I'm fed up with people telling women that if they just make the right personal choices at the right time in the right order, then there's no problem fitting career, marriage and kids into their lives. That's a load of crap. If anyone could have PLANNED her way through this, it would have been me.

Chantal Sutherland has shattered public perception by making a fortune in the male-dominated world of horse racing as a jockey.

"Good girls go to Heaven, but bad girls go everywhere." So said Helen Gurley Brown, longtime editor of Cosmopolitan and game changer for women.

Marissa Mayer and Anne-Marie Slaughter have provided two amazing high-profile examples of one strategy for breaking through subconscious stereotypes -- exposing people to alternatives.

What if we stopped using that phrase? Maybe we choose the Voldemort option -- the phrase that must not be named.

Try and picture a magazine cover story about her -- the deeply satisfied, happy-with-herself woman. It's hard to even imagine, because we never see her in our cultural theater.

I think my generation is ready for the fight to have it all. As ambitious as we are, our naiveté and idealism is perfect fuel to pioneer a progressive working lifestyle that can work for both genders.

"A world where men ran half our homes and women ran half our institutions would be just a much better world," Sandberg said. But this isn't our world.

It's that time of year again. In January, most of us consider (at least briefly) how we can improve ourselves and (sometimes) do something about it...