Having It All

Download or read book Forget "Having It All" written by Amy Westervelt and published by Seal Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear-eyed look at the history of American ideas about motherhood, how those ideas have impacted all women (whether they have kids or not), and how to fix the inequality that exists as a result. After filing a story only two hours after giving birth, and then getting straight back to full-time work the next morning, journalist Amy Westervelt had a revelation: America might claim to revere motherhood, but it treats women who have children like crap. From inadequate maternity leave to gender-based double standards, emotional labor to the "motherhood penalty" wage gap, racist devaluing of some mothers and overvaluing of others, and our tendency to consider women's value only in terms of their reproductive capacity, Westervelt became determined to understand how we got here and how the promise of "having it all" ever even became a thing when it was so far from reality for American women. In Forget "Having It All," Westervelt traces the roots of our modern expectations of mothers and motherhood back to extremist ideas held by the first Puritans who attempted to colonize America and examines how those ideals shifted -- or didn't -- through every generation since. Using this historical backdrop, Westervelt draws out what we should replicate from our past (bringing back home economics, for example, this time with an emphasis on gender-balanced labor in the home), and what we must begin anew as we overhaul American motherhood (including taking a more intersectional view of motherhood, thinking deeply about the ways in which capitalism influences our views on reproduction, and incorporating working fathers into discussions about work-life balance). In looking for inspiration elsewhere in the world, Westervelt turned not to Scandinavia, where every work-life balance story inevitably ends up, but to Japan where politicians, in an increasingly desperate effort to increase the country's birth rates (sound familiar?), tried to apply Scandinavian-style policies atop a capitalist democracy not unlike America's, only to find that policy can't do much in the absence of cultural shift. Ultimately, Westervelt presents a measured, historically rooted and research-backed call for workplace policies, cultural norms, and personal attitudes about motherhood that will radically improve the lives of not just working moms but all Americans.

Download or read book Having It All in the Belle Epoque written by Rachel Mesch and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-03 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In this entertaining academic history of these rival magazines, Mesch . . . explores the emergence of the working woman in France.” —Publishers Weekly At once deeply historical and surprisingly timely, Having It All in the Belle Epoque shows how the debates that continue to captivate high-achieving women in America and Europe can be traced back to the early 1900s in France. The first two photographic magazines aimed at women, Femina and La Vie Heureuse created a female role model who could balance age-old convention with new equalities. Often referred to simply as the “modern woman,” this captivating figure embodied the hopes and dreams as well as the most pressing internal conflicts of large numbers of French women during what was a period of profound change. Full of never-before-studied images of the modern French woman in action, Having It All shows how these early magazines exploited new photographic technologies, artistic currents, and literary trends to create a powerful model of French femininity, one that has exerted a lasting influence on French expression. This book introduces and explores the concept of Belle Epoque literary feminism, a product of the elite milieu from which the magazines emerged. Defined by its refusal of political engagement, this feminism was nevertheless preoccupied with expanding women’s roles, as it worked to construct a collective fantasy of female achievement. Through an astute blend of historical research, literary criticism, and visual analysis, Mesch’s study of women’s magazines and the popular writers associated with them offers an original window onto a bygone era that can serve as a framework for ongoing debates about feminism, femininity, and work-life tensions

Download or read book Having it All written by John Assaraf and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our schools and parents teach us only a small fraction of what we need to learn in order to reach our true potential and achieve success. The rest we must learn through our own trials and tribulations. 'Street kid' John Assaraf broke free from a troubled past to create a multi-million dollar empire. In Having it All, Assaraf tells of his discovery that, no matter what kind of difficult circumstances someone happens to be in at any one time, he or she can achieve whatever they want in life. By combining old-world wisdom and street-smart tactics, Assaraf created the life of his dreams. He shares his method here.

Download or read book Having It All by Not Doing It All written by Pamela Hay and published by Balboa Press. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Being a woman today means a thirty-year rollercoaster ride. Professional women have been trying for decades to do it all at home and in the workplace, while still receiving less domestic support from their husbands than needed. The competing obligations and second-shifting leaves women with too little time and space for nurturing their own needs and exacts a heavy price on their wellbeing over time. Women have learned how to lean in. Have they learned how to lean back? The effort to be superwoman is burning them out. There are better ways to lessen the load and stress. This book draws attention to the second-shift phenomenon and offers women better life strategies that can bring more joy, energy, fulfillment, and fun into their lives.

