The Superwoman complex

It’s time to make sure that a new generation of women doesn’t fall prey to it

Having it all. It has become such a cliché, hasn’t it? Growing up, that was the phrase that was thrown at us all the time by our female teachers and mentors. They may not have had it all, held back as they were by the constraints of a highly patriarchal, traditional society. But my generation could change all that. We could grow up to fully rounded lives, with flourishing careers, well brought up kids, happy families, and perfect homes.

Oh yes, we could achieve all this – and more. We just needed to fix our sights on our life goals, keep a razor-sharp focus, be prepared to work harder that we had ever thought possible and we would be rewarded by the Golden Grail called ‘Having it all.”

Since we didn’t know any better, we fell for that spiel. So, we played by all the rules. We worked hard. We aimed high. We did our best at the workplace. We tried to run model homes. We dutifully helicoptered around our kids. We stayed in shape. We went on ‘date nights’ with our spouses. We looked after elderly parents and grandparents.

And we tried – oh God, how we tried! – to tell ourselves that we did ‘have it all’.

It was only after our bodies began wilting under the combined pressures of sleepless nights, early mornings, long days at work, punishing fitness regimes, endless hours at the stove, and the relentless demands of childcare that we realized that we had, in fact, been conned.

We didn’t really ‘have it all’. What we had was the dubious privilege of ‘doing it all’.

But even after that realization dawned, were we willing to give up on the ‘having it all’ dream?

Not a chance. The conditioning of a lifetime is hard to overcome. So, we pushed through the bone-breaking exhaustion. We struggled to overcome our guilt about not paying enough attention to our jobs/children/spouses. We doubled down on trying to create a ‘work-life balance’. And, in the process, we created the cult of the Superwoman.

I am sure you’ve heard of this mythic creature. She excels at everything she puts her mind to. She is the quintessential Career Woman. She is the archetypal Earth Mother. She is the sexy smoldering girlfriend. She is the devoted wife (who can also do sexy and smoldering on demand). She is the perfect daughter/daughter-in-law. She runs an impeccable home. She can run in stilettoes. And she can do all this while looking like a million bucks (which, of course, she has earned herself).

We may have come a long way from when legendary Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown popularised the phrase ‘having it all” in 1982 with her bestselling book, Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money…Even If You Are Starting With Nothing. But the phrase still exerts an insidious hold on our minds. And it is exacting an unacceptable toll on both our bodies and our minds.

I was reminded of this yet again last week when I met an old friend for coffee. No, she couldn’t take time off for lunch, even though we had so much to talk about. She could only manage a hurried coffee before she disappeared right back into the swirling vortex that was her life.

Sample this: a typical day in her life. She wakes up at 5.30 to fix breakfast for the family and send the kids off to school with their tiffin. There’s barely enough time for a quick shower before she sets off for work. She works in a large corporation where eyebrows are raised if you come even 5 minutes late – but you are treated as a laggard if you clock out at 6. She gets back home around 8 pm, dead tired, with barely enough energy to eat dinner, let alone make it. And she does this six days a week.

In this, she is far from atypical. Most women of her generation are doing the same insane juggling act, with more balls in the air than they can possibly keep in play. And the saddest part of this scenario is that they believe – despite all evidence to the contrary – that this is the only way to get the most out of life.

Well, if you ask me, we have allowed ourselves to run ragged (in high heels, natch) for far too long. And we have paid the price for it in flagging energy levels, constant guilt, and the feeling that somehow we are still failing.

But while it is too late to save us, it may be time to cut the next generation of women a little slack. Yes, yes, I know that they’re supposed to Lean In and all that (thanks Sheryl Sandberg!). But sometimes it makes sense to lie back as well, and take stock of your life.

Perhaps it is only when we grant ourselves a little down time that we get to understand that there is only one way in which you can really ‘have it all’ – by not having it all at the same time.

So, let’s not burden our daughters with the weight of expectations that we carried on our shoulders. Allow them to make their own rules. Let them choose between family and career if they want to. Give them time off after babies to enjoy motherhood; but provide them enough opportunities to get back on the career track after a break. Encourage them to choose husbands who support them at home and work. And don’t let them feel guilty for putting themselves first on occasion.

