Have It All? Why We’re Asking the Wrong Question.

I woke up this morning to a message from a former student who’d sent me a link to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s cover story in the new Atlantic.  If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a brilliant piece that lays out the reasons why women still can’t have it all — and what we as a society […]

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Have it all? Yeah, right!

Once again, the “have it all” myth has reared it’s schizoid head.  This time, the poster-woman is Facebook’s second most famous face, COO Sheryl Sandberg, who graced the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday. Don’t get me wrong.  I love Sandberg.  We all do.  A graduate of the Harvard Business School (and […]

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Does your Female Boss Really Have your Back?

According to a new report out of Sweden, the answer may be no. Sigh. Can’t you just hear the backlash? The ugly comparisons to the odious Miranda Priestly of “The Devil Wears Prada” fame?  The rousing chorus of “I told you so”? Sorry, folks, but we don’t buy it. What we think this report speaks […]

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The last, best word on Having It All

Delia Ephron said it all in Sunday’s New York Times: To me, having it all — if one wants to define it at all — is the magical time when what you want and what you have match up. Nothing more to say.  At all.

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The Glorious Gloria Explains It All

It happened again the other day:  I was being interviewed by my introductory journalism class when I got The Question: Are you a feminist?  Of course, I shot back.  Beat.  Are you? The young woman was the tiniest bit flummoxed at being put on the spot.  Well, she said.  I guess it depends on how […]

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There is No Having It All, There is No Perfect (and, Spoiler Alert: There is No Santa Claus Either)

So, the subject of our book is certainly in the air as of late. First, Ann Marie Slaughter, and now, a piece on The Daily Beast by Debora Spar, whose take on the issues of women chasing perfection, juggling roles and choices in a not-adequately-changed world was, frankly, so similar to the things we’ve written […]

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The Mother of all Conversations: Where The Chatter About Marissa Mayer Went Way Wrong

Now that the chatter about Marissa Mayer has started to grow cold, let me admit that the whole conversation has pissed me off. In case you’ve spent the past few days under a rock or — same thing — totally unplugged, Marissa Mayer is the former Google superstar who was annointed CEO of Yahoo on […]

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Having trouble with self-control? It’s all in your head!

When your best intentions go south, new research suggests that it wasn’t the devil that made you do it.  It was your brain. Will power, the study found, is a finite resource, one that can be easily depleted.  Which is why, when faced with a “do-I-or-don’t-I” kind of decision, you might find it easier to […]

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No, Really! Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Crisis is just opportunity in disguise. The universe/god/buddha doesn’t give us more than we can handle. It’s always darkest just before the dawn. Scar tissue is stronger. The cracks are where the light gets in. Blah blah blah. Here’s an interesting question: Which is worse, coming up […]

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The Most Important Secret to Making Big Changes? Think Small.

With New Years within spitting distance, I got to thinking about resolutions, and why it is that so many of us have found so little success with them. And here’s what I’ve come up with: we are thinking too big. I’m going to get in shape/become fluent in Mandarin/launch my business/get organized/go vegan: these are […]

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