How much, then, I was touched and disturbed by this article I just finished reading at The New York Times. I have started down the road of the last third of my life which will, I hope, last a good 30 years or so - but no one comes with a guarantee, do they. What I see happening in this country is profoundly upsetting and discouraging. As a product of that generation of women talked about in the article -- you know, the so-called pioneers -- I can only shake my head and ask myself "Why the hell did you even bother, Jan?"
Pulished: June 21, 2012
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.
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