The Elegance of Caregiving

In 2011, Anne-Marie Slaughter gave up her position in the State Department in Washington DC as (the first female) Director of Policy Planning, (reporting directly to Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton), and returned home to her husband and sons in Princeton, NJ, to resume her former academic profession as tenured professor, where, prior to her appointment in Washington, she had been Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Her decision, on the surface, was not particularly noteworthy. Her two-year leave of absence for public service was over, and staying on in Washington to pursue a political career would have meant giving up tenure at Princeton. Another professor who returned to academia, to teaching at Harvard after holding positions in public service is Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, and Director of the National Economic Council under the Obama Administration.

While Slaughter’s decision was unsurprising, the circumstances and forces behind making this decision to return home propelled Slaughter down a path of forced self-reflection, resulting in two note-worthy pieces of writing: The first, an article in the Atlantic Monthly in 2012 titled Why Women Still Can’t Have It All went viral and has the distinction of being the most read article in the history of the magazine.  The response to this article eventually led Slaughter to further reflect on the hard truths about priorities and the consequences of choosing them, which gave rise to the book Unfinished Business, published earlier this year.

Slaughter’s decision to move back to Princeton was a difficult one, and influenced by her desire to be around for her teenage sons whom she got to see only on weekends during her two years in Washington. Her choice ultimately was between family and the chance to further pursue an ambition - a political career in foreign policy. In her own words:

“This crisis had forced me to confront what was most important to me, rather than what I was conditioned to want. That realization led me to question the feminist narrative I grew up with and have always championed. I began to wonder why success as a woman, or indeed as a man, meant privileging career achievement above all else.” (Emphasis added.)

In the reactions of people around her, the decision she ultimately made was not as much of an issue as the reasons behind why she made such a decision:

To Slaughter herself, “deciding to choose family over career felt like heresy.” The reactions of people privy to her decision-making showed that “the problem was not that I had come back to the university per se, but that I had come back because of my kids.” Her status as a tenured professor at an Ivy League school took a dive all of a sudden, and depreciated only because she chose it on account of caregiving.

Unfinished Business is Slaughter’s manifesto on why “professional success is not the only measure of human happiness and achievement.” It upends mainstream views on female empowerment through professional achievement, and offers realistic alternatives down the path towards achieving equality. This essay is a response to Slaughter’s approach, as elaborated on in Unfinished Business:

Slaughter confronts the issue of gender equality by exposing the myths that we believe about career advancement. She calls these myths “half-truths” and addresses them separately as those about women, those concerning men, and those dealing with the workplace; she then furnishes the reader with the “whole truths” about those issues. 

One half-truth about women, for example, is the belief that if women were committed enough to their careers, they would be able to “have full-fledged careers just like men without giving up the joys of family life.” Feminist viewpoints that urge women to prioritize careers, and mantras like Lean-In subscribe heavily to this belief and perpetuate the idea that it is mostly a lack of aspiration that is holding women back. Slaughter exposes the false assumptions that underlie this and other myths:

Slaughter states that the assumption that women are distracted from their careers or abandon them because they lack the ambition for it is founded on the deeper assumption that these women could have flourishing careers if they only pursued them more earnestly. An extension of this assumption is that “if you are prepared to do whatever it takes to advance your career, including rarely seeing your children, then you can indeed have a career and a family too.” Slaughter further points out that many male CEOs and senior partners state that that is precisely the sacrifice they have had to make in their path to becoming leaders in their field – working extensive hours and sacrificing time with family. Slaughter shows, however, that women who desire to rise to the tops of their fields need to make those very sacrifices and then some:

Slaughter shows that typically, men who have devoted themselves to their careers have done so in the comfort of support from “wives or partners who have either been full-time or at least lead caregivers.” But a career-woman with aspirations of rising to the top typically does so with neither parent available for the children. Women who wish to prioritize their careers over everything else have an unfavorable environment because: “Relatively rare is the husband who agrees to stay home or be the lead parent so that his wife can advance her career.”

An additional burden that women face is the reality that they still shoulder the bulk of domestic responsibilities even when they hold a job outside the home. Thus, when the home environments and gender-based expectations on who bears the brunt of domestic work are so different for men and women, ambition, or the lack of it can hardly be held accountable for the differences in men’s and women’s rise in their careers.

