Can Women Have It All?

Powerhouse Anne-Marie Slaughter says women still can’t have it all – motherhood and pure ambition. We’ll go the phones.

Powerhouse career mom Anne-Marie Slaughter went to Washington with gold-plated resume and a tip-top powerhouse job.  She knew, she told younger women coming up, that when it came to career and family, you could have it all as a woman.  And now she’s saying no, you can’t.  Not the way our workplaces and hours and expectations are set up today. For even the most high-powered, she says, it doesn't work. Her call for us.

This hour, On Point: Anne-Marie Slaughter, and why women still can't have it all.
-Tom Ashbrook

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a professor at Princeton University, she was the Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department from January 2009 until February 2011. Her cover story in the Atlantic magainzine is "Women Still Can't Have It All."

The Atlantic "It’s time to stop fooling ourselves, says a woman who left a position of power: the women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed. If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here’s what has to change."

Huffington Post "The woman who is about to get a lot of attention for writing an article titled "Why Women Still Can't Have It All?" accepted her dream job three years ago, working for Hillary Clinton as the State Department's first woman Director of Policy Planning. It was exactly the kind of influential role that Anne-Marie Slaughter (whose other firsts include a stint as the first woman to run the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs at Princeton) had been aiming toward her entire career."

The New York Times "If a woman has a sterling résumé, a supportive husband who speaks fluent car pool and a nurturing boss who just happens to be one of the most powerful women in the world herself, who or what is to blame if Ms. Supposed-to-Have-It-All still cannot balance work and family?"

Slate "If you haven't seen it already, by day’s end you’ll probably glimpse the Atlantic’s new cover with a small child stuffed inside her mother’s briefcase. The headline: "Why Women Still Can't Have It All." Anyone who has contemplated the realities of adulthood at any point in the past few decades will quickly get the gist of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article: It’s hard to have kids and a career."