Let’s change the meaning of ‘having it all’ for their generation. And let’s quietly kill off Superwoman while we’re at it.

Yummy Mummy or High Flyer?

Feminism is about the right to make our own choices – and not care what anyone else thinks of them

It’s a good thing that Cherie Blair has such a wide mouth, given how often her foot lands right inside it. The latest such instance occurred at a recent event in London where Fortune magazine was celebrating the Most Powerful Women in the world.

Rueing the lack of feminist values in the new generation of women who just wanted to be “yummy mummies”, Cherie lamented that it worried her how so many women couldn’t be bothered with a career: “They think, ‘Why can’t I just marry a rich man and retire’.” Cherie warned that “every woman needs to be self-sufficient” and that “even good men could have an accident and die and you’re left holding the baby”.

From her point of view, this was unexceptional stuff. After all, this is a woman who saw her father walk out on her mother when she was eight. She saw her mother struggle to make ends meet, while her grandmother looked after her and her younger sister. So, it is no surprise that the first lesson that the young Cherie learnt was: Don’t trust men; always make your own way.

But of course, the British media and blogosphere – which hates her with a particular passion – went wild about how Cherie was dissing women who chose family over career and weren’t as high-achieving as she had been.

I have to admit, though, that on one level, I am in complete agreement with Cherie Blair. It is important for young women to learn the lesson that the only person you can depend on is yourself – and that financial independence lies at the heart of this. There is no quarrelling with that.

Where I do disagree is that I believe that when we tell women that the only success that is worth striving for is the kind they achieve in the workplace, we effectively devalue everything that women achieve as homemakers, mothers and carers.

Yes, it’s great to have a pay cheque coming in every month. It’s lovely to have a high-powered job that gives you satisfaction. It’s wonderful to feel that your achievements at work are being validated by a judgemental world. But while we are going about it, is it really necessary to debase and demean those women who have made a choice to get off the career treadmill and devote themselves to their families?

I don’t have children myself, but I would imagine that it must tear women apart to leave small babies at home, being cared for by paid strangers, while they go off to earn a living. It probably gets even more difficult – and guilt-inducing – when the kids grow up and begin to need you more, rather than less.

Anyone who wants to learn about the competing demands of career and children and what it does to women should read Anne-Marie Slaughter’s cover story for The Atlantic. Slaughter, a high-flyer at the US State Department, recently resigned to go back to teaching at Princeton University. In her article, titled ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”, she explains how even though she had a ‘supportive’ husband – the Holy Grail of all feminist tracts – who took over the care of her two sons, she still felt guilty of letting her family down. She still blamed her absence for her teenage son’s angst. And so, when it came time to renew her contract, she decided to quit to ‘spend more time with her family’, usually a euphemism – as she notes wryly – for being fired.

But Slaughter’s story tells us an essential truth: most women are hard-wired to want to take care of their young. And sometimes you just can’t beat biology, no matter how hard you try.

So, do we really need to tell a harried young mother with two kids under the age of six that she needs to get dressed and go out to work or else she will be letting down the sisterhood? Must we make the army wife or the diplomatic spouse feel worthless because she follows her husband on his job? And most importantly, do we really want to live in a world where the only person who has power in a relationship is the husband who brings in a regular pay check? Do we want to tell the young women coming of age today that feminism may be about choice – but there’s only one choice available to them: of going out and having it all.

And what does ‘having it all’ really mean? Does it mean being exhausted to your bones because you have worked a 12 hour day at the office and must now cook a meal for your family? Does it mean striving for professional success no matter what the cost to your personal life? Does it mean buying into the macho code of deciding everyone’s worth on the basis of their pay cheque?

After all, the question is no longer whether women can succeed in a man’s world – but why we allow men to define what success is.

And I suspect that’s the trap that Cherie Blair has fallen into: of defining success in man-centric terms: how many hours you work; how much money you make; how far you can clamber up on the corporate ladder. But why should we allow men (or Cherie Blair for that matter) to define what success is?

Because when it comes right down to it, feminism is about the freedom to make our own choices – and to not give a damn what anyone else thinks about them.