I'm sure that some of you have already heard about or read this article - "Why Women Still Can't Have it All", written by Anne-Marie Slaughter and published in the July/August edition of The Atlantic - but I thought I'd share it for those who haven't, as it provides some thought-provoking commentary on issues that both women and men face in striving to attain fulfillment at work and at home.

Slaughter specifically highlights the legal industry, built on the foundation of the billable hour, and discusses the unique challenges that this model presents for a law firm associate seeking to establish a work/life balance with which he or she is satisfied.

I thought that the article was a worthwhile read, as Slaughter directly addresses a lot of issues I've thought about and grappled with since beginning law school and considering the career I want to pursue and the balance I want to strike in terms of how that career fits into my life.

-- CourtneyDoak - 25 Jun 2012

Thanks for sparking this conversation Courtney. When I read this article my first thought was "Slaughter should have edited her outline a lot more." I liked the gist of what she was saying but it was often hard to distill what her main sub-points and solutions were. I think she could have done a better job conveying her point using half the words.

As for the substance - I appreciate that she sparked a conversation about more flexible work schedules, changing the business model, and being vocal about not being able to have it all. I also like that she was bold enough to say that fundamentally women are different than men in terms of how much not being present for family life effects them (obviously there are exceptions to that statement). The piece of this article that I have found myself thinking about most is that my career path will probably look more like a set of stairs, than a straight uphill line. What I have been trying to take away from Prof. Moglen's class is that my career path is changeable and I am in control of it. I can do with my license what I want, and just because I made the decision to come to law school does not mean that I have to become a BigLaw lawyer. I can and probably will do that for a couple of years, but I calculated my end date and am now trying to figure out what I need to do to get to my next career after that end date comes. Hearing a successful woman say that most career paths will plateau at points, and then pick up speed again (potentially in a different direction) was comforting and helped make me feel like law school was less of a waste.

-- SkylarPolansky - 25 Jun 2012

Courtney,

I read the Slaughter article yesterday when you posted it and happened to come across this response by James Joyner while taking a break at work. Though the Joyner piece is obviously much shorter than Slaughter’s, I found that it highlighted many of the issues that I felt were problematic in the original article. Like Skylar mentioned, I thought Slaughter’s article was somewhat meandering and kept stressing the hope that “women can have it all,” when nearly every anecdote made it look like the closest thing to “having it all” was only a few steps away from miserable anyway. The Joyner article is a bit more cynical, and I guess I am too, which is why I like it better. Joyner specifically addresses Slaughter’s suggestion that women (and men) can maintain a better personal/work life balance if society changes—Joyner sees that “evolution” to be “impossible.”

“All things being equal, those willing to put 90 hours a week into their careers are going to get ahead of those willing to put in 60, much less 40. While there is any number of studies showing that working too many hours is actually counterproductive from an efficiency standpoint, there nonetheless is a rare breed of cat who can keep up a frenetic work schedule for years on end. And those workaholics are simply more valuable to the company, agency, or organization than those who clock out at 5. That means that those of us who choose to prioritize our children are going to get out-hustled by those without children, or those willing to let their children spend longer hours with a partner or childcare provider.”

Like Joyner, I would like to agree with Slaughter and see attitudes about careers move in a direction where a more fulfilling life is possible for anyone (male or female) that struggles to split time between career ambition and the desire to spend time on family or personal matters. For me, the most poignant illustration in the Slaughter article was the brief comparison between a working mother who must manage her time to care for her family and an athlete splitting time between work and training. Slaughter (using a rhetorical question) paints this picture such that the reader takes pity on the mother because she does the same amount of work as the runner without being championed in the same way.

I found myself fighting this imagery as I read. I did not pity the mother any more than the runner, but maybe that’s just because I know that I would view them equally as people who wanted to devote time to things they love. That said, I think that Joyner is right when he expresses doubt that “we'll ever create a culture that values family time as much as work time.” Even if work hours match up with school hours or companies make moves toward allowing employees to work regularly from home, there is always a tendency for people to compete in their careers. I feel like that tendency would be a harder thing to fight than Slaughter assumes and also something that is approached differently by every person.

