Let's establish something right now: No one has it all. Men don't have it all. Women don't have it all. The concept of 'it all' was invented by a magazine editorial team in 1982 and has been causing low-grade psychological damage ever since. Here is what I have observed from the most effective, influential women. What they have is something faaaar more interesting. They have priorities. Priorities so clear that the word 'balance' genuinely does not occur to them. They do not balance. They are not in the circus, to perform a balancing act.
Instead, the choose. Repeatedly, deliberately, and without apology.I am obviously going to back this up with Data - DUH! A 2023 Harvard Business Review study, followed 200 senior women leaders across three industries over five years. This is the finding that surprised researchers: women who reported the highest career satisfaction were not the ones who achieved the most. They were the ones who at some early point in their career (life) explicitly decided what they were saying no to.They had names for their non-negotiables and they were very clear about them.
These women had, in the slightly clinical language of the study, 'integrated their identity across contexts' which, translated from academic into human, meaning: they were the same person at the board meeting and at school pickup. And that coherence as it turns out - what you say no to, has the extraordinary way of shaping you into your truest self. Boundaries - thats what it comes down to. Your gender doesn’t define that for you, you define that for yourself.
The multi-hyphenate is not a woman who cannot make up her mind. She is a woman whose mind is large enough to hold more than one truth without them cancelling each other out.On the Psychology of BecomingThere is a reason we call it Women in Becoming rather than Women Who Have Arrived. Arrival implies a final answer. A state achieved. A self completed.
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Neena Phillip
