Why Women Still Can’t Have It All - The Atlantic

In our circles, I am often known for throwing parties, sending copious amounts of e-mail, and being a cheerleader for our class.  Guilty as charged.  I am also a litigator, so people expect my professional side to about combat.  Often, it is.  However, one of my deep interests in my professional life is figuring out how to attract and retain women at the highest levels of the legal profession.  This is not an easy task.  This week’s Atlantic magazine article highlights the issues.  Please give it a read, along with the Harvard article below.  Once you do, consider if we want to have a broader discussion as a class about this.  (On this point, I would welcome guest posts.)  Click on the links to read the articles.  Please let us know what you think.

Eighteen months into my job as the first woman director of policy planning at the State Department, a foreign-policy dream job that traces its origins back to George Kennan, I found myself in New York, at the United Nations’ annual assemblage of every foreign minister and head of state in the world. On a Wednesday evening, President and Mrs. Obama hosted a glamorous reception at the American Museum of Natural History. I sipped champagne, greeted foreign dignitaries, and mingled. But I could not stop thinking about my 14-year-old son, who had started eighth grade three weeks earlier and was already resuming what had become his pattern of skipping homework, disrupting classes, failing math, and tuning out any adult who tried to reach him. Over the summer, we had barely spoken to each other—or, more accurately, he had barely spoken to me. And the previous spring I had received several urgent phone calls—invariably on the day of an important meeting—that required me to take the first train from Washington, D.C., where I worked, back to Princeton, New Jersey, where he lived. My husband, who has always done everything possible to support my career, took care of him and his 12-year-old brother during the week; outside of those midweek emergencies, I came home only on weekends.

Magazine - Why Women Still Can’t Have It All - The Atlantic



"Having It All" Is Not a Women's Issue - Stew Friedman - Harvard Business Review
Now, I know that this is a Yale-related blog, so Harvard stuff is not typically called for. However, I found this article interesting, too.

The resonance of Anne-Marie Slaughter's Atlantic article is testimony to how far we've come since 1987, when I began talking about work and family in my Wharton School classes. Back then, many students — men and women — flat-out resented it. "We're here to learn about business, not family," they said. And when I started the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project a few years later, I got some strange looks, for it was odd to be a man talking about work and family at a business school known mainly for its strength in finance. "Why," some of my colleagues wondered, "are you focusing on this women's issue?"
But this is not a women's issue; our increasingly shared understanding is that this a critical social issue with great economic consequences.

"Having It All" Is Not a Women's Issue - Stew Friedman - Harvard Business Review