Download or read book You Can Have It All, Just Not at the Same Damn Time written by Romi Neustadt and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author, entrepreneur, speaker, and life and business coach Romi Neustadt has a message for women: You CAN have it all--just not at the same damn time. Romi Neustadt is a mom of two, a wife, a daughter, bestselling author, speaker, entrepreneur, and coach. What's more, she's achieved these things without a staff of 10, the ability to sleep two hours a night or driving herself batsh*t crazy. She's figured out the key to having it all: Priorities, babe. In her second book, Romi provides a no-BS blueprint for women to figure out what to focus on and what not to. She explains why saying YES to everything and everyone really means saying NO to the things that matter -- to your goals, your dreams, and your true self. The key to achieving your wildest dreams isn't to downsize them. It's to embrace them more fully, and discard everything that isn't serving them. This book will teach you how to: Zone in on what really matters to you, so you can ditch everything that isn't serving your dreams. Recognize and embrace your true worth as a provider, partner, and all-around kickass human. Say no to the millionth request from your kid's school for home-baked goods--without experiencing mom guilt. Establish boundaries that stick with coworkers, friends, and family. Ditch toxic relationships and the soul-sucking drama that accompanies them. Stop feeling like an imposter in your own life. Create habits that protect your time and energy. Kick fear (of not being lovable, pretty, or good enough) to the curb once and for all. Written in the same down-to-earth, accessible style that made her first book, Get Over Your Damn Self, a beloved bestseller, this book is for every woman who wants to live a fulfilled, authentic life without feeling stressed and exhausted. Romi is living proof that it's possible, and you will be too.

Download or read book All the Rage written by Darcy Lockman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do men do so little at home? Why do women do so much? Why don't our egalitarian values match our lived experiences? Journalist-turned-psychologist Darcy Lockman offers a clear-eyed look at the most pernicious problem facing modern parents—how progressive relationships become traditional ones when children are introduced into the household. In an era of seemingly unprecedented feminist activism, enlightenment, and change, data shows that one area of gender inequality stubbornly persists: the disproportionate amount of parental work that falls to women, no matter their background, class, or professional status. All the Rage investigates the cause of this pervasive inequity to answer why, in households where both parents work full-time and agree that tasks should be equally shared, mothers’ household management, mental labor, and childcare contributions still outweigh fathers’. How, in a culture that pays lip service to women’s equality and lauds the benefits of father involvement—benefits that extend far beyond the well-being of the kids themselves—can a commitment to fairness in marriage melt away upon the arrival of children? Counting on male partners who will share the burden, women today have been left with what political scientists call unfulfilled, rising expectations. Historically these unmet expectations lie at the heart of revolutions, insurgencies, and civil unrest. If so many couples are living this way, and so many women are angered or just exhausted by it, why do we remain so stuck? Where is our revolution, our insurgency, our civil unrest? Darcy Lockman drills deep to find answers, exploring how the feminist promise of true domestic partnership almost never, in fact, comes to pass. Starting with her own marriage as a ground zero case study, she moves outward, chronicling the experiences of a diverse cross-section of women raising children with men; visiting new mothers’ groups and pioneering co-parenting specialists; and interviewing experts across academic fields, from gender studies professors and anthropologists to neuroscientists and primatologists. Lockman identifies three tenets that have upheld the cultural gender division of labor and peels back the ways in which both men and women unintentionally perpetuate old norms. If we can all agree that equal pay for equal work should be a given, can the same apply to unpaid work? Can justice finally come home?

Download or read book Wonder Women written by Debora L. Spar and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years after the Equal Pay Act, why are women still living in a man's world? Debora L. Spar never thought of herself as a feminist. Raised after the tumult of the 1960s, she presumed the gender war was over. As one of the youngest female professors to be tenured at Harvard Business School and a mother of three, she swore to young women that they could have it all. "We thought we could just glide into the new era of equality, with babies, board seats, and husbands in tow," she writes. "We were wrong." Now she is the president of Barnard College, arguably the most important all-women's college in the United States. And in Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection—a fresh, wise, original book— she asks why, a half century after the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, do women still feel stuck. In this groundbreaking and compulsively readable book, Spar explores how American women's lives have—and have not—changed over the past fifty years. Armed with reams of new research, she details how women struggled for power and instead got stuck in an endless quest for perfection. The challenges confronting women are more complex than ever, and they are challenges that come inherently and inevitably from being female. Spar is acutely aware that it's time to change course. Both deeply personal and statistically rich, Wonder Women is Spar's story and the story of our culture. It is cultural history at its best, and a road map for the future.