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[Music] [Music] hi I'm Stu Freedman from the management department at the Wharton School and I'm
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here today speaking with anarie slaughter who is a professor of politics and international Affairs at Princeton
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and who wrote the Earth shattering article in the Atlantic last year uh why women still can't have it all and we're
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here to speak with emry today about that welcome emry thank you my pleasure it's
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great to have you here let's start by uh a little bit of background on that article and what spurred it what was was
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there a critical experience in your in your life or in your work that propelled you to write that
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piece I would say somewhere over the in the two years that I spent in Washington as it became
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harder and harder to be working in DC with my kids back in Princeton I really did feel this sort of ground shifting
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under my feet as I started thinking you know I've always believed you could make
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this work work in family but this isn't working and so I started thinking about
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you know that writing something about that and then I thought well no you know this is just me it's just now and so
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probably the event that crystallized it was coming back to Princeton and starting to give talks just to students
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and they weren't prepared talks they were just kind of what was it like in Washington and I would start to to a lot
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would start to spill out about how hard it was and it was those students and then later as I wrote in the article
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Road an audience of young Road Scholars who kept saying you have to write this and that made me
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decide this is going to be difficult it's hard for me to write it may be controversial but really for this next
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Next Generation I need to write this and we need to have this conversation so so the impetus really
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was to to share your story with the Next Generation and and and what was your your hope your intent or what were they
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asking for why was they were they wanted they wanted to open up the conversation
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around work and family and they wanted to hear more than what I and so many of my peers have been had been telling them
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which is you can do it you know our standard response had been you can do it it's hard but you can make it work and
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that is of course true for some number of women and that is has been true of me as long as I stay in a more flexible job
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and I did make it work for two years in Washington I just couldn't make it work
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for four much less eight but these younger women and men I think in some ways are the first generation who've
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watched a whole generation of working men in women ahead of them because I didn't see working women I'm I'm of the
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generation where I was still first these young men and women whether it's their
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own parents or others have seen it and they don't like what they see or they're
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scared of what they see or at the very least they think you know what people tell me and the reality I'm seeing just
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isn't meshing so there is a hunger to open this topic back up whereas many women of my generation told me after
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this article came out well you know that's fine but it wasn't exactly news
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right like we knew this is living this we've been we've written these things
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before you could have written this 20 years ago it wouldn't have been any different so every generation has to
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find it for themselves so what what was the news if I can follow on that last Point what was it that what cord was
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struck I mean why do you think it had such a a broad effect and readership well I think it I think the
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first thing is I did catch again this generational wave and I think many young younger women who had been saying to
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each other I don't want to be in a workplace and never see my children I don't want to have two nannies if that's
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what it takes I want something different those women had been talking to each other but it wasn't getting it wasn't
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registering in the larger conversation they sent my article to their mothers sisters aunts mentors every woman I
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think uh who they had talked to as as well as to each other so I think that's
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uh a large part of it but I also think you know I was drawing aside the curtain I did know that I was doing this
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I I I have been enormously successful and very fortunate uh and I've been able
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to have great jobs and so from the outside I think it looked exactly like sure you can have it all you know I have
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two kids and a husband and great some great jobs and the fact that I was saying you know what actually this
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didn't work the way way I expected it to actually I'm having to not continue in a
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job that I would have loved to continue in because my kids are at home and and I
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feel like that's more important I think it it kind of ripped aside the um the perfect facade and I know many
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women wrote me with profound relief CU even the women who are making it work and the men it's hard they're feeling it
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right they're feeling it and they were feeling like that was their fault you
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know something must be wrong with them they weren't organized enough or there
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something was wrong with their parenting or something and I was basically saying
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you know what this is really hard and a lot of people are not actually able to make it so a lot of people are stepping
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out and that means we don't have that's the major explanation in my view as to
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why we don't have enough women at the top you said that you became aware that
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the the feminist beliefs on which you'd built your career were shifting under
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your feet so were those beliefs wrong or were women women of of Our Generation sold a bill of goods by early feminists
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or have attitudes changed the world's changed what what shifted it's interesting I've I've had to think
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really hard myself about what I meant I certainly didn't mean that feminism sold
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us a bill of goods feminism is responsible and as far as I'm concerned for the life that I have I am in total
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debt to the women uh and the men who were a generation ahead of me who broke barriers and allowed me to dream of a
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career and then have one but along the way it never occurred to me as somebody as a self-proclaimed career
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woman feminist however you want to see it it just never occurred to me that I would end up in a situation where I'd
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make the choice I made and that's what shifted it was to leave Washington yeah
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to to and the way I think of the choice is I'd been there for two years I always
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knew that after two years my public service leave would end and that I would would go home but then I succeeded well
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enough to be considered for promotion and that was the point at which I thought you know the old me would have
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said well of course you'll make it work I mean this is just you have a dream job
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and that's even more of a dream job and generally if your part's in power and
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you have an opportunity you take it because you can never promise that'll come again and I when it came down to it
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as it was hard but I knew the right thing to do was to go home and that is not something I had been taught to
