'Having it all' is a lie for Australian women
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Australian women of child-bearing and child-rearing age have been raised on a lie. The “you can have it all” lie.
The sooner we face it, the better; the game is rigged.
The answer cannot be to ask young women to dream smaller.
Photo: Shutterstock
I could tell you stories of women I know who are exhausted, burnt out, miserable. Of women who work a full five days of paid work, only to return home to chaos where they are obliged, expected even, to cook, clean, enrol the children in holiday programs, worry about the kids’ emotional wellbeing, carry all the parental guilt and continue to ram puzzle pieces into the wrong puzzle board.
I could even tell you the exact moment the lie revealed itself to me, with a hysterical two-year-old at my feet and the chief executive on the phone and my head reeling from the ever-growing to-do list I could never, ever get on top of.
This is the story of my generation. Researchers who interviewed 15,000 Australian women for the annual Women’s Health Survey recently told us about half had been diagnosed with depression or anxiety by a doctor or psychologist.
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