The decision to have a child is both a private and a public decision, for children are our collective future.
Sylvia Ann HewlettFor women the wage gap sets up an infuriating Catch-22 situation. They do the housework because they earn less, and they earn lessbecause they do the housework.
Sylvia Ann HewlettWomen have made enormous progress on the lower and middle rungs of the career ladder, but we are failing to make the leap into senior positions. Everyone jumps to the conclusion that it's motherhood that holds women back, but often the big roadblock is the lack of executive presence.
Sylvia Ann HewlettThere are six elements of gravitas critical to leadership: grace under fire, decisiveness, emotional intelligence and the ability to read a room, integrity and authenticity (people don't like fakes), a vision that inspires others, and a stellar reputation.
Sylvia Ann HewlettFashions change, and with the new psychoanalytical perspective of the postwar period [WWII], child rearing became enshrined as thespecial responsibility of mothersany shortcoming in adult life was now seen as rooted in the failure of mothering during childhood.
Sylvia Ann HewlettWomen of my age in America are at the mercy of two powerful and antagonistic traditions. The first is the ultradomestic fifties with its powerful cult of motherhood; the other is the strident feminism of the seventies with its attempt to clone the male competitive model.... Only in America are these ideologies pushed to extremes.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett