Once again, the "have it all" myth has reared it's schizoid head. This time, the poster woman is Facebook's second most famous face, COO Sheryl Sandberg, who graced the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday.
Don't get me wrong. I love Sandberg. We all do. A graduate of the Harvard Business School (and protege of Larry Summers), she's emerged as one of the country's most impressive female power brokers, not to mention role model to women and girls everywhere. And rightly so. As the Chronicle story points out, she's a "passionate advocate for women to claim a far greater share of the top corporate leadership positions." But she says the sharing of leadership starts in the home:
"A world where men ran half our homes and women ran half our institutions would be just a much better world," Sandberg said during a May commencement address at Barnard College in New York City."To solve this generation's central moral problem, which is gender equality, we need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women's voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored," she said.
Deborah Gruenfeld, a leadership and organizational behavior professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, said Sandberg has become "a symbol for a new wave of feminism, where women can own their power by just being women, where you don't have to see that as totally incompatible. You can be feminine and be a totally powerful person."
And hooray for that, right? But where the story threw me sideways was a throw-away line in the preceding paragraph. After writer Benny Evangelista noted that last year Forbes named Sandberg the fifth most powerful woman in the world, and Fortune named her the 12th most powerful woman in business, he wrote:
Yet she still managed to balance her professional life with raising two young children, making her the ultimate role model for women who want to have it all.
That's the issue, isn't it? As women who have come of age in the second half of the twentieth century, we've been raised with the mantra that we can have it all. We can do anything. We can do everything. And yet. Despite the progress we women have made in scarcely more than a generation, the world has not caught up. Workplace structures, public policy -- even the social culture -- is still more reflective of the days of Don Draper, where there was always a Betty at home to take care of business. But who lives like that anymore? In this economy, who could? And the 40-hour workweek? A pipedream, especially once you leap up on the corporate ladder. Or even if you don't. Nonetheless, in most households, women own the second shift. (Even Nobel Prize winners: Biologist Carol Greider of Johns Hopkins University was doing the laundry when she got the call that she had won the Nobel Prize in medicine.)
So, this notion of "having it all." It's great, and all that. But there's a problem of holding up superstars like Sandberg (or Angelina Jolie: We can all birth/adopt a bunch of kids and still find the time to make movies, right?) to convince us that we can run a company and raise a family, all while wearing a big fat smile and some killer high heels. Cue the iconic sex-kitten ad from Enjolie perfume.
And that's what makes me crazy. First, as we explore in Undecided, when we find our own sense of balance entirely off-kilter, which I suspect is most of the time for most of us, we feel as if we're the ones who have blown it. We've chosen wrong. We've done it wrong. Which leaves us lusting after that greener grass: we'll have what she's having, thank you very much. We end up making the political the personal.
And that's just wrong. Because what I find most insidious about perpetrating the have-it-all myth is the fact that when we buy into it, we're lulled into a false state of complacency that keeps us from pushing for the kind of change that would help us all, male and female alike, no matter where we sit on the food chain. But it's going to take work. And conversation.
Not to put more words in Sandberg's mouth, but I suspect she would approve.
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I am not berating that choice, but it is definitely not for me. I want to be the one to raise my children, and be with them as much as I can. So, my husband and I have decided to forgo the luxuries of a dual income, and we do struggle a bit financially, but my kids have everything they need.
On the other hand, by staying home with the kids, I am not 'having it all' either- I am sacrificing my career to be home with them. Once they are older and in school, I may go back to my career as long as it doesn't compromise my mothering. I don't think having it all exists. Being happy in the choices you have made, does exist. And that is the question we should be asking ourselves- are we happy in the choices we have made? Have we adjusted our lives according to our own personal priorities? That is the goal.
It's nice that you have been able to make choices. Most people don't. We are left struggling for survival.
Except it's not a sense of complacency that women are lulled into. They really do fight for what they are told to believe. They push to get through the glass ceiling, to be CEOs, or at least successful at what they do. They push to find the best man they can get, to help pay for the extravagent lifestyle and education for their child.
Far from the have-it-all myth leading to complacency, it is a struggle all the way. Career women are expected to be like men in their determination, independence, etc, yet unlike men, the most ambitious women would want the most succesful spouse that they could find. And this leads to the dual-career, dual-income family which takes away precious resources that could be going to the underemployed in society today. But does this matter? No, and it's not due to complacency. It's due to greed and narcisissm.
People like Sandberg can have it all, and no, they don't have to DO it all. It's typical for successful people to think everyone should live their lives the same way they do. Narcissism, not complacency.
For some people, having and caring for a family will ultimately be more valuable than having a high - powered career: for others (such as myself), having children will *not* be something we want to do. So the first step is to be honest with ourselves about what we truly want, and be strong enough not to give in to external pressures to have a family and/or a career that is not right for us.