Slaughter pays special attention to the question of why some women don’t lean-in or choose not to: Her answer to this question is that “plenty of women have leaned-in for all they’re worth but still run up against insuperable obstacles created by the combination of unpredictable life-circumstances and the rigid inflexibilities of our workplaces, the lack of a public infrastructure of care, and cultural attitudes that devalue them the minute they step out, or even just lean back from the workforce.”

Slaughter’s brand of feminism acknowledges many different obstacles to gender parity. 

And even within the realm of women’s ambitions, her tenets recognize a nuanced world with room for variation that allows for the ebbing and flowing of aspirations at different stages of one’s life.

In reflecting on her own circumstances, she acknowledges that she herself might have written something on the lines of Lean-In in her forties, when her children were young and when the kinds of problems she encountered were easily solved “by working harder or hiring people to help out.” However, a decade later, at the time of her dilemma where she found herself having to choose between a political career and spending more time with her sons, she gained “insight into the circumstances and choices facing the many women who have found that for whatever reason, leaning in simply isn’t an option.”

One notable area of variation that Slaughter recognizes concerns the aspirations of women who defer professional achievement for a few years as a personal choice. Where mainstream feminism views this choice as opting-out of a career, Slaughter lauds this choice of prioritizing caregiving as an essential component of a healthy community. She calls for a paradigm-shift in our notions of “success,” and suggests that “perhaps the problem is not with women, but with work.” (Emphasis in original) 

Slaughter believes that the locus of the problem is within the system – an “antiquated and broken” one, and offers ways to mend this system. She asks why working flexible hours or part-time or taking time off should take one off the leadership track rather than just slow down the path to promotions, and she answers: “Because the deep assumption in the American workplace is that the fast track is the only track. Up or out.”

Slaughter rejects this false dichotomy of “up or out,” and calls for a recognition of the track that allows for caregiving in its path. Slaughter also strongly dismisses the assumption that when women (or men) focus on caregiving at certain junctures in their lives, that is an indication of a lack of commitment to their careers. 

Slaughter rejects the idea of a career being “a race in which everyone starts at the same time and competes over the same period of time.” One of the many real-life examples she cites throughout the book is that of Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose career track record includes brief periods of being a full-time mom, working part-time after her second child, and beginning her first campaign for elected office well into her middle age, at sixty-two. 

She cautions that when we view careers through that narrow lens of a sprint from beginning to end with no room for variation, we leave behind those who have caregiving responsibilities or aren’t able to have a full-time caregiver at home, and as a result of that narrow mindset, we lose an enormous pool of talent: 

“We lose the distance runners, the athletes with the endurance, patience, fortitude and resilience to keep going over the long haul. We lose the runners who see a different path to the finish and are willing to take it, even if it is in unchartered territory. We lose the runners who have the temperament and perspective to allow them to see beyond the race.”

Slaughter views the problem of the so-called work-life balance as a concern that is not the sole purview of women. Instead, she reduces the entire problem of gender inequality to one issue - caregiving – something both men and women should be responsible for. She shows that as a rule, there is “the undervaluing of care, no matter who does it.” She exposes the reality that we tend to value people “who invest in themselves more than we value people who invest in others,” and she reminds us that in women’s fight for equality, we have “left caregiving behind, valuing it less and less as a meaningful and important human endeavor.”

To quote from my own writing that resonates with this position is an excerpt from my 2013 essay Is Feminism Elegant?

“If the presence of women in the workforce is perceived as the result of following a principle of empowerment (as opposed to a parameter), those who do not practice it, and do not enter the mainstream workforce are viewed as somehow not sipping from the cup of empowerment. They are viewed as ideologically indifferent to the general feminist agenda, or worse, ideologically underdeveloped! 

By solely viewing women’s work outside the home as gainful employment, we have gravely undermined the value of women’s work inside the home, and by extension, the value of the woman herself. So how do we revise our perception? We ought to view women’s work, domestic or otherwise, as having monetary value.”

Slaughter further promotes caregiving as a worthy alternative and supplement to competition, and calls for dismantling the latter’s “aura of mystery and power.” She questions our tendency to automatically view as role models those who have made a lot of money or risen to positions of power in their fields, and urges us to use other attributes as our compass of admiration.

She asks: “What about their values? How do they treat other people? What was the cost to their families – the people who brought them into the world, people they married, people they were responsible for bringing into the world? How can that part of the story not be relevant to who they are and how we should think about them?” 