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expect of myself in other words it's the flip of the 1950s stereotype the woman
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of course is going to you know choose her children and put her family first I just thought no I'm a different kind of
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woman and I or parent or person it's not just a woman and I I will make it work but when it came
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down to it I realized you know what there's actually something more important and as you know ambitious as I
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am as dedicated to my career I'm actually a different person than I thought I was so your thinking had
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evolved in in light of the the Zeitgeist of beliefs about what men men or women could possibly do yeah it's hard
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to explain fully but it was it was exactly you know I think the best way to explain it is I just read an article
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about how we always look back and we know we've changed a lot if I think of who I was at 20 or 30 or 40 I know I've
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changed a lot but when I look forward I assume I'll be the same person at 60 or
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70 or 80 and yet in fact of course change and so it was an evolution it was a growth but it was one I never would
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have expected you've said that there are several half truths that that women hold
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here and you write about this in the piece uh that it's possible to have it all if you're just committed enough if
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you marry the right person if you sequ sequence it right what did you mean by Hal truths well exactly that they are
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true but not enough I mean there there it is certainly true that if you want to succeed you have to be committed you
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have to work very hard I mean Cheryl sandberg's arguments are right I think in many many ways but that's not enough
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and it's also certainly true that it may be necessary to marry the right person I
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think it is but it's not always sufficient makes a huge difference if you don't marry the right person you may
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never get out out of the Starting Gate but even with a fully supportive spouse and that and I have a wonderful husband
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who is completely you know a equal partner more than an equal partner even so you know you hit situations
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where both of you need to be there or you feel you need to be there uh and the sequencing it could be right in the
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sense that if we restructured Society in the workplace I think it would be quite
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possible to sequence but right now what so many women have found is if they opt out of the workplace for something they
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might think it's five years eight years they can't go back or they can't go back
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in the same way it's not that they won't get a job necessarily but but it's not
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as if they pick up as you know that associate who was heading toward partner or you know that untenured faculty
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member who was heading toward tenure they're in a very different world the paths are the ba the pathed or different
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very so they're half TRS but there are things we cling to because we want to
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believe if we just do this it'll work and that's not enough so what can businesses do to be supporting employees
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to to be able to live the lives that that matter to to them and still contribute productively to the economic
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engines of progress in our society and businesses specifically um what thoughts do you have about that what have you
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been discovering about that as you've really taken up the charge in this in this Arena this last year Well there I
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mean they're their whole programs the one that I think is the most interesting
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is the results only workplace environment or row where you effectively tell your employees here's what you have
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to do here's the date by which you have to do it here's the quality that it has
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to attain and it's really up to you when you get it done and how you get it done
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and where you get it done uh which is a radical uh change it's not Flex time
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it's no time it's your time um there are there are programs like that and they're
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being implemented in some very surprising places including some very big corporations I actually think the
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most important thing is what I call the culture of the presumptive yes which is you are completely open to
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experimentation and you let your own employees figure out either to singly or more likely as teams what they need to
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make it work and then you experiment and some of those experiments will not work
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you know a job share really may not work a certain kind of flexible Arrangement may not work but you're willing to try
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and it's like any innovation you know small steps small bets you you keep trying and you see what works and
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when it works then you expand it so I think the the biggest barrier in the workplace is women are afraid to ask and
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Men parents are or caregivers are afraid to ask because they're afraid they'll be
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told no but worse still they're afraid that they will look like they're not so
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committed to their career so the very asking will be a black spot so they don't ask so nothing changes uh and if
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the management said hey you let's try let's try you tell me what you need and
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let's give it a try and if it doesn't work I promise you I will say it's not
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working we got to do something else but hey maybe it will and those small steps then engender
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a greater sense of confidence and confidence in being able to produce further changes and and uh and so it
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goes absolutely experimentation um so thinking about what we do here at the whorton school uh and other business
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schools what thoughts do you have about what we ought to be doing to Foster progress well in the first place I think
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the idea that if anybody in any student in that classroom who would like to reproduce let's just put it that way
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wants to have children or uh imagines that they're going to want to have time
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for f their family everybody needs to think of it as an equal respons responsibility and that is an ethos that
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I think we are starting to see among many of our younger men that it isn't this idea that well you know that's the
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person at home's domain presumably a wife of uh but rather this is my responsibility how am I going to fit my
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career around it because if we get men and women thinking that way or women and men I should say that changes the
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dynamic a great deal and of course then Young young men start asking questions of employers as well and that that makes
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a big change but I think there's even something deeper and I've thought about
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this even at the undergraduate level we are seeing kids who are more programmed and more accomplished than
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ever before they don't have a speriment it I have a 16-year-old son and at 16 he
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has little time and if you look at my freshman and sophomores at Princeton they are scheduled to the minute and I'm
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sure at Wharton it's even greater you cannot re Ward cramming every minute of
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your time all the way through high school all the way through college all the way through graduate school the
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early parts of the workplace and then say Oh but now actually family is really important I mean that we have to
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start putting our money where our mouths are we really have to start saying we think it's important to take time now as
