5
Ladies, you can't have it all
Mrs. Moneypenny says that women can't have everything without being mediocre at everything.
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Tess Vigeland: Today, there's no shortage of women sitting at the head of the table. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust -- just to name a few. They've shattered the glass ceiling while juggling careers and family.
But Heather McGregor -- aka Mrs. Moneypenny -- says women who believe they can have it all are just setting themselves up to be average. Mrs. Moneypenny is a former investment banker, wife, mother of three. And she's currently a columnist for the Financial Times. Her new book is "Sharpen Your Heels: Mrs. Moneypenny's Career Advice for Women." Welcome to the show.
Heather McGregor: Well, it's very nice to be here.
Vigeland: I'd like to start by having you read a passage from chapter five of your book, if you would. This is the chapter entitled "You can't have it all."
McGregor: Absolutely. Young women today are raised to believe that the sky is the limit. I adore ambition and I believe that women should be encouraged to be ambitious from an early age. But to grow up thinking and be encouraged to think that it is perfectly possible to be the CEO of a large public company or brilliant brain surgeon or a concert violinist or whatever and achieve this while securing and maintaining a gorgeous husband, having an amazing sex life, conceiving and raising perfectly balanced children, keeping up your league hockey on the weekends, plus still have time to see your girl friends and your parents, get to their hairdresser and have your nails done and finally to your pilates classes -- is to be severely deluded.
Vigeland: Oh Mrs. Moneypenny, I'm afraid you're committing heresy here.
McGregor: No, but I don't think so! Do you manage all of that?
Vigeland: I manage all of it except the children, which I do not have.
McGregor: Right. Well, there you go. Already you've got one thing left to have to try and juggle. But I don't think that women can have it all, because I think that if you try and excel at everything, all that will happen is that you'll be average at everything. And I think women have very hard choices in life. And many women, by the way, don't have children and still face difficult choices, because they have aged parents or disabled relative or something else in their life. There are lots of challenges in our careers.
Vigeland: Well, staying with the topic of careers, I want to talk about networking, you know this is an issue that you address in great length in the book. Can you give us a couple of your top suggestions for how women can develop and expand their networks?
McGregor: Yes, I mean, everybody brings two things to a position: They bring their human capital, which is whatever college degrees you have or professional qualifications. But secondly, you bring your social capital, which are the people that you know. And I define as somebody I know as somebody who returned my telephone call or my e-mail. And by the way, one has not replaced the other. I've got no time for those people who say, "Well, you know, who you know has replaced what you know." Actually, it hasn't. Students of logic know that it's necessary but not sufficient to have good qualifications. And the same thing is true of a good network. If you aren't absolutely, for instance, rubbish lawyer and you have a brilliant network, all that happens is a lot of people know you're a rubbish lawyer, OK? So you do need to have both.
And for women, I think at the beginning of your career, you should look around you and really work on getting to know your peer group, because if you graduated from college and you're ambitious at the start of your career, you will spot other people like you, both in your company and in your clients or in your customers. Spot those people and try to meet them regularly and build relationships with them, because they will be the leaders of the future.
Vigeland: But of course, if you're doing all these meeting and greeting and networking, that's gonna take some time, which gets us back to you can't have it all! Exactly! So you have a wonderful story in the book where you talk about how difficult it is to say "no" to anything.
McGregor: Yes, and it is very difficult. Saying no is a key life skill. And I think, again, we are conditioned to please as women. I mean, without wanting to make too light of this subject, I think it's a bit like getting your legs waxed. It feels very uncomfortable for a short period of time, but the long-term gain is really worth it.
Vigeland: OK. I think most of the women in our audience can probably relate to that. What decisions have you made in realizing that you couldn't have it all?
McGregor: Well, for a very good start, I have a body mass index of 37, which you can't see on the radio, but I promise you. It's because I just don't get to the gym often enough. You know, if I have spare time, it goes to my children or my husband or everything else. I am at the bottom of my priority list. So that is a difficult choice I have made. I would love to be able to wear size 4 clothes. That would be great. But it's not something I've been able to find the time to get around to doing.
Vigeland: I do have to ask Mrs. Moneypenny, are you related at all to Ms. Moneypenny? And if so, how is Mr. Bond?
McGregor: Sadly, I am Mrs. Moneypenny and I'm totally unrelated. I was given my name. Although I am actually 50 in March, I was born officially in 1999 and I was given birth to by the Financial Times. And they gave me that name and twelve-and-a-half years later, I still have it.
Vigeland: Mrs. Moneypenny is the author of "Sharpen Your Heels: Mrs. Moneypenny's Career Advice for Women." Thank you so much for joining us. It's been fun.
McGregor: You're extremely welcome. Thank you.
