There is a saying that behind every powerful man stands a woman. But now that women have made it to top, are we standing alone?
The answer, Barnard President Debora Spar suggests, is yes: not only are we standing lonely and miserable, we are not even truly at the top. Spar's recent article for The Daily Beast is a depressing wake-up call to the myth that women can "have it all", a myth that encourages an endless pursuit of perfection that leads only to a demanding lifestyle wracked with guilt.
And nowhere else is there more pressure to "have it all." As a friend and fellow programmer remarked, the hardest part about Computer Science at Columbia is not the curriculum, but the pressure to be well-kept and refined to boot. One cannot simply succumb to the "nerdery" acceptable at more technical schools---even on the most hectic of days, sweatpants and ponytails would be giving up.
In the article, Spar highlights the psychological and biological differences between men and women, and argues for a "feminism of difference." Yet she does not mention a question I find essential to the puzzle: is, whether it be by nature or nurture, a desire to excel in multiple fields weighed with higher importance in the female psyche?
If this desire to "have it all" is somehow inherent in our natures, arguing for women to streamline our aspirations may be much harder said than done.
