Telling Women's Lives

Unfinished Business- Jessica Jordan

I enjoyed revisiting Anne-Marie Slaughter in Unfinished Business now that I have a bit more WGS knowledge. First, I appreciated how at the beginning, Slaughter recognized her experience is completely different than other women’s. She was able to step out of her own perspective, yet still try to make overarching insights that applied to our culture, rather than simply applying to the fast-paced career oriented women. One prevalent issue Slaughter raised is our views on caregiving in our society, for both the elderly and our children. She expressed her familiar view- that women can’t have it all- not because we are not capable, but because of the way society has constructed the roles for males and females. She explained how the male who leaves his family for a fast-paced and time consuming job is doing his duty as the husband, while the female takes over as the lead caregiver. People don’t think twice about these roles- they have been ingrained in our minds as “natural”. Instead, we think it’s odd when the male is lead caregiver at home, while also criticizing women who stop working to focus on their families. It seems we have created this unhealthy system of criticizing the mothers who leave their children while also criticizing the mothers who stop working to care for their children, when really we should be considering the reasons why females make these choices. Slaughter explored these concepts in her book and shed valuable insight on the caregiving attitudes in our society.