-- AnneFox - 26 Jun 2012

Courtney,

Thanks for starting this discussion. While the article raised some interesting points, I ultimately felt unsatisfied with the scenario that Slaughter set up. When I read this response by Lori Gottlieb in The Atlantic I realized why. As Gottlieb criticizes, Slaughter comes off a bit like a petulant child, upset that she can't physically occupy two places at one time.

As Gottlieb writes, "If you choose Harvard because you like Cambridge better than New Haven, you have to give up Yale and your love of its drama department. If you order the salmon entrée at your favorite restaurant, you have to forgo ordering the steak entrée that night. If you choose to have kids, you have to give up a certain amount of your freedom for the next 18 years. Not just career freedom, but marital, economic and social freedom as well. Order up what you want -- Harvard, the wild salmon, the kids -- but know that there's no such option out there called "having it both ways." Gottlieb notes, "This isn't a feminist issue. This is Life 101."

We all know that choices involve sacrifice, so Slaughter's shock at the notion that she would miss her kids will working long hours in another city did not quite resonate with me. What I did find interesting - and what I would have liked to see her engage with instead of tiptoeing around - was the concept that this dichotomy has a different effect on women than it does on men.

It is obvious that the current state of affairs of our workplaces, and the difficult choices we're forced into, distress Slaughter, as it should all of us. However, Slaughter also seems to emphasize "having it all" as spending time with the family + a high-powered professional position, whereas I've always been taught that having it all is more a measure of happiness and value add to society than salary and prestige. With the facts as Slaughter lays them out, it would be difficult for any woman with a family to ever be truly happy with her choices without feeling as if there are opportunities she's deprived herself of, and I have to hope that that isn't the case. Right? Or do you disagree?

-- SherieGertler - 27 Jun 2012

Thank you all for your responses – I had read Joyner's article, but hadn't seen Gottlieb's, so thanks for posting, Sherie. Ultimately, as I wrote above, I found the article worthwhile in provoking thought on work/life balance issues with which I grappled while working as a financial analyst before law school, and which I think about now as I ponder my ideal legal career trajectory. I think that one of my main takeaways from this class was that for me it isn’t about having it all, at least in the terms Slaughter describes, where ambition equates to being a leader in one’s chosen profession. I’d rather have enough – enough to be happy and fulfilled, personally and professionally – and have the liberty to choose when and how to make tradeoffs from which I’ll derive that fulfillment.

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

Courtney, thank you for your thoughtful response!

I appreciate your point that Slaughter's biggest value (to you) was the reflection it inspired on whether anyone can really have it all, although, as you point out, "having it all" in the article reflects Slaughter's individualized conception of what that means.

In response to your point on Slaughter's conception of "having it all": I agree that Slaughter qualifies the population she is addressing, and therefore covers her claims in that way. However, I felt that her claims suffered from her one-dimensional view of professional success, in that she largely equates professional success with high-powered positions and hours invested. I thought her exploration could have been more valuable had she explored in-depth other dimensions of professional success (i.e., engaging in meaningful work, feeling passionately about the work you do) and whether there are inherent tradeoffs there as well. While her version of "having it all" is no less 'valid' than mine and yours, I believe she limits her basic premise by posing her conflict in this way. And here is where I most strongly agree with Gottlieb's response. Slaughter's premise boils down to the fact that she has 2 time-intensive endeavors which both demand more than half her time, and therefore cannot fully pursue both opportunities simultaneously. This upsets her, and it upsets her when she feels other people judge her for this, but to me it felt like a simple fact of life. And, as you point out with the personal example of your father, one not limited to professional women.

When the conflict becomes that one cannot occupy two places at once, the situation seems more black and white than work-life balance really is (in my limited experience). It also seems more despairing, barring a nation-wide overhaul of professional culture.

That being said, I appreciated your recognition of the value of the article for what it is (and not what it is missing) and its uplifting to hear that a company as large and pervasive as UBS can reform.

-- SherieGertler - 28 Jun 2012