How are women expected to balance family, their careers and ambitions? What changes might make that balancing act more doable? The College of Charleston’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program will tackle these questions during a panel discussion Friday, October 5, 2012 at noon in room 227 of the Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library (corner of Coming and Calhoun Streets). The event is free and open to the public.
“The interest I’ve heard about this panel discussion from mothers has convinced me that this is a topic we have to talk about,” says Alison Piepmeier, director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.
The lunch panel is a response to the recent public conversation triggered by Anne-Marie Slaughter’s cover story in the The Atlantic in which she takes on the challenges of work-life balance. Slaughter, a Princeton professor and former state department official, argues that we live in a world that makes it nearly impossible for women to have high-powered careers as well as satisfying family lives.
“We live in a culture that doesn’t work for many of us who are parents,” Piepmeier says. “What does it mean when mothers are expected to return to work when their children are still infants and good childcare facilities are expensive and hard to find? What are you supposed to do when your child is sick and your workplace isn’t set up to allow you to rearrange your schedule and take care of her? Why do so few fathers in positions of power talk about this balancing act?”
Panelists will include scholars who’ve studied motherhood, women who’ve quit their jobs to be with their children, students who are single mothers and women who have started a nonprofit organization to support those single moms.
