Can we all "have it all"?

Public policy expert Anne-Marie Slaughter made waves with her 2012 article, "Why women still can't have it all." But really, is this only a question for women? Here Slaughter expands her ideas and explains why shifts in work culture, public policy and social mores can lead to more equality — for men, women, all of us.

So my moment of truth

did not come all at once.

In 2010, I had the chance to be considered

for promotion from my job

as director of policy planning

at the U.S. State Department.

This was my moment to lean in,

to push myself forward

for what are really only a handful

of the very top foreign policy jobs,

and I had just finished a big, 18-month project

for Secretary Clinton, successfully,

and I knew I could handle a bigger job.

The woman I thought I was

would have said yes.

But I had been commuting for two years

between Washington and Princeton, New Jersey,

where my husband and my two teenage sons lived,

and it was not going well.

I tried on the idea of eking out another two years

in Washington, or maybe uprooting my sons

from their school and my husband from his work

and asking them to join me.

But deep down, I knew

that the right decision was to go home,

even if I didn't fully recognize the woman

who was making that choice.

That was a decision based on love

and responsibility.

I couldn't keep watching my oldest son

make bad choices

without being able to be there for him

when and if he needed me.

But the real change came more gradually.

Over the next year,

while my family was righting itself,

I started to realize

that even if I could go back into government,

I didn't want to.

I didn't want to miss the last five years

that my sons were at home.

I finally allowed myself to accept

what was really most important to me,

not what I was conditioned to want

or maybe what I conditioned myself to want,

and that decision led to a reassessment

of the feminist narrative that I grew up with

and have always championed.

I am still completely committed

to the cause of male-female equality,

but let's think about what that equality really means,

and how best to achieve it.

I always accepted the idea

that the most respected and powerful people

in our society are men at the top of their careers,

so that the measure of male-female equality

ought to be how many women are in those positions:

prime ministers, presidents, CEOs,

directors, managers, Nobel laureates, leaders.

I still think we should do everything we possibly can

to achieve that goal.

But that's only half of real equality,

and I now think we're never going to get there

unless we recognize the other half.

I suggest that real equality,

full equality,

does not just mean valuing women

on male terms.

It means creating a much wider range

of equally respected choices

for women and for men.

And to get there, we have to change our workplaces,

our policies and our culture.

In the workplace,

real equality means valuing family

just as much as work,

and understanding that the two reinforce each other.

As a leader and as a manager,

I have always acted on the mantra,

if family comes first,

work does not come second --

life comes together.

If you work for me, and you have a family issue,

I expect you to attend to it,

and I am confident,

and my confidence has always been borne out,

that the work will get done, and done better.

Workers who have a reason to get home

to care for their children or their family members

are more focused, more efficient,

more results-focused.

And breadwinners who are also caregivers

have a much wider range

of experiences and contacts.

Think about a lawyer who spends part of his time

at school events for his kids

talking to other parents.

He's much more likely to bring in

new clients for his firm

than a lawyer who never leaves his office.

And caregiving itself

develops patience --

a lot of patience --

and empathy, creativity, resilience, adaptability.

Those are all attributes that are ever more important

in a high-speed, horizontal,

networked global economy.

The best companies actually know this.

The companies that win awards

for workplace flexibility in the United States

include some of our most successful corporations,

and a 2008 national study

on the changing workforce

showed that employees

in flexible and effective workplaces

are more engaged with their work,

they're more satisfied and more loyal,

they have lower levels of stress

and higher levels of mental health.

And a 2012 study of employers

showed that deep, flexible practices

actually lowered operating costs

and increased adaptability

in a global service economy.

So you may think

that the privileging of work over family

is only an American problem.

Sadly, though, the obsession with work

is no longer a uniquely American disease.

Twenty years ago,

when my family first started going to Italy,

we used to luxuriate in the culture of siesta.

Siesta is not just about avoiding the heat of the day.

It's actually just as much

about embracing the warmth of a family lunch.

Now, when we go, fewer and fewer businesses

close for siesta,

reflecting the advance of global corporations

and 24-hour competition.

So making a place for those we love

is actually a global imperative.

In policy terms,

real equality means recognizing

that the work that women have traditionally done

is just as important

as the work that men have traditionally done,

no matter who does it.

Think about it: Breadwinning and caregiving

are equally necessary for human survival.

At least if we get beyond a barter economy,

somebody has to earn an income

and someone else has to convert that income

to care and sustenance for loved ones.

Now most of you, when you hear me

talk about breadwinning and caregiving,

instinctively translate those categories

into men's work and women's work.

And we don't typically challenge

why men's work is advantaged.

But consider a same-sex couple

like my friends Sarah and Emily.

They're psychiatrists.

They got married five years ago,

and now they have two-year-old twins.

