A new report suggests major corporations view maximum flexibility as the most pro-woman benefits policy.
A new report suggests major corporations view maximum flexibility as the most pro-woman benefits policy.
I n 2012, Anne-Marie Slaughter drew national attention for a cover article in the Atlantic entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” She argued that even as the U.S. had become increasingly accepting of women in the workforce, corporate conditions and government policy had not yet done enough to help women balance high-achieving careers with the demands of motherhood.
But as she explored the topic over the ensuing years, Slaughter changed her tune. Her introspective 2016 book Unfinished Business reached quite a different conclusion: Perhaps, she admitted, the reality is that no one can “have it all.” Perhaps our benchmarks for successfully balancing work and home should be adjusted, for men and women alike.
Today, Slaughter’s realization — provoked in large part by having prioritized her career to the extent that her husband served as “lead parent” for a large chunk of time — seems to align with the sentiments of women disenchanted with Sheryl Sandberg’s “lean in” model of feminism. “I was a Sheryl Sandberg superfan. Then her ‘Lean In’ advice failed me,” was the title of one 2018 Vox essay. In Australia’s “Women’s Agenda” earlier this year, another woman lamented, “I took Sheryl Sandberg’s advice and leaned in. It didn’t work.” In 2021, the Atlantic noted a trend of women “leaning out,” choosing either to leave the workforce entirely or shift to part-time work in an effort to reduce child-care costs and be more present at home.
But as of yet, corporate America appears unwilling to follow the zeitgeist. In our new report, my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague Nathanael Blake and I found that the benefits programs of Fortune 100 companies continue to promote maximum flexibility — the illusion of “having it all” — as a viable and desirable option for working women.
According to our report, the Fortune 100 companies with the most generous family benefits policies have also begun offering employees a whole host of options for postponing or forgoing parenthood. The same major companies that offer fully paid parental leave to mothers and fathers, assist employees with the bulk of adoption expenses, and help to fund child care also tend to be the companies that have begun promoting elective abortion, IVF, egg freezing, and surrogacy.
This shift toward a benefits smorgasbord suggests that major employers view their role as convincing women to stay in the workforce, come what may. In some cases, that might require funding three months of leave after a baby arrives and backup child care thereafter; in others, it might require subsidizing technology that appears to enable women to keep motherhood on the table even as they delay marriage and childbearing. Strikingly, the companies with the best paid-leave programs also tended to be those that rushed to promise travel subsidies should employees procure an out-of-state abortion in the wake of Dobbs.
In short, corporate America appears unwilling to consider that marginally assisting parents — while simultaneously giving the thumbs up to a variety of anti-parenting options — might not be the best way to attract and retain female employees. It betrays a refusal to acknowledge the tradeoffs inherent in balancing work and family, for both men and women. Egg-freezing today doesn’t guarantee parenthood tomorrow.
Companies with the resources to do so ought to create workplaces where women can navigate life’s tradeoffs in a clear-eyed way rather than promote the fiction that it’s possible to have it all if you manage your “leaning in” and “leaning out” with enough precision. Time is a finite resource; climbing the corporate ladder necessitates time away from home, and vice versa. It does parents no good to pretend that enough money from their employer will somehow erase this reality.
We should consider that, ultimately, the prevailing corporate answer to these tradeoffs is so misguided not because business leaders are nefarious but because they, like most Americans, have bought into flawed cultural assumptions that have dominated for decades. We treat workforce participation and parenting as commensurable goods and economic growth as an end in itself, rather than realizing that work outside the home is in service of the more important task of raising the next generation.
Social-media phenomena such as the rise of “tradwives” and modern-day homesteading are a direct repudiation of the longstanding notion that being a flourishing American woman requires gunning for a seat in the boardroom. It’s fashionable on the left to dismiss women who would prefer to bake sourdough and raise more than two children as privileged, ignorant, or subjugated. But doing so ignores the inescapable reality that the work of the home matters and someone has to do it — whether that someone is hired or not.
If corporations value the contributions of women, as they should, they would do well to consider that benefits programs aimed at retaining full-time female employees at all costs — and at the expense of motherhood — aren’t the best strategy. Instead, strategies such as reincorporating women who have left the workforce for long stretches or increasing opportunities for long-term remote and part-time work will do more to signal that business leaders see the value in women who don’t want to forgo family life for the sake of corporate success.