The question, when asking if women can “have it all”, is not about women’s ability to succeed but about the societal and cultural barriers to that success. Women have surpassed men in gaining bachelor’s and advanced degrees, and there are examples (though at times few in number) of successful women and mothers in the upper tiers of all fields, ranging from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Harvard President Drew Faust. Nowadays, the hurdles to female success are more cultural and therefore harder to dismantle than the legal and blatantly discriminatory barriers to work women faced just decades ago. These modern obstacles include institutional biases of more time spent in the office equating success; perceptions of motherhood as a hindrance to career devotion and accomplishment; and the internal idea women hold that there remains a binary choice between having a family or having a career.
Women will never be treated exactly as men are—men will never have to take maternity leave due to pregnancy, for example—yet that does not mean that women cannot be justly treated and respected in the workplace. As we continue to identify and address such slippery cultural barriers to greater female success, women will be able to reach their potential to “have it all.”
I have seen women succeed professionally, yet at the same time I have seen the work such efforts still require: in the first meeting I attended for a publication, I was one of only two women sitting around a conference table full of men. Though my six-year history of all-girls education made me feel greatly out of place, I was comforted by seeing the only other woman in the room, the section editor, sitting at the head of the table.