Comment: Can Women Have It All?

So there's a certain article doing the rounds at the moment, it is authored by Anne-Maire Slaughter, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and former Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department. It is a long essay - 6 pages - published in the July/August edition of the magazine The Atlantic. It is entitled "Why Women Still Can't Have it All" and has resulted in a media storm with (at time of posting) 981 "plus 1's" on Google+, 154,000 recommends on Facebook and 1822 comments on the original article. It is the most viewed article in the magazine to date.

Here are some of the main points I pulled out of the article:
Her experience

1. Anne-Marie was working away from home weekdays and would travel to the family home at weekends to be with her two teenage sons and husband (also an academic at Princeton).
2. She did this for three years before deciding to leave, declaring the reason as wanting to spend more time with her family, especially one son who was finding life a bit difficult.
3. She returned to an academic post as professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton.
4. Since reflecting on this period she feels that having such a high-pressure job and being fully present for your family are incompatible and thus women can't "have it all".

Half-Truths we hold dear

It's possible if you are just committed enough

 It's possible if you marry the right person

 It's possible if you sequence it right

Her recommendations

1. Change the culture of "face-time" - why stay late when work can be done from home?
2. Revalue family values - other outside work commitments are treated differently to being a parent
3. Redefine the arc of a successful career - stair stepping with intervals to pay into the "family bank"
4. Rediscover the pursuit of happiness - making family references normal in professional life
5. Enlist men to the conversation 

So what do you think? Is it much easier to find this work-life balance in academia where timetables are often self-supervised? Is there the same culture of competitive "face time", how about the inflexibility of field work?

Here are some other responses to the article, do comment back with any other interesting comments, or blogs that you have found discussing this topic:

• The Atlantic - 3 charts showing how mums and dads balance work and family
• The Guardian - Anne-Marie Slaughter and The Fiction of "Have it All" Feminism
• Belfast Telegraph - Women Can't Have it All But Maybe Their Daughters Can
• Huffington Post - Anne-Marie Slaughter: Why One Woman Reached The Top, Then Left
• Harvard Business Review - Women (and Men) can Have it All

Oh the irony...

...that getting married (back in April) took up so much time that I neglected a blog about work-life balance as a woman!

But we're back.

I am now working on a fixed term contract with WildCRU to review the global trade of exotic pets. This is my first review for publication and I am learning lots about a topic that I was previously unfamiliar with. In the autumn I am heading off to Imperial College London where I have been accepted for a place on the MSc in Conservation Science - a brilliant collaborative masters between Imperial, ZSL, DICE and Kew Gardens.

Claudia is in Borneo again doing her major field season for her PhD at the SAFE project (http://www.safeproject.net).

Here's to a new season, and a cartoon about irony: