Glass Ceilings and Having It All

There is a remarkable scene in the recent US drama Mrs America where Cate Blanchett’s character, Phyllis Schlafly, a prominent 70s conservative activist, lawyer and political lobbyist tells a group of conservative housewives how she sees things playing out for women if feminists like Gloria Steinham have their way. “What is going to happen if you push women out into the workforce is that women are going to find themselves with two full-time jobs, and they’re going to be exhausted and unhappy and feel like they are not doing either well.”

The inconvenient truth for many second-generation feminists is that this, in many ways, has turned out to be true. For while protofeminists kicked the door down, the full transition to an equal society stopped somewhere at reproductive rights and at the threshold of the home, where inside, many women were still living in a domestic time warp that resembled little of the advancements they had expected would come with even burgeoning liberation.

It left women in a palpable bind that somewhere along the line became repackaged in a ‘Having it All’ mantra which although has been replaced with more nuanced language, is still a driving force for many of us. But it is also a real source of conflict, as we continue to be underpaid, underrepresented and undervalued in our careers, and completely invisible in terms of much of the mental and domestic load outside of that.

Its dogged prevalence also meant that ‘breaking the glass ceiling’ was the collective goal.

Women had to demonstrate they could hold their own with men, according to a workplace established with men’s needs in mind, not women’s. In a way that was the wrong fight. I think what many of us have realised is that that outdated workplace was somewhere women never really wanted to operate in, in the first place.

But the inference of breaking through and pushing upwards, has been important, and necessary. And we have delivered. We did better than our male counterparts in school, exams and often college. That we were higher achievers, in general, was no fluke. But what this propulsion forward, the need to always be reaching, didn’t really leave much space for was a more varied approach to our work-life. What if, at certain points, taking that promotion was not the right thing to do? What if you did have one, two, three children at home under five and simply putting yourself out there like you had no other commitments was not the right call?

My own experience of this was a bruising one. I went back to work when my second child was seven months old. My first child was two. I had been offered a promotion, a big leap, while on maternity. I had already changed jobs when I was pregnant. As the stress began to build of having so many changes in such a short space of time, with a young baby and a toddler, I kept telling myself, this was fine. There was almost a kind of martyrdom to it, that by never stopping, never looking down, I could be another to demonstrate beyond all doubt what could be done.

But taking that job was the wrong call for me. It was massively stressful, took up all of my brain space and left me feeling too depleted to manage all I had at home. I did end up feeling like I was doing both jobs badly which is a very painful place to be. I was miserable. My circumstances were also dictated to by finance and societal norms and like many women, going back to work after 6 months was too soon.

Sometimes I look back at that time and wonder why didn’t anyone stop me and ask the question, maybe this is too much? And why couldn’t I do that for myself?

What I did get though, was a different perspective on ambition, expectation and what real parity should deliver. It wasn’t pressuring yourself into almost impossible places, it is the freedom and the confidence to say no. And that counts for the workplace as every other part of our lives. Real strength and security in our position in the world should be a surety that there will be other opportunities. That pulling against the reality of your situation leads to stress, ill-health and unhappiness. It means that women all over, in most places you look, are spread too thinly.

We are still saying yes too often and no too little.

It’s time we let ourselves off the hook. We cannot continue to operate in a workplace that was set up for men in the 1950s who mostly had wives or mothers at home, with a trajectory up the corporate ladder as the only real measure of success. It will never serve us. We need to imagine our own work culture. One where you can step up or step down, weave in and out, a fluid place that will support all you bring, and all that comes with you.

Jessie Collins, July 2020.

What has your experience been?
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