Time to Rethink: The ‘Women’s Dilemma’ and Public Policy
By Yasmine Ergas, Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights
The ‘women’s dilemma’ is center stage – again. I call it that even though the impossible balancing of family life and professional life that Anne-Marie Slaughter recently dissected in a widely debated article in The Atlantic affects many men too. It still is primarily a women’s issue, and it will take some time before it can be characterized in gender-neutral terms. A recent workshop promoted by the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, with the financial support of ISERP, and the co-sponsorship of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, analyzed many of the new terms of the ‘motherhood’ issue. The following remarks are informed by that debate but do not seek to summarize it. Instead, I focus on some of the issues that Slaughter’s article raises.
Slaughter has been much criticized for lamenting that “women still can’t have it all.” In truth, the “having it all”...