Sometimes there are small errors in headlines that can quickly be amended and all is forgiven. Sometimes there are opinion pieces that are a little simplistic and could do with a drizzle of evidence and a garnish of nuance. Other times there are spear tackles of successful women that ponder whether they “can have it all”.
This relic of a phrase is still invoked in our media from the BBC to newspaper tabloids.
A recent Daily Telegraph piece featured a handful of high profile women in the media who have separated from their husbands. Positioned as sympathetic, but ultimately scorching, the headline read: “Why love is the price celebrity women pay for their status.” Despite failing the public interest pub test, having no insight into the dynamics of the various relationships or acknowledging that the separations happened over the course of several years, the column concluded the women “could not juggle a demanding career, marriage and parenting young children”.
Naturally, the long list of divorced men in the industry wasn’t included, nor was there an examination of the issues women in the public eye unfairly and disproportionately face. Things like the enormous amount of vicious trolling and harassment we experience online. Or the fact that appearance and age still play such a big role in our employment prospects. It definitely didn’t factor in structural issues, like affordable childcare, maternity leave policies and the role men play in parenting and domestic work. I mean, that’s all just so dull and evidence-based.
Instead, the article tenuously tied all of these women together, in a bid to show that our feminist foresisters shouldn’t have bothered burning their bras, because now their pants are on fire because we were lied to. You see, women can’t “have it all”.
But it’s not just a tabloid takedown weaponising this question. Just last month, in a now deleted BBC headline following Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation the boringly cliche question was rolled out again. Despite explaining that she didn’t have “enough in the tank” to continue being an effective leader, the article examines Ardern’s life as a working mother of a small child. Would the youngest male head of government who led New Zealand through the pandemic, and on tragedies including the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, and the White Island volcanic eruption get asked such a question, or an article about his resignation mention a young child?
I’m not sure who decided women want it all. And even if some do, who has decided what “all” is?
While the phrase “having it all” became popular in the 1980s due to a book by the same name, its very genesis has since been debunked as both a misrepresentation and a myth.
Written by Helen Gurley Brown, who was the then-editor of US Cosmopolitan magazine, the self-help book for women made almost no mention of children and was largely about money, sex, diet, exercise and appearance.
The title has since been exposed as a marketing gimmick, one the author tried hard, but failed to have changed. Four decades later, “having it all” is a far less aspirational goal and a far more capricious penalty.
“Having it all” is now largely weaponised against professional mothers. It’s a bar men aren’t expected to reach, and yet it’s one that continually shifts and moves for women. By its very design, all unwilling participants are destined to fail.
We need a new metric – or heck, our own individualised metrics – because what is “all”? If you choose not to have children, haven’t found your soul mate and have zero interest in a seat at a boardroom table, do you have “nothing”?
We should be having more conversations and columns about priorities, self-care, sacrifice, timing and opportunity costs. A fairer and more realistic metric is one that doesn’t reward a system where women are expected to do it all.
Feminists have fought, and continue to fight for women to have choices. To have agency. To have autonomy over our bodies and our lives.
Growing up, I was surrounded by women who had low to no job skills, no financial independence and very limited education. I witnessed many endure and stay in violent relationships, their health, happiness and wellbeing continues to be neglected or ignored entirely.
As far as objective statistics go, several decades into their nuptials, these women in my family are a raging marital success story.
Unfair attacks on the marital status of high-profiled mothers who are shifting public policy and challenging gender expectation are a mere distraction from the work that still needs to be done.
The face of homelessness in this country is women over the age of 50. First Nations women are the fastest growing prison population. A decade-high number of women were killed in December, 10 women in 20 days were allegedly murdered by a current or former partner.
This is the “price” women continue to pay in Australia.