Contributor: Stew Friedman
Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of The Atlantic article that shook the world — “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” — spoke at Wharton today in the Authors@Wharton series, co-sponsored by the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project and Wharton Women in Business.
An interview with Professor Slaughter was videotaped today for Knowledge@Wharton and her Huntsman Hall talk was also videotaped. Subscribe to this forum to be alerted when these videos become available.
You are invited to post your ideas, reactions, and questions about Professor Slaughter’s remarks in the Comments section for this post. Let’s keep the conversation about this important topic going!
Stew, Adam and team – thank you for bringing Anne-Marie Slaughter to campus. What an incredible and thoughtful discussion – and one that I’m so glad to see continued here. One outstanding question I had from the conversation is how do we (as women) engage men in this dialogue? For many of us this includes our partners, our peers, our bosses/leaders. Aside from “asking for xx” from that latter group (and I agree women don’t ask enough), how else can we bring men into the conversation/partner with them to help change existing work/life norms?
Great question, Ankur. One of my purposes in calling my book and course “Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer LIfe” was to use language that makes it easier for men to grapple in realistic ways with the issues of integrating work and the rest of life. So my emphasis is on leadership, performance, and results — in all parts of life — and this framing invites men (and women, too, of course) to engage in the challenging and rewarding stuff of creating change in your world that is sustainable because it serves not only your own interests but those of your company, your family, and your society. For men, leading from the point of view of the whole person is a more accessible idea to pursue than “work/life balance” because of the traditional stereotypes still associated with this term (i.e., that people who want balance aren’t really committed or that it’s really just a women’s issue)
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