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Helen Gurley Brown, creator of Cosmopolitan magazine wrote a book for women on how to get to the top. For it’s title she coined the phrase "Having It All".
The picture painted of today’s woman is one with a briefcase in one hand, a baby in the other and the cell phone that will not stop ringing pressed to her ear. She’s supposed to balance the demands of work and family without breaking a sweat; beating deadlines at work but still getting home in time for bath time while attending aerobics classes three times a week. Our grandparents never saw it that way. For them, a woman’s place was at home - barefoot and pregnant, their main tasks being childbearing and taking care of the home. Even in those days, the phrase ‘a woman’s work is never done applied without today’s pressures of holding down a full time job. With the coming of feminism, women were told that they were identical to men and had every right to success and power both inside and outside the home as their male counterparts. "I believed I could have it all," says 32 year old Mwelwa Kapapa. "I had a great job, a wonderful husband and all I needed to complete the picture was a baby." Perhaps one of the reasons feminism was a failure was that it did not take into account the effect motherhood had on women. Even though the birth of a child does affect men as well, it does not do so in that deep, gut-wrenching way that it does women. "I was at the peak of my career as an economist, the envy of every woman," says Mwelwa, "but after Chishala Junior was born, I decided to give it all up to be a full time mother. I now know that something that can turn an ambitious, wild, career girl like me into a devoted, full time mother is a force to be reckoned with". This is not to say that women would rather stay at home than work. Women value their work. It gives them an identity, self esteem and comradeship. You can see this by the number of women who give up half of their paychecks to daycare centers or nannies to be able to leave the house. Today it is easier for a mother to hold down a full time job were as in the past, the survival of the children depended in the mothers being there to breast feed. People have begun to accept that couples will have less children, who will be bottle fed and eventually sent off to daycare centers or will be left at home with a nanny or relation. Another and probably the most important change has been men’s attitudes towards women. In traditional societies like ours, a woman’s place is/was at home. She knew it, and so did the men. With women’s desire to work, men, albeit slowly and with much resistance have taken on a more supportive role in their wives careers. Couples today take turns in attending to their needs while in the past it was the mother’s duty to see to these. Gwendoline Konie, president of The Social Democratic Party does not believe that a woman can have it all. "There is a huge price to pay for success. Some area of your life will suffer and it’s up to you to choose which." Peggy Tetamashimba agrees, "You cannot attend that seminar in Siavonga and still attend the PTA meeting. This is where supportive husbands come in but those are us rare us dodos.” Asked whether they would still work if they had all the money and freedom to do anything they wanted, 20% of the women asked said they would keep their present jobs, another 20% said they would be full time mothers and wives while 60% said they would set up their own businesses in order to set their own hours but still have some activity outside the home. This shows the need that women have to both nurture and work. "Don’t try to do everything at once," says Bertha Banda a medical doctor. "I studied and after 3 yeas of practice, I took a 5 year break to have my 2 children before going back to work. It was less stressful for the children and I. A woman can have it all if she knows what her ‘all’ is. But she has to remember that she is not Super Woman and cannot do everything at once." Some woman however choose not to have children over a career, particularly if they know that they are going to spend a lot of time away from home. In this case, the husband has to be in agreement. Such cases though are rare. Having It All – In A Lifetime, and not in 5 years is what women should strive to do. Not succumbing to pressures from society or family but pursuing personal happiness is what everybody should aim for.
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