In an even better world women would run ALL institutions, and men could run the house for the next hundred years as payback for what they have done to women.
In reality, with his own taxes, a man pays to have his children kidnapped and be extorted. If he refuses the ruling he goes to jail. If he can't afford to pay his kidnapper due to unforseen circumstances he goes to jail.
The Bradley Ammendment states by law there is no excuse for a man not to pay the kidnapper of his children. Men have been released from POW camps only to be imprisoned by the country they risked their life for. Under the Magna Carta debtors prisons were abolished. Under womens divorce law, debtors prison are reinstated.
The majority of child abuse is commited by women, Women are given employment due to quota's and standards drop to accomodate women.
@Terence Manuel
Since a black man is at the top, does that mean all black men are privileged? Who is at the top never translates into equality for any demographic. Womens law is the main reason the economy has been run into the ground. All those entitlements cost trillions a year. HP had a woman at the top she gave herself a bundle and ran the company into the ground. A woman leads the IMF, the world is worse since she took over but she is wealthier. I can go on and on. Just because you refuse to hold women accountable simply makes you part of the problem.
Women control 55% of the wealth, make 85% of all purchases, are 58% of college grads. Men are 85% of the homeless, 97% of industrial accidents, 80% of suicides, the majority of the unemployed. "Man up," is a term used to shame men into silently continuing to suffer. It no longer works oh white knight of the internet. Look to the bottom to see who suffers disproportionally.
If a man dares to not walk on eggshells around her, treating her like an equal, and heaven forbid hurt her feelings, he needs to be punished. So we have an agency to punish him and an agency for any grievance a woman has with a man, plus lawyers fees ect.
Women demand maternity leave for 6 months so we'll have an agency for that and insurance to cover it. She'll demand child care facilities so we'll have an agency for that, insurance and the facility itself. Well all that equality has now doubled and tripled the cost of that road. These policies have extended into every fabric of the western world.
Further, you only point to the very "top" employment. Down at the bottom is where 999 out of 1000 men reside. 94% of industrial deaths/accidents, 80% of suicide, 85% of homeless, the majority of unemployed are men. This is the short list of where most men reside. Western womens idea of equality seems to be women dressing in the finest silk clothing, having fun-filled employment, while men labor for their comfort.
They want to have their cake and eat it too.
And no, I don't mean helping out with the chores and order given to him by her...I mean a real, equal say in the parenting.
Unclear what you mean by this comment.
Men have NOT been more willing to open up corporations and other institutions. Why look at the Board of any S&P 500 company. Look at the number of female CEOs. Even in the health care field where women have excelled, men still run the major hospitals......
Are you saying women are NOT allowing men to participate in joint parenting?
Interesting take you have. I think you are wrong unless I misconstrued your point.
What % of so-called parenting or home experts are men?
What % of school and child psychologists?
Even though women are told they can have the career, the husband and the kids, there are still aspects of traditional femininity they don't manage to lose. And I'm not talking about being sexy or feminine. As this piece suggests, women can be that. But what many women might be unable to do, or don't want to do, is marry a man with less then themselves and in this way, help them to achieve success.
I’ll bet that Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg probably didn't give her husband a helping hand up to his CEO position. Yet if women would do that, society might not be in such dire straits as it is, with so many capable men and women pushed out.
At least men, traditionally, would marry women very different from themselves, and may even have helped them gain fulfillment in life in some occupation or other. But how many career-women are marrying men outside their own occupational class. How many women take a chance on someone who has little to his name, thinking he is not good enough.
And I see dual-career, dual-income families, seeking more security and increased status, who surely are taking away precious resources from the unemployed and underemployed.
Then there are women who choose to marry but not have children. But the subject was women and the idea of 'having it all' so I focused only on the idea of the career, a husband and kids, a house and two cars, and power to make the choices they want.
You assume much about Sandberg. Both were at the top of their businesses before marriage and they have only achieved more success since. Why would you assume she didn't support him? What do you base such an assumption on?
What I meant was, one could pretty well assume they were *equals*, and that's the important part. And you have confirmed that. They were equals, and of course gave one another support, and their mutual success would lead to further success.
What I was suggesting originally was that women like that aren't so likely to marry men way down the ladder, so to speak. Not so likely. the path to success for women comes not with marrying someone lower down but marrying as well as one can. And that's always been the way women did it. And it's the way Sandberg did it.
Men, however, traditionally, would do it via the My Fair Lady route. Pygmalian, right? So what I'm saying is patriarchy still exists, in ways people might not alays recognize. It's how women get ahead. It;s how Mrs Sandberg got ahead. If she's married someone with less status, she wouldn't have made it. Only men can do that and not have it affect their lives.
I never said she didn't support his ambitions.