I found this article highly offensive. The guest advocates that we need to start telling young women they can't expect to be both a good mother and good at their career. If they try to have everything they will only be average at everything and not excel at anything. There is never a mention that young men should be told the same. No, women should be prepared to make sacrifice and not be the best in their field for the sake of the children but men, they should have it all. Rubbish, not even deserving of time on the radio.
Why should half our population be absent from the Board room, White House, Congress and Executive office for the betterment of the other half? Our society will only advance when both gender are equally invested in the advancement of our communities, children, corporations and government. I would call Ms. Moneypenny to join The Year of The Girl movement and sign a pledge to empower all girls to be a leader of tomorrow: http://www.togetherthere.org/
The reason why men aren't mentioned is because men have a different issue.
Men never 'had it all' back then. Remember that, back then, men weren't to take care of the house, and they were expected to be detached from the family. Note that 'take care of the family' for men really amounted to 'get money/stuff for it', which meant 'get back to work'.
That's why the 'hard working dad that silently came home and laid on the couch' became a stereotype. While women were told to stay at home, men were told to stay at work.
When everything shuffled, there became a trend for women to go to the workplace, but then be looked at poorly if they abandoned their family for it. It's a new expectation: women are now meant to have a good job, earn their own keep, AND take care of everything at home.
So how about men? Men actually have a slightly different issue. There's a combo message going out to them: house husbands are 'wrong', but so is wasting your life in your job. Men don't want to go back to dying at work, but going home is still considered 'not being a man'. So while women are being told "Do everything!" Men get the message "Don't do this, don't do that." Don't be Sensitive: you're acting like a girl (or homosexual, which is a 'bad thing'). Don't be tough, that's being a brain dead Alpha male. You can't stay at home, you're being a penniless scrub. Don't focus on work: that's how your Dad wasted his life.
In essence, it's the same thing really: hated no matter what you do.
The article is saying that being 'perfect at everything' doesn't work, and it's true. A man never could do it. A woman will now need to know it can't be done either.
Note, I used the singular. A few people are thinking that 'ALL WOMEN can't be both'. Yes Women, the group, can and should be in all parts of society.
However, EACH singular woman will have to make choices. Women, the group, can take good care of the home, kids, spouse, job, and social requirements. ONE woman can't do a 80 hour job, come home and spend 50 hours doing chores, then spend 25 hours with the kids, 10 hours with the spouse, 10 hours with friends, 5 hours taking care of your body, and 60 hours of sleep and relaxation. SOMETHING will give.
Some INDIVIDUALS will be single, childless, CEOs rivaling Apple. Others will be housewives with 10 children. Still others will be health nuts with a glorious body. Still others will have a regular job, a few kids that will have to do some self-management, and are glad they can carry the furniture if they really have to.
And there's nothing wrong with any of that.
Meanwhile, men will need a similar message: Be who you are.. it's ok. Then we'll have the CEO, the dad with 10 kids, the bodybuilder, and the 'average'. A few other messages will have to go in though: a woman CEO doesn't mean you can't be a CEO too, and being a house husband doesn't mean you aren't manly (those who thought it weird to think of a husband with a vacuum as 'manly' just spotted the issue men have that I was mentioning earlier. Those that nodded need to speak to more young men)
I am SO TIRED of this discussion: ... I think women have very hard choices in life. And many women, by the way, don't have children and still face difficult choices, because they have aged parents or disabled relative or something else in their life. There are lots of challenges in our careers.
this shouldn't just be a WOMAN's choice, it should be a HUMAN's choice. We all have hard choices. Why is this for women to take on? Where is the discussion about the MAN's choice? Have a news story about THAT.
When we realize that these hard choices are hard for everyone, then the discussion becomes balanced and real. The fast track for men means they are giving up something, too.
As a woman who grew up in the 60's, this is an issue that women need to hear. We've been brainwashed to think we can have it all (commercials showed a smiling woman going from work to home doing everything with ease) and if you let any of those balls you're juggling - work, home, marriage, kids - drop, then you're looked at as a failure. I tried and finally had to sit down and make priorities. My kids came first, they were my primary responsibility; I'm divorced and chose not to date much while my kids were at home; work was my second responsibility and there were times when work and kids switched back and forth. Now that my kids are grown, I've gone back to school and am focused on career and preparing for retirement. But even making priorities and sticking to them, there were women who put their careers first who would not accept my choices as valid because of the brainwashing that women have received that says you can have it all. Face it, we're human and we have limits, whether we are male or female.
I am SO TIRED of this discussion: ... I think women have very hard choices in life. And many women, by the way, don't have children and still face difficult choices, because they have aged parents or disabled relative or something else in their life. There are lots of challenges in our careers.
this shouldn't just be a WOMAN's choice, it should be a HUMAN's choice. We all have hard choices. Why is this for women to take on? Where is the discussion about the MAN's choice? Have a news story about THAT.
When we realize that these hard choices are hard for everyone, then the discussion becomes balanced and real. The fast track for men means they are giving up something, too.