They love being mothers,

but they also love their work,

and they're really good at what they do.

So how are they going to divide up

breadwinning and caregiving responsibilities?

Should one of them stop working

or reduce hours to be home?

Or should they both change their practices

so they can have much more flexible schedules?

And what criteria should they use

to make that decision?

Is it who makes the most money

or who is most committed to her career?

Or who has the most flexible boss?

The same-sex perspective helps us see

that juggling work and family

are not women's problems,

they're family problems.

And Sarah and Emily are the lucky ones,

because they have a choice

about how much they want to work.

Millions of men and women

have to be both breadwinners and caregivers

just to earn the income they need,

and many of those workers are scrambling.

They're patching together care arrangements

that are inadequate

and often actually unsafe.

If breadwinning and caregiving are really equal,

then why shouldn't a government

invest as much in an infrastructure of care

as the foundation of a healthy society

as it invests in physical infrastructure

as the backbone of a successful economy?

The governments that get it --

no surprises here --

the governments that get it,

Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands,

provide universal child care,

support for caregivers at home,

school and early childhood education,

protections for pregnant women,

and care for the elderly and the disabled.

Those governments invest in that infrastructure

the same way they invest in roads and bridges

and tunnels and trains.

Those societies also show you

that breadwinning and caregiving

reinforce each other.

They routinely rank among the top 15 countries

of the most globally competitive economies,

but at the same time,

they rank very high on the OECD Better Life Index.

In fact, they rank higher than other governments,

like my own, the U.S., or Switzerland,

that have higher average levels of income

but lower rankings on work-life balance.

So changing our workplaces

and building infrastructures of care

would make a big difference,

but we're not going to get equally valued choices

unless we change our culture,

and the kind of cultural change required

means re-socializing men.

(Applause)

Increasingly in developed countries,

women are socialized to believe that our place

is no longer only in the home,

but men are actually still where they always were.

Men are still socialized to believe

that they have to be breadwinners,

that to derive their self-worth

from how high they can climb over other men

on a career ladder.

The feminist revolution still has a long way to go.

It's certainly not complete.

But 60 years after

"The Feminine
Mystique" was published,

many women actually have

more choices than men do.

We can decide to be a breadwinner,

a caregiver, or any combination of the two.

When a man, on the other hand,

decides to be a caregiver,

he puts his manhood on the line.

His friends may praise his decision,

but underneath, they're scratching their heads.

Isn't the measure of a man

his willingness to compete with other men

for power and prestige?

And as many women hold that view as men do.

We know that lots of women

still judge the attractiveness of a man

based in large part on how successful he is

in his career.

A woman can drop out of the work force

and still be an attractive partner.

For a man, that's a risky proposition.

So as parents and partners,

we should be socializing our sons

and our husbands

to be whatever they want to be,

either caregivers or breadwinners.

We should be socializing them to make caregiving

cool for guys.

(Applause)

I can almost hear lots of you thinking, "No way."

But in fact, the change is
actually already happening.

At least in the United States,

lots of men take pride in cooking,

and frankly obsess over stoves.

They are in the birthing rooms.

They take paternity leave when they can.

They can walk a baby or soothe a toddler

just as well as their wives can,

and they are increasingly

doing much more of the housework.

Indeed, there are male college students now

who are starting to say,

"I want to be a stay-at-home dad."

That was completely unthinkable

50 or even 30 years ago.

And in Norway, where men have

an automatic three month's paternity leave,

but they lose it if they decide not to take it,

a high government official told me

that companies are starting to look

at prospective male employees

and raise an eyebrow if they didn't in fact

take their leave when they had kids.

That means that it's starting to seem

like a character defect

not to want to be a fully engaged father.

So I was raised

to believe that championing women's rights

meant doing everything we could

to get women to the top.

And I still hope that I live long enough

to see men and women equally represented

at all levels of the work force.

But I've come to believe that we have to value family

every bit as much as we value work,

and that we should entertain the idea

that doing right by those we love

will make all of us better at everything we do.

Thirty years ago, Carol Gilligan,

a wonderful psychologist, studied adolescent girls

and identified an ethic of care,

an element of human nature every bit as important

as the ethic of justice.

It turns out that "you don't care"

is just as much a part of who we are

as "that's not fair."

Bill Gates agrees.

He argues that the two great forces of human nature

are self-interest and caring for others.

Let's bring them both together.

Let's make the feminist revolution

a humanist revolution.

As whole human beings,

we will be better caregivers and breadwinners.

You may think that can't happen,

but I grew up in a society

where my mother put out small vases

of cigarettes for dinner parties,

where blacks and whites used separate bathrooms,

and where everybody claimed to be heterosexual.

Today, not so much.

The revolution for human equality

can happen.

It is happening.

It will happen.

How far and how fast is up to us.

Thank you.

(Applause)