Women and Work: Having It All Post-Lean In

Can women have it all? Work and family? Professional fulfillment and domestic bliss? It's an age-old question, but now new contributors are adding to the conversation. Here are some titles to broaden your horizons this Women's History Month.

There is, of course, Lean in, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's bestseller about women realizing their true potential through self-confidence and dreaming big. In Lean in, Sandberg asks a vital question: Why are there so few women in leadership positions?

Lean In is available in multiple formats.

Former State Department official Anne Marie Slaughter's July 2012 article in the Atlantic, "Why Women Still Can't Have it All" serves as an interesting counterpoint to Lean In. Slaughter asserts that to have a fulfilling career as well as a family women  have to compromise one or the other: "It is time for women in leadership positions to recognize that although we are still blazing trails and breaking ceilings, many of us are also reinforcing a falsehood: that 'having it all' is, more than anything, a function of personal determination."

In Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, Debora Spar explores how the first wave of the women's movement evolved into today's ideal of the perfect woman. She argues that governmental and corporate policy need to change to accommodate the demands placed on modern women.

If you are interested in these issues, please join us for the Chicago Women's Leadership Panel, a moderated discussion during which four Chicago businesswomen will answer questions inspired by Lean In.