A year and a half ago my coach asked me, “What is it to be a powerful woman?” Given how long it’s taken to find the answer, I’d have to start with, “Respecting a feminine process, gestation, versus a masculine one, pulling the trigger.
This week, in a conversation with a man, I had to articulate my coaching approach. I realized that I was also describing who I am as a woman.
I am a woman who traveled on my own to Madagascar, China, and the far reaches of Indonesia. I am a woman who slept in the park in Pamplona so that I could see the running of the bulls. I am a woman who hopped on my bike and rode from New Haven to Boston by myself over three days. But I am also a woman who knits, cooks most of the meals at home, and always prefers my husband to get the check.
It sounds like a cliche from the Enjolie perfume campaign: “I can bring home the bacon…fry it up in a pan…and never, never let you forget you’re a man…” And from what I see in all of the articles about our supposed unhappiness, this surface description is one that can lead to high levels of stress and not much satisfaction.
So, what is the difference between “doing it all” on paper, and actually being happy about it? To me this is at the heart of being a powerful woman. To me being powerful means not just knowing what you want, but finding the courage to be OK with it. Is it wrong to want to be cherished by my husband? Is it wrong to want to be in a key decision making role at work? And being powerful means knowing what you want in a world with so many pressured messages. Does being a good mother mean that I have to stay home full-time? At work, do I have to keep pushing because an earlier generation paved the way?
After reading Judith Warner’s Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, I felt lucky to have been raised by a French mother. In French culture, broadly speaking, a woman’s pleasure is an accepted goal. Whether that pleasure comes from caring for children or having a career that she is passionate about is not the point. A woman has the right to pursue her own satisfaction; in fact, she has a right to consider it at all. When I hear women have decided to stay at home because, “I was making a fraction of what my husband was making, so it didn’t make sense,” it makes me sad. A woman should be allowed to go to work because she enjoys it, not just because of the income!
So the answer to where power lies seems to be not so much in what we do, but in how we do it. Just like for men, power comes when we create our life, rather than reacting to it all the time. For me it’s not, “I am a world traveler BUT I knit,” rather it is, “I am a world traveler AND I knit.” Weaving it all together my way is where we get the nourishment we need. And when we are well nourished, we have the energy to be our best for our organization, our family and our community.