Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Can Women Have It All Without Changing The World First?

This post was originally published on July 23rd, 2012

In the early days of the second wave of the feminist movement, we really did believe that we could change the world. Our dreams were for a world without racism, poverty, and war, and for a world where women and men would be equal in every respect. Men would take an equal role in child care and women would take an equal role in all aspects of public life.  We were inspired by the dream that women (and men) could have it all, but I don’t think many of us believed that anyone could have it all without radically transforming the world.

We eagerly spoke about the need to lower working hours for both women and men to say a 36 hour week, about flexible working hours, and about the Swedish model that encouraged both women and men to take parental leave.  Changing the conditions of work was a central platform of second wave feminism.

The feminists of my generation understood that it would be very difficult to “have it all” before we changed the world. 

Unfortunately in the US especially the world has changed, but in a direction exactly opposite to what we proposed. Now working more than 40 hours a week is expected in “high-powered” jobs and many of those in low-paid so-called “low-powered” jobs are expected to work overtime without the option of refusing.

In “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” Anne-Marie Slaughter mentioned that her former boss Hillary Clinton comes in at 9 and leaves at 7 so that her employees are not forced to work more than 50 hours a week. A friend of mine in a high-powered job found that she could complete her work between 9 and 5, but she was told that “it would look bad” if she left before the others.

In addition, standard US vacations are 2 weeks, while in Europe 4 weeks is the norm.  As we all know, 2 weeks is barely enough time to relax and not enough time to begin dreaming. I sometimes wonder if the American system is set up to ensure that Americans are “married” to their jobs and have no time to think about changing the system.

In Sweden, the dream that men and women would share child care has not been fully realized. Though parental leave is available to men on an equal basis with women, most men don’t take as much of it as women do. Even in Sweden, men who take “too much” time out for their families are viewed as less committed to their jobs. When women take more time off than men, they do not advance at the same rate in the workplace. For this reason the Swedish socialists and the greens are discussing a law that would require men with preschool children to take more time off work to care for their children.

Slaughter describes herself as being part of a second generation of second wave feminists who looked at the “pioneers” of my generation—many of whom were single and/or did not have children—and said, “Not for me.” When we told the women who followed us that it would be very difficult to have it all on the same basis with men, they refused to believe us. Good for them!  It is important to keep dreams alive.

The women of Slaughter’s generation saw that my generation had not succeeded in changing the conditions of work and life. They also saw that women were not being rewarded for rocking the boat too much. So rather than continuing to make changing the system a first priority, some of them focused on individual solutions. “I” can make the system work for “me” without changing its structures.

At the same time many of the women of Slaughter’s generation muted their criticism of other basic values of the patriarchy and capitalism that govern the system. Slaughter does not mention that the overwhelming power of the military industrial complex and the assumption that war is the ordinary solution to international problems should make it difficult for feminists to work in State Department. Nor does she mention that Hillary Clinton is forced to work with US military officials who (very like the Vatican in relation to the child abuse scandal) are engaged in a daily process of not responding to and covering up what can rightly be called a “rape culture” in the military.

In the field of Religious Studies feminists are not exactly “free” to “choose” not to be part of patriarchal religions and to get good jobs teaching about them, unless they wear the “veil” of disinterested objectivity.

How many feminists can “have it all” in a society that has not changed? Lucky those who have found “ideal” or “nearly ideal” partners. There don’t seem to be enough of them to go around, so many of us find ourselves in unequal or even abusive relationships—or we don’t have partners. In work, too, how can we have it all when society has not changed? How many jobs– in a voracious capitalist society that has very little interest in the meaning and conditions of work or the environment–are truly satisfying?

I agree with Slaughter that anyone who thinks that women “can have it all” is denying the enormous impediments that society puts in our way. I only wish Slaughter had also said more clearly that feminism is not “about” individual lucky superwomen having it all.  Feminism is about changing the world so that all women and men can have time for work and family–and the time to dream about ending racism, poverty, war, patriarchy, and the destruction of the environment.