These questions should be the obvious ones to ask when gauging the success of a person, but our notions of success are so narrowly defined and so driven by monetary outcomes that we have lost sight of what truly matters, and we need reminding. Perhaps it is a sign of the times that multiple books by public personae are urging us to re-examine our values:

In addition to Slaughter’s own thoughts on values, she quotes from conservative political commentator and NYT Op-Ed columnist David Brook’s recent book, The Road to Character, where Brooks, who describes himself as someone “paid to be a narcissistic blowhard” embarks on a mission to “save (his) own soul.” Brooks distinguishes between “résumé virtues” (traits valued professionally that lead to bigger paychecks and outward success) and “eulogy virtues” (praiseworthy character traits that are mentioned when the person isn’t around to hear it.) 

Slaughter quoting Brooks on eulogy virtues: “They’re “the ones that exist at the core of your being – whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you’ve formed.” They’re the ones, in the end, that matter the most.”

Slaughter’s case for caregiving passes the “test of elegance” as described in my essay Is Feminism Elegant? 

An elegant theory is one that explains the maximum evidence with minimum effort. It employs the fewest principles or rules while doing so. Elegant theories have high explanatory power, but at the same time are parsimonious. 

By using one simple but over-arching principle of caregiving as the cornerstone of gender equality, Slaughter unites the cause of women of all socio-economic levels in one parsimonious leap. In terms of applicability, caregiving is pertinent not only to women of all socio-economic levels, but to men as well. Because caregiving is also needed for the elderly, it applies to everyone - those who have children, as well as those who don’t. Slaughter’s keystone of caregiving is thus the elegant and much-needed unifying force of gender parity. 

Slaughter recommends building an “infrastructure of care” that includes affordable childcare and eldercare of high quality, a right to part-time work, flexibility in the workplace, and higher wages and training for paid caregivers, to name just a few.  What remains to be seen is how this business will be finished. What will be the specific policy changes and laws that would elevate the status of caregiving - of domestic workers, professional caregivers and of housewives - while at the same time making caregiving an affordable option for women who wish to prioritize their careers? 

In her effort to get to the roots of gender inequality, Slaughter takes things we already know about men, women, the workplace, gender expectations, our notions about masculinity, what we view as threats to masculinity, our judgments about work habits, and so much more, and she weaves together a composite that allows us to see the false assumptions that many of our beliefs on gender equality are founded on. Unfinished Business is a book that belongs on the bookshelf of every woman and man on the threshold of a career, navigating a career, or reflecting on a past career. It should be read by women leaning-in and by women staying-put, by men who care about gender equality and by men who are afraid that stepping out of antiquated gender-roles might threaten their masculine identity. It’s a book the requires re-reading to fully absorb the scope of Slaughter’s analysis: broad strokes that capture the realities of multiple cohorts of women, and intricate strokes that zoom in on individual words we use – working-mother, opting-out, Mr. Mom - euphemisms that betray our double standards, and the subtle cultural messages we send out that perpetuate the cycle of gender inequality.

To end with a slogan that Slaughter developed to exemplify her case for caregiving:

“If family comes first, work does not come second. Life comes together.”

An Open Letter to Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, in Response to 'Lean In'

Dear Sheryl Sandberg,

I am taking seriously the invitation you extend on page 173 of your book to continue the conversation you have begun with Lean In, on women and leadership.

I waited with great anticipation for your pre-ordered book to arrive at my doorstep on March 11^th, and now that I have read it, I have much to say in response. My acquaintance with your philosophy of female empowerment began with your 2010 TED lecture. Like thousands of other women, listening to your talk kindled in me a general sense of self-empowerment. Your message of “sitting at the table” and “not leaving until you leave” hit home hard as things that I had clearly failed to do well enough in my own life. As a woman, as an emerging writer, and as someone who has straddled both sides of the fence, namely, the stay-at-home and “working woman” sides, I had many perspectives and angles that were begging to be fit into some philosophy. That your philosophy was an imperfect match I attributed to the fact that yours is mostly tailored to suit the woman in the corporate world. There were many contradictions and questions that I knew could not be addressed or clarified in a TED lecture or commencement speech. That is why I waited, truly eager to read what you had to say in the leisure and expanse of a book. I hope you will take my points of reaction to your book in the spirit of someone who wishes the same end-goals for women as you do, albeit from different pathways and perspectives.

