the legal industry, leading to excessive working hours. , massive inefficiency and highly inflated costs. Costs The answer, she argues, is a combination of alternative fee structures, virtual firms, women-owned firms and the outsourcing of certain legal work to other areas. Women and younger lawyers are beginning to drive these changes. Clients who are tired of inflated legal fees are also demanding a change.

If women are to achieve real equality and help create a better world for all, we must stop accepting traditional masculine behavior and masculine choices as the ideal. Slaughter reminds us that wear behavior and WhereChoices as women matter too.

To create a better world, men will need to start asking themselves how they can manage a better work-life balance, just as women have always done. They, too, will need to figure out how to balance active parenthood with their professional careers.

By having these conversations, and by encouraging women to take more active leadership positions, together we will create a world that is properly focused on helping everyone lead happy, healthy, and productive lives.

Then and only then will we be able to rebalance ourselves and the world.

Then, and only then, can women (and men) truly have it all.