Telling Women's Lives

Allie Hubbard- Unfinished Business Reader Response

One issue that Anne-Marie Slaughter raised in Unfinished Business, which I found very interesting and significant was the concept of America being a place of workaholism. Slaughter mentioned a Cadillac ad during the Super Bowl praising the virtues of America being “crazy driven, hardworking believers”. I completely agree with Slaughter who was disgusted by the ad because are not the true values of America, the true values are ones of happiness and human connection. I believe this ad really captured what the working world views as valuable and shows how we need to change these beliefs. I really resonated with the one reporter that wrote: “What working like crazy and taking no time off really gets us? It gets Americans to the grave earlier, it’s made us more anxious than people in other developed countries and it’s created a group of people more disengaged from their jobs than in countries with more leisure time.” It’s very interesting how this “workaholic” mentality differs across cultures also, in America you are considered successful and elite if you have this lifestyle. While in other countries, such as Denmark you are considered boring because you don’t have time to read a book or see a play and Denmark is the happiest country in the World, while the U.S. comes in fifteenth. If the data back the idea of “less is more” than how come we are still operating in a workaholic culture. This type of culture is leading to women not being able to reach the top, after work they have duties at home they have to attend to, going to soccer games and parent teacher conferences. However, if there is no such thing as “after work” and you are on-call 24/7, how can we do both?