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Work/life balance problems seem to constantly be a problem. In every job, people, both male and female, have to decide which life they are going to put first, their work life or their family life. Although almost everybody wants to balance both, that seems to be an impossibility in most cases. This issue hits close to home for me because I want to be a part of the legal profession after I am done with law school and I do not know if I am going to be able to balance both. I know that personally would be able to balance both because I have balanced my family, school and part-time job all through college and most of high school, but I do not know if society is going to let me balance both and this had held me back a little when deciding if I really do want to pursue my goal of becoming a lawyer and I do not think that is fair.


In the interview between Debra Levy and Joan Williams, one of the questions brought up was “It seems that many women of today leave the work force as a form of resistance to a work culture that makes it difficult to raise their children as they think best. What role did feminism play in the development of this type of work culture?” And Williams answered that, “Mainstream feminism asked women to perform like men. It did not start from where women are-caring for their children with a strong value system that dictates that desire. The movement for equality devalued mothers and the ideal of care giving in our society. But it is also true that the push for work/family balance has come from within feminism. One of the things I do is critique full-commodification feminism, which is the sense that women’s equality lies in performing as ideal workers along with men, and delegating childcare to outsiders.” This goes along with our book Gender on Trial in a way because in Gender on Trial it discusses how when women are in a profession such as being a lawyer or in the legal field, they are not expected to have babies and if they do, then they are looked at differently and looked at as if they cannot handle the work they use to. In Gender on Trial when a women