Sherie, while I personally agree with your conception of "having it all" (happiness and value-add to society), I don't think that Slaughter's conception (high powered career + family) is any less valid, as I’d imagine that some women (and men) work in their high-powered jobs not for salary or prestige, but because they find the work meaningful and fulfilling. I’d venture to say that “having it all” could mean something different to everyone, as a personal notion of what it means to "have it all" is, by definition, a highly individualized matter based on individual priorities and preferences. Slaughter acknowledges that she’s specifically addressing a narrow population, comprised of women at the upper echelon of their professions who seek to balance their success at work with a desire to also raise children and be present to parent them. I don’t think she was shocked that she missed her kids, and I actually thought she spoke with considerable candor in acknowledging that perhaps her gender played a role in how she experienced the impact of being away from her kids. Actually, my main qualm here was that Slaughter presumptively imposes her construct of what it means to “have it all” on other high-powered professional women (Condoleezza Rice, as an example) solely because they are similarly situated to her professionally and therefore members of her target audience.

Irrespective of whether Slaughter’s framework for “having it all” is one with which I identify (because I don’t, for the most part) what I thought was most interesting about Slaughter’s piece is the reflection it inspired for me on whether anyone – male or female – can really “have it all” (in the terms Slaughter puts forth) in our society.

First, like Joyner, I agree that Slaughter needs to widen the contours of the lens she uses to examine this issue. Balancing work and life isn't just a "women's problem". Having been raised by a single father, I have seen firsthand that the sacrifices he made for my two younger sisters and me - regularly leaving work early to pick us up from school if we were sick, or to drive us to soccer practice, or to attend a parent-teacher conference - likely cost him professionally. Thus, to the extent that Slaughter frames the issue as solely a "women's problem", I simply disagree.

Moreover, like Joyner, I am skeptical about the prospect of widespread changes in the work environment that would enable women (and men) to be better able to attain professional success while spending what they consider to be enough time with their families or on personal endeavors. It’s clear that such a massive cultural overhaul may ultimately be impossible, but I did want to share an experience I thought about while reading that made me hopeful that perhaps on a smaller scale, one company at a time, such changes could take root.

Shortly after I began working as an analyst at a global financial services firm (UBS), the senior management team which had run the Bank’s operations in the Americas were discharged in the wake of the financial crisis and pending DOJ investigations for auction rate securities fraud. When their replacements (the former CEO and Executive Committee from a competitor), deemed the "Renewal Team", arrived, they totally, and rapidly, transformed the corporation's culture.

I truly think that the way they were able to galvanize people went beyond the simple fact that they were new faces who hadn’t been at the helm during the recent scandals and struggles. The new team placed a discernible emphasis on balance, encouraging employees to spend time with their loved ones or time doing things they loved. People satisfied at home and at work, they contended, would ultimately be more productive during time spent at the office. The cultural shift began at the top, but it trickled down and in a very short time the company I worked for was infused with a very different set of values than those that had dominated before the management change. Certain analyst roles, once notorious for regular 2 AM nights, now carried with them relatively 'normal' hours – yet no work was going unfinished.

Rana Foroohar proclaims in a recent Time Magazine article, “Can’t Have It All? Blame Our Extreme Work Culture”:

It’s a truism that work expands to fit the time you give it. Indeed, the economic gains made in both the U.S. and Europe over the past two decades have been two-thirds productivity related and only one-third down to working more hours.

In my experience, the “productivity gain” was simply a byproduct of the new management team’s execution-oriented approach. In contrast to their predecessors, who had rewarded so-called “face time” and lauded 50-slide PowerPoint? “decks” outlining every initiative, no matter how insignificant, in excruciating detail, the new management team simply saw no value in using time at work this way. People stopped working 100 hours a week because there was not enough work to fill those hours – yet the company’s performance began to improve. Clearly a great deal of the turnaround was attributable to the improvement in the financial markets, but some of the turnaround, I believe, was attributable to the new management team's "renewal" mentality. Workers were no longer rewarded for marginally improving the 8th iteration of a PowerPoint? that would ultimately go to a manager who’d typically take a cursory glance at it before throwing it away. That time was spent instead on efforts to generate revenue and drive actual results for clients, and when that work was complete, people were encouraged to go home and attend to their personal obligations.

I do of course recognize that the rosy picture I painted is of a culture that permeates a single corporation, and of a culture that seems fairly anomalous for finance and probably can’t be extrapolated to law and other industries where working more absolute hours is directly related to greater individual or company-wide success. I also recognize that the process of transforming one corporation is certainly not indicative of the process that would be required to transform a society. However, I guess witnessing a reformation of a corporate culture has made me want to believe that a larger-scale change could one day be possible, if those who rise to the top of their respective fields cultivate value systems that genuinely emphasize work/life balance (though the question clearly remains whether individuals who adhere to such value systems are capable of rising to the top of their fields on more than a one-off basis). Thus, like Joyner, I’m just not sure that our nationwide work culture will ever undergo the type of sweeping transformation that’s possible on a micro level. In any event, I ultimately appreciate that Slaughter inspired me to reflect on these issues, and to reflect on my conception of what it means to “have it all”.

-- CourtneyDoak - 27 Jun 2012