With International Women’s Day behind us and Mother’s Day fast approaching, it seems timely to reflect on that age-old question: can women have it all?
Can a woman balance a career with three kids? How does a woman run a company with a six-year-old at home? What’s her secret? How does she strike a meaningful balance between her working life and dating life – if she has one? Is there a ‘good time’ to have a baby when your career is on the rise? How does she take on the role of caregiver to her immediate and extended family while flourishing as a community leader in her field?
Notice the common thread in all of these questions is that none of them relate to men. Why are women the only ones who tend to deliberate this question? Men have choices too and have to make decisions that affect their career and family, but historically this balancing act seems female-centric.
Today, “can women have it all?” is more commonly used as a catch-all phrase to ponder women’s ability to raise a family and have a career, largely attributed to iconic US magazine editor Helen Gurley Brown, who literally wrote the book on it – Having It All – in 1982. It cited her advice for success, for getting everything you want, yet ironically Gurley Brown had no children. Career and baby – two seemingly incompatible pursuits – still form a puzzle that even in 2023 we don’t seem any closer to solving.
Across almost two years of events, Women in Business Mornington Peninsula – a collection of female business owners, senior leadership and community leaders focused on community and connection – have been asking the question: what is your greatest challenge? From a list of well-known gender barriers, including access to funding and policy and government impacts, respondents overwhelmingly selected ‘Balancing work and personal/family commitments’.
So while our membership and event attendees are leading large and small companies, supporting extensive workforces, balancing budgets of millions of dollars and creating and nurturing products, services, strategic directions and community initiatives, they continue to feel that the balancing act between this and that is not so well-balanced.
After International Women’s Day this year, Sam Mostyn AO, chair of the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, gave an address to the National Press Club titled Who Cares? The Courage To Create An Economy For All. She shared the same statistic that WiBMP chair Melissa Goffin led with in her introduction at our IWD event: the confronting truth that Australia ranks 43rd out of 146 countries in the latest World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Index, measuring health, education, political empowerment and economic participation. We’ve got decades of work to do to narrow this gap.
Ms Mostyn wrapped up her address by asking those present what they were prepared to do to help achieve gender equality. She said gender equality was not a situation where women win and men lose but rather one where “we all gain potential and opportunity”.
We need to start thinking about women’s careers in the same way we think about men’s careers. We need to start making the working father as much a part of the conversation and the solution as the working mother.
Perhaps we can join the chorus of calls to shift this debate and reframe the question to “What do I want and need and how do I get it?” The most important discussion is not whether or not women can have it all but what ‘all’ is for each of us. Balancing is not carrying all of the weight. It is understanding the importance of you within all of the things you manage.
So while you’re out and about this Mother’s Day, think not just on how you can honour and appreciate your mum or the women in your life through flowers or gifts but by asking her – and perhaps yourself – how she can live her life more authentically. Give her permission to put herself first, to understand her internal balance as critical to not just herself but all of the people and things around her.
Let’s all agree that ‘all’ is really only about us and how we define it. Our priority in this world is to create our own peace, our own happiness and our own purpose in whatever way we see it.
Happy Mother’s Day all.
Women in Business Mornington Peninsula
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