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students as faculty we think that hour that you have coffee with a friend is more important than cramming in one more
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thing on your resume we think calling home or we think taking time and I don't
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mean volunteering and doing good works I mean cultivating human connection with those you love be and at this you know
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as students it's mostly F it's friends sure but I've heard students say you
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know I have to schedule in my friends I don't have time for my friends well later that's going to be I don't have
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time for my kids and that's what again Fosters this binary choice voice so I
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think we've got a lot of work to do as educational institutions indeed um I couldn't agree
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more well what do you think we should be telling our kids about what they can expect in in their work
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lives well one thing I I think we tell them the the future work is changing right work over their lifetimes first
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place they'll whole many different jobs but work itself will be done in pretty
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radically different ways uh different kinds of knowledge work different kinds of teamwork uh different kinds of techn
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technologically enabled work so what I want to tell them is and as part of that less is more a lot of it's creative work
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you will not be able to succeed creatively unless you give yourself downtime unless you it's not just
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downtime it's different time you need to do different things you need to talk to
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cultivate different relationships and you should as you think about the changing nature of work you should be
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thinking about a very different notion of the place of family as part of that changing nature and that you will be
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happier you will be more productive you will be you will work longer and live longer your children will be happier and
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our society will be more competitive and so I don't like thinking about it just
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in terms of work family and you taught you yourself actually taught me to stop saying work life because work is part of
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life and that doesn't work I prefer to think of it as Who are the who do we want to be as Breadwinners
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caregivers human beings professionals so as you think to the Future about the Next Generation which
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which clearly is your your motivating force behind this work um where does where does the brunt of responsibility
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lie is it at the individual level is it is it institutions uh social policy public
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policy uh where where is the real action have to have to come in order to see the
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kinds of changes that you're envisioning I think at all those levels I really do
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I do think every individual can be part of this change and part of the reason I'm writing a book is both to tell the
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stories of men and women have written to me and to Showcase Solutions but also to
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say to people if you want to be part of this change you know here's what you can
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do for men and women uh I think government is going to have to do some big things it it just has to if you look
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at the societ societies that make this work it isn't an opin situation you know
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there are certain we're going to have to move toward Paid Family Leave we're
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going to have to have paid family leave and you know yes I understand that business says that's an incumbrance but
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you know back in the early part of the 19th century they thought restrictions on work days
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period were an incumbrance right I mean so we're going to have to have some really important signals from the top
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from government but I wouldn't wait for that uh I would work for it but I wouldn't wait for it and the so the in
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between is the workplace and there I think a lot of the experimentation must take place the
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places that are are doing this kind of experimentation have a better chance of retention um I think leaders and again
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this is work you've done that I've read I mean thinking about total leadership
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thinking about what makes you a good worker m are a good leader a good professional so workplaces are going to
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have to change things like you know schedules and time in the office but they're going to have to change cultures
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and that you know good CEOs are always about I think many of the best are about the culture and the culture now has to
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focus on it essentially has to say you were here all night for you know two months you you're either not managing
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your time well and you must be a very unidimensional person so you know that's
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not what we want to reward we want to reward the quality of your work but we also want to reward somebody who is you
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know able to relate to others to manage well to understand to manage well that people need time not they're not just
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automatons all those things changing culture is a a a slog right it takes a long time uh especially deeply
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entrenched attitudes and values and expect ations the kinds of things that you're talking about so uh as we're
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wrapping up here and what is it that you'd want to uh kind of convey to boil
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it down to as to the to the viewers in terms of what they can be doing now we can all be a part of of progressive
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change in this area what what's the most important thing for people to be thinking about it and doing so I think
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the first thing is for for all of us it's to own what we want not what think
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we should want not what you know our parents expect and or Society or any of that own what we want and recognize that
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if we want both a profession and the power and dignity of a profession and the love of family and however family is
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constructed that is entirely legitimate and actually we will be better for it as
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our society will be so that's the first thing and the second is to have the courage to both talk about it and ask
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for change the worst that can happen is somebody will say no but I think part of
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what my article demonstrated was there were a whole lot of people who are thinking about like this and you know if
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you thought you were alone no the woman next to you and the man next to you they
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were thinking about it too so have the courage to say I'm G to ask and even if
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they say no And even if they think a little less well of me well you know that's not what I'm judged on I'm judged
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on the quality of my work and I'm going to keep working so you're no worse off
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and you may be much better off and then I think if you are in management you have you should be
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willing to get out of your comfort zone so many people tell me all the time well
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you know I'm just uncomfortable with a job share or well that goes against the
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idea what are other people going to think if this woman has a different Arrangement and that man you know comes
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in only four days a week so get out of your comfort zone that's what change takes try it and I think you may be
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agreeably surprised surprised uh and I think it may it may lead to then it's a
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then it's it's a long slow process but it's a virtuous circle thank you emry you're welcome
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appreciate your time here today my pleasure all [Music] right