There’s no work-life balance in the office of Vice President Selina Meyer, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the HBO (TWX) comedyVeep.
But there’s truth in Veep’s depiction of the massive time commitment it takes to be a leader, something that, surprisingly, gets overlooked in the conversation about parents and high-level work. In Lean In, Facebook (FB) Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg gripes about the leadership-and-ambition gap between men and women. She says this is, in part, because women want families and think they can’t move up the ladder after they have kids the way men do. Sandberg blithely advises other parents to do as she does—she often leaves work for a 6 p.m. dinner with her family.
Veep, on the other hand, hilariously shows how often the conflicts between work and life can’t be resolved.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy planning for the U.S. Department of State, famously wrote about the total lack of flexibility in vaunted government positions in an article for the Atlantic last summer. As she pointed out, this is not just a woman’s issue, and Veep is evenhanded in showing that the men who sign up for this life find it as difficult as the women do.
Clearly, not everyone wants such an all-consuming career. But that doesn’t mean we should pretend that people who do can make family a priority.
Source: BusinessWeek magazine, July 1, 2013
Sheryl Sandberg: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
John Agno: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women
Comments