Aparna Raghavan: Why ‘having it all’ is not a feminist issue

PepsiCo’s CEO admitted to it. Professionals on LinkedIn are posting on their personal accounts about it. We have unearthed yet another reason to be collectively and irately loud about — women cannot have it all.

We are go-getting, career-having, Victoria’s Secret wearing, nurturing, loving beings with the freedom to just be and be with whomever we want. But we still see ourselves nowhere in the ‘having it all’ spectrum.

As I skimmed through reams of online rants that urge with an almost scientific level of certainty, that this problem is gendered, I couldn’t help, “Why is their ‘having-it-all’ status not even up for deliberation at the roundtable?”

Is it because men strut around, taunting us with their amenity? Probably not, and it’s not because they have colluded to not let us in on their secret; it’s because they don’t have a clue either. Just like most human beings don’t.

‘All’ is a tricky entity to define. So, naturally, women want to fit the universe into it.

It’s not surprising, looking at the history we’ve had. From corsets, to galoshes to little black dresses, to business suits — we have experienced an exponential surge of freedom, self-worth and happiness

What is the thing that really limits us in a developed country where we can vote, drive, pursue a career (not just a job) and not have our lives dictated by the biological imperative to procreate?

Choice.

We love freedom because it gives us the right to choose. But, choice, by definition, means leaving something out. We have finite resources and time, and it’s our choices that decide how we spend it. We make choices based on the aspects of our life we deem important, and the other aspects we are willing to offer as collateral. The dichotomy in what men and women deem important is the root of the disparity we find in the perception of having it all.

Men often choose to put in more hours at work (more so when they have kids), commute more and take more physically demanding, risky jobs. They do this at the expense of a fulfilling career — time spent teaching kids math or attending recitals or having time for hobbies. These choices take them away from family, but make a fraction of them more likely to become CEOs.

Women, on the other hand, have been consistently shown to put a premium on having a job they love, with flexible hours and family benefits. These choices put them at a relative disadvantage when it comes to wages and the ascent of their career.

Given these observations, we are so accustomed to making the unilateral deduction that women take a beating to their careers that we fail to notice that men have their losses too. And all of this stems from our priorities. Time spent doing something is time spent not doing something else. It’s a zero-sum game.

I am a feminist in that I believe in equal opportunity. I am proud of the things we have fought to achieve. But, I think it’s fallacious to expect the trend to continue as ragingly as before. At some point this will have to stop being a revolution, and I think that feminism is already on the brink of that — the point of diminishing returns, where fighting more battles doesn’t produce as dramatic an effect. I’m not insinuating that women aren’t subject to some very barbaric acts or that they aren’t harassed sexually, just that those are the serious problems we need to be tackling rather than conjuring non-existent ones.

My argument may have a defeatist tone to it — we might have to settle for less-than-perfect lives. But I think being aware of this limitation will only make us try harder to inch close to what ‘all’ means to us. I agree that both men and women have years of socialization to surmount. I agree that it’s tough to find that equilibrium where we both maximize our wins. But, it’s easier than we imagine, because this begins, not like a mass movement, but on an individual level. All we need to do is seek out what works for us.

By that token, I wholly support efforts that make this process easier — whether it’s employers who are willing to accommodate flexible hours because they cannot afford to lose a valuable employee, or whether it’s couples choosing to alternate leaning in and out of their careers for mutual well-being. What I do not support is this apparent lack of having it all being used as a vehicle to fight for rights no one is being denied.

So, yes, we should aspire to nothing less than all, content in the fact that the world doesn’t owe it to us.

Aparna Raghavan is a a fifth-year majoring in medicinal chemistry.