You can(not) have it all

In today’s world, many young women grow up believing that they can have it all. We attend university, study abroad, and do exciting internships. Once we start our first jobs, many of us dream of a successful career. At the same time we think about getting married and starting a family one day. This is pretty much the image of “having it all” for most of us: being able to fulfill our personal and professional goals.

This combination is something most ambitious young women think about. They wonder how it will all work out. I definitely do not know the answer to this question but I do know for sure that it will sometimes be a struggle if you want to have it all. However, with companies and politicians trying to improve the conditions for working women and mothers, I tried to believe that things will probably work out once I am in that particular situation. And before this will happen, I do not have to think through all the details as I wrote here.

But then I read an interview with PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi in the Atlantic and she said the exact opposite of what many women (young and old) believe in: she can’t have it all. I was surprised! This woman is the CEO of a huge international company, she has been married for years, she has two daughters and she is ranked number 13 on Forbes’ Power Women’s list! So why would this woman say she can’t have it all? In the interview, Mrs. Nooyi said “having it all is just an illusion that comes with painful sacrifices and tradeoffs”. So she has it all, but at the same time she feels guilty towards her daughters and her husband for not being able to spend more time with them.

What the PepsiCo CEO said really made me think: if even a woman like her says that women can’t have it all, maybe what we have to do is reframe what we assume to be “all”. If you want to start a successful career, get married and have children you have to compromise. You cannot have 100% of all of these things. Most of us won’t be able to be a full-time stay-at-home mom and at the same time climb the corporate career ladder (well, unless you have Hermione Granger’s time turner…) In my opinion, we should be clear about what we want and how we are going to do it. Not all the details have to be planned, but if you want to have children and work at the same time you probably have to accept that you will see your children less than other moms who only work part-time or stay at home. However, that should be fine with you!

So maybe we really cannot have it all. Instead, I guess we can have all that we want!

Carolin

If you want to read another article about this topic: go and read “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All." by Anne-Marie Slaughter.