Super Women Unravelled

I can bring home the bacon
I can fry it up in a pan
And never ever let you forget the romance
Cause I’m a woman.

As a young woman growing up in the 1970s, those words were the anthem of the liberated woman. They embodied the ideal that women could have it all: a career, a family and better sex than her mother. A quarter of a century later, myself and many other women in their 40s have found these words daunting and the reality of trying to have it all tiring and overwhelming.

Often in those ensuing twenty-five years, we have faced situations that have forced us to choose: career or family. As the increasing rate of infertility has shown, women have delayed motherhood in favour of careers often to the point that motherhood is no longer a viable option. Many face the dilemma of expensive medical interventions or abandoning the dream of a carrying a child inside their own bodies in favour of carrying an adopted child in their hearts. Equally perplexing is the plight of the women who have opted for motherhood in their 20s only to face discrimination when they attempt to re-enter the work force once their children are in school.

I recently watched a compelling pilot for a new US television show, The Lipstick Jungle. Based on a book by Candace Bushnell and starring Brooke Shields, it follows the lives of three women in their 40s who appear to be living this Enjoli dream. In reality, their lives are falling apart. Shield’s character is facing divorce because her stay-at-home husband feels emasculated by her higher income. Another character begins an affair with a younger man when her husband is more interested in his academic career than her. She stands naked with her lover’s number written in ink on her leg without his noticing. The third is trying to balance her desire for independence with her burgeoning interest in a billionaire with the need to play knight in shining armour to her damsel in distress. It chronicles well the plight that even seemingly successful women sometimes face: juggling is difficult, it is easy to keep dropping balls.

So then is the Enjoli woman dead? Have women given up the dream of having it all? A quick glance around any office in the city will quickly answer that question with a resounding no. Then how do we manage? What are the lessons of the last quarter of a century that we can share with our sisters and daughters?

I think the most important one is that you don’t have to have it all. It is alright to choose…and then to choose something else later. Hinduism recognizes four main stages of life: the student, the householder, and the retired person, and the ascetic (also known as a sannyasin or a sadhu). Each of these three stages is preceded by a samskara, a ritual that brings a person from the previous stage of life into the new one. While these are the most important stages of life, brought on by the most elaborate samskaras, there are many other samskaras performed during one's life. Traditionally, a person may undergo anywhere from 10 to 18, even up to 40, samskaras during their lifetime. So too with modern life, rather than a single life, during our seven or eight decades upon this earth, we will in fact live many lives.

The icons of my generation, women like Madonna and Demi Moore, have proven the value of re-inventing ourselves. They have moved between successful careers and motherhood, focusing on each in turn as needed. Following her divorce from husband Bruce Willis, Moore took several years off her acting career to focus on helping her children to adjust to the change. Yet her return to the big screen as the villainess in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle marked another samskaras in her lifetime. Further highlighting her success was her partner who attended the premier with her, Ashton Kutcher a man some fifteen years her junior. Madonna has likewise focussed at times upon the importance of her husband and children over career.

We must learn to accept the beauty of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken:

Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

To give ourselves permission to explore a path for as far and as long as we wish. Then to take another…and another.

The other important lesson we must share with our younger selves is creativity. Many successful women have created their own paths: women such as Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay cosmetics. Ash worked for several direct sales companies from the 1930s until the early 1960s, achieving success as a salesperson and trainer. Frustrated at being passed over for promotions in favour of men, she retired in 1963, intending to write a book to assist women in business. The book turned into a business plan for her company. In 1963, Ash began Mary Kay Cosmetics with a $5,000 investment. Her life illustrates an important lesson: when a glass ceiling prevented her from succeeding in a man’s world, she created a world of success for herself and tens of thousands of other women.

Today there is a myriad of options to help women achieve better work/family life balance. Many employers now offer options such as job sharing, flexi-time or home-based alternatives. Other women find that beginning a business of their own like Mary Kay Ash offers them the freedom they desire. For others, volunteering offers the opportunity to share their talents and keeping their CVs current while maintaining their commitment to family.

Whatever path chosen, the young women of today are blessed to have sisters and mothers that have learned the lessons of Enjoli: that have survived the bacon and the romance to find a life balance and a path right for them at that moment in their lives. Achieving that balance has not been easy for my generation and I am certain it will not be easy for either of my daughters’ generations but by accepting that they do not have to have it all and learning to create their own paths, the young women of today will be better prepared to face the demands of career and family.