As someone who has been “the only woman in the room” far too many times, it is natural that you have begun your efforts at bridging the gender gap in professional achievement by focusing on issues that you have grappled with yourself. Your spotlight on the issue of ambition and leadership roles fills a much-needed gap in the literature of women’s roles in management.  You make a compelling case for targeting the barriers of self-limiting behaviors and internalized stereotypes, because, as you say, “they are under our own control. We can dismantle the hurdles in ourselves today. We can start this very moment.” You offer valuable advise on how to navigate the terrain of the corporate world which is seemingly a minefield for women. Why then has (initial) support for your book not been unanimous? I offer a few explanations and suggestions:

The statistics surrounding the ambition gap (as quoted in your book) are alarming and not easy to interpret. As you point out, there is scant evidence of the ambition gap when graduation rates are taken into account, as girls out-earn boys in degrees at the undergraduate level (57% of degrees are conferred to girls) and at the graduate level (60% conferred to girls.) However, as you also point out, the ambition gap is a gaping morass when one looks at women several years after graduation. Even among Harvard graduates, the percentage of women in full-time jobs ten years after graduation is around 60%, and for women who have two or more children, it’s less than 50%. The ambition gap is therefore a robust phenomenon that’s hard to ignore. But the reasons underlying this gap are not so transparent. One interpretation of these numbers, and the one you favor, is that a few years after taking educational measures that reflect a prior ambition, women give up on their aspirations and “opt out” of careers by succumbing to negative messages and internalized stereotypes. You treat the ambition gap as predominantly an internal issue, and the thesis of your book, as stated in the introduction, is, “We can re-ignite the revolution by internalizing the revolution.” Many have mistakenly interpreted this approach as an indication that you view women as primarily responsible for their lack of a greater presence in roles of leadership.

Another source of criticism for your philosophy stems from the idea that there are many factors that contribute to the notion of ambition.

An alternate interpretation of the dismaying statistics surrounding “opting out” and the ambition gap that must also be given voice is that ambitions may be muted and squashed as a result of inadequate support in the work and home environments. To use the jungle gym analogy, many women who climb onto the jungle gym are forced to jump off when children arrive because their spouses and work environments do not adequately support their new responsibilities. And it’s very difficult to hang on to the bars of the jungle gym while also holding onto a baby or two. Much of the dissent about your book revolves around this issue.

My contention about the ambition gap doesn’t concern your particular approach to remediation, but rather, concerns itself with questions about the studies that generated the alarming statistics in the first place. Were questions in the studies posed in a general manner that assumed the status quo of inadequate infrastructure and stereotypical gender-roles for women? Or, were the questions skillfully worded to tease out only the element of ambition? For example, consider the question: “If you had the requisite infrastructure and support in terms of childcare and other domestic responsibilities (a condition that the average man takes for granted), would you pursue roles of leadership and greater responsibility at work?” My guess is that if the questions in the studies controlled for variables in the environment that are known to put a damper on ambition, the ambition-gap between men and women would be significantly bridged. Thus, the question still remains: Are women truly less ambitious, and more fearful of risks than men are, or are the differences in ambition an artifact of being too aware of the stereotypical gender roles and sub-optimal conditions in which women are expected to sustain a career? Perhaps the best method to fueling ambition in women involves a multi-pronged approach where women are urged and taught to dream big, as your book most certainly does, but to also create a home and work environment where those dreams are sustainable.

Many critics have also pointed out that a top-down method will not spark a movement. I am of the same opinion. In an essay on feminism titled ‘The Problem with Women,’ I wrote: “Top-down solutions are capable only of  ‘trickle-down’ effects, and not capable of larger brush-stroke changes. For a solution to bring about meaningful changes within a single lifetime, it must begin with a broad base that is common to women of all ages, socio-economic, educational and ethnic backgrounds.” That the focus of your book is primarily on educated women in the corporate world is another reason why I think there is such a polarized response despite the fact that everyone with an opinion wants the same end results for women! The media has already identified a Sandberg camp and a Slaughter camp. While I do not wish to add to the growing commentary about these camps, I will state for the record that I, like Prof. Joan Williams, think that you are both right. I see the shortcomings of your philosophy in its scope and not in its content. In other words, if your philosophy could be extended to include all women, you are sure to ignite a movement. To that end, casting the idea of leadership as a way of life rather than a role is imperative. When we cast the idea of ‘leadership’ as a role or position that women should aspire to, we create certain corollaries that develop from that viewpoint: If you are not in a designated leadership role, you are automatically in the category of the less empowered. You are not in control of the wheel. A “worker bee” who is satisfied with her level in the corporate hierarchy is automatically considered a non-leader when external labels of leadership are applied. And when exclusionary criteria are applied to groups within a group, i.e. women in non-leadership positions within the larger cohort of “working women,” there comes about unnecessary divisions among an otherwise homogenous group.

On the other hand, if leadership is viewed as an attitude, a mindset, a philosophy, and a way of life, it doesn’t leave anybody out of its spectrum. And from anywhere on the spectrum, one could still aspire to external roles of leadership.

Part of my eagerness to read your book stemmed from the desire to learn about the theoretical bases of your philosophy. Why, in your opinion, is the female sex beleaguered (other than the fact that she internalizes stereotypes)? Do you subscribe to the Marxist origins of early feminist thought? Or, what, in your opinion, are the historical roots of female oppression? I was especially looking forward to seeing how your senior thesis at Harvard on the economic determinants of social behavior might have informed your current philosophy. I was particularly hopeful that you would address the question of how, when there is a significant wage-gap between partners (a topic closely related to your thesis), the lower-earning partner could “lean in” (without much financial leverage) if doing so meant scaling back for the higher-earning partner? While these issues were not directly addressed in the book, you hinted at your theoretical leanings in your discussion of the “mommy wars” and the phenomenon of many women rejecting the label of ‘feminist.’ I would like to present my own analysis of these two issues.

The phenomenon of the “gender wars” or what the media loves to call the “mommy wars” is a predictable outcome of the way in which we have framed the issue of female empowerment within a broader theoretical framework. While Prof. Joan Williams (as you quote in your book) attributes these conflicts to a clash of identities and a clash of social ideals, I attribute them to the way we perceive gainful employment within the larger theoretical framework of feminist theory. A detailed account of my explorations is delineated in my essay ‘Is Feminism Elegant?’ In that essay, I explore the shortcomings of dominant feminist thought from the viewpoint of the aesthetics of theory. But briefly: The dominant modus operandi of the feminist movement is gainful employment outside the home. This method has been cast as the unique and singularly powerful pathway to female emancipation. In addition, this technique of empowerment is viewed as a principle of empowerment, and not a parameter, or one expression of a higher principle. Thus, by solely viewing women’s work outside the home as a means of empowerment, we have gravely undermined the value of women’s work inside the home - and by extension, the value of the woman herself. Furthermore, because we view the presence of women in the workforce as a manifestation of a principle of feminist empowerment (and not a parameter), we view those who do not practise it, and do not enter the mainstream workforce as somehow not sipping from the cup of empowerment. They are viewed as ideologically indifferent to the general feminist agenda, or worse, ideologically under-developed! Therein lie the attitudes of superiority from the “working moms” and the counter-attacks of attempts to induce guilt by stay-at-home moms. These judgments are thus predictable products of our perception that gainful employment is the singular method of female empowerment. If however, both gainful employment and domestic work were on equal footing in the theoretical framework of feminist theory, the mommy wars would diminish. Thus, to remedy this, perceptions must be changed. We must learn to view all work undertaken by women, domestic and otherwise, as having monetary value.

Like many others, I too reject the labels ‘feminist’ and ‘feminism.’ My objections are on linguistic grounds. A full exploration of my viewpoint can be found on my blogpost ‘The Feminine Mistake.’ In brief, I reject those labels because they have (negative) connotations of being the “other.” As someone who belongs to the group that makes up half the human population, I deeply object to being classified as the other.

In conclusion, I’d like to offer some unsolicited advise: If you hope to ignite a grass-roots movement with your book and with LeanIn.org, you must broaden your message to include ways in which a woman without a job outside the home can assume leadership roles within her domestic precinct. When I heard you say, in one of your speeches, that women need to “sit at the table,” my immediate reaction was to broaden your message to apply to all women: A woman needs to sit at the head of the family dining table, especially if she is the primary domestic worker. Then, when I read your book and saw that you ended chapter eight ‘Make your Partner a Real Partner’ with “We need more men to sit at the table…… the kitchen table,” I thought to myself: Damn - She beat me to the dining table analogy!

Finally, while many in the media are getting dizzy pointing fingers at your standpoint on female empowerment and supposed lack of experience with female oppression, I want to commend you for beginning a conversation and bringing about awareness regarding the intangible barriers that women succumb to in their professional lives. As you are someone in a position of great influence, I hope that you will eventually broaden your message of self-empowerment to target the intangible barriers that suppress the voices of women in their homes and daily lives.

Sincerely,

Nandini Ramakrishna