Behind Every Good Woman is a Good Man?

One thing I've really enjoyed and appreciated over the last several years is seeing how discussion on feminism has become more prominent, more nuanced, more mainstream, more complicated, more diverse, etc.

Last year, Anne Marie Slaughter, professor at Princeton, wrote an Atlantic Monthly piece called "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" that went viral.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/

Also last year, Marissa Meyer, a Google Executive, was appointed CEO of Yahoo!  It was notable then, that she was hired while pregnant.  Then she surprised everyone by returning to work 2 weeks after giving birth and more recently issuing a ban on telecommuting at her company. (She has said in a prior interview [paraphrased] "I don't think that I would consider myself a feminist.  Certainly I believe in equal rights and feel women are just as capable as men in a lot of dimensions, but I don't have the militant drive that comes with that."

This Monday, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In was released. Before the book, before her HBS speech, before her Barnard speech, there was her TED talk in 2010, which I remember watching when it first came out. (below)

Most recently, former Lehman Brothers CFO, Erin Callan, came out with a NY Times op ed piece, "Is There Life After Work", warning women of the potential sacrifices they face for "leaning in" without really thinking about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/is-there-life-after-work.html

She considers herself a feminist because she's allowing women to have real freedom.  If you want to become the next CEO, go for it, but know the costs.  But you shouldn't feel marginalized for accepting those costs.  If you want to be a stay-at-home-mom, that's great too, and you shouldn't feel marginalized for that decision either. It's your choice. As is any combination of work-life balance in between.

In her book [disclosure: which I've only skimmed so far], Sandberg defends Meyer's decision to return to work early from maternity leave.  And Slaughter defended Meyer's other controversial decision to eliminate telecommuting in another Atlantic Monthly article, "Mayer's Job is to be CEO - Not to Make Life Easier For Working Moms"

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/marissa-mayers-job-is-to-be-ceo-not-to-make-life-easier-for-working-moms/273584/

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All this is a tangential preamble.  What really struck me about Sandberg's talk was her suggestion that to achieve equality in the workplace, you really needed equality at home. She talks about how stay-at-home-dads are ostracized, sometimes ridiculed, and have no support, and how that's a real problem and barrier for WOMEN succeeding.  (I got a glimmer of this when I was a SAHD for several months - looking back an invaluable experience for me; or costly experience depending on how you look at it!)  The way I interpret this is that we'll never really have equality in the workplace unless we see a massive shift of men taking on more responsibility in the home, whether that be just doing more chores, or working part time, or being full-time stay-at-home-dads.  There is an implicit acknowledgment that women (like men) want it all but can't have it all.  We're not going to see 50% of leadership positions go to women just by encouraging women to work hard and stay in the game, b/c there are too many sacrifices.  Anyway, I found this point extremely insightful.

One of my college friends, who's now a pastor in DC wrote tangentially about this idea on his blog soon after the first Slaughter article came out called "__men can't have it all"

http://peterwchin.com/__men-cant-have-it-all/

Peter was not primarily making a point about feminism.  He was actually making a point about genuine Biblical masculinity.  He was making a point about how God calls men to be excellent at being fathers, beyond the bare minimum, beyond the traditional stereotypes.  But the side effect of this will be improved opportunities for women in the workplace.

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So, in a strange way, one of the nuanced goals of feminism may be to improve working conditions for MEN. Giving more paternity leave for example, to encourage and support men who want to stay at home. Would any man reject this?  I wouldn't!

Also, another nuanced goal of feminism may be not so much to encourage women to reach for the top (though it should and must), but more so to encourage all (men and women) to reject ridiculously demanding work conditions at the top, so that we can all have some semblance of work-life balance, thereby creating the atmosphere where men and women can succeed at work while feeling like they haven't given up on the hope of "having it all".