Anne-Marie Slaughter: We need a men's movement - Women's Agenda

Anne-Marie Slaughter: We need a men’s movement

One year since Anne-Marie Slaughter penned an essay on why women still can’t have it all for The Atlantic, the former Hillary Clinton adviser is calling for a men’s movement to normalise the role of men in the home.

This week, Slaughter told The Guardian that her argument was not so much surmising the inability of women to achieve balance that it has frequently been cited as being about, but rather about the fight to achieve equality — for both sexes.

“I became the poster child, certainly in the media, for ‘women can’t have it all,’ when my whole life stands for the opposite proposition,” she said.

Instead of calling for women to adopt another much hyped phrase and ‘lean in’ to their careers, she’s now saying that men need to take a step back from their careers and ‘lean in’ to their home life.

The former state department official says it’s time for a ‘men’s movement’ to really bring on equality between the sexes. While women still need to find a balance between work and life, men need to find a balance in achieving equal value in the home.

“You know, women are hypocrites this way, because we would go crazy if men treated us in the workforce the way we typically treat them at home — if a guy in the workforce assumed he was more competent than you are, and told you what to do — but that’s the way most women treat men in the household” she told The Guardian.

Her thinking is influenced by the belief that the men who prioritise family are stigmatised in the workplace, and the phrase ‘working dad’ needs to become normalised.

Read Slaughter’s interview with Read Slaughter’s interview with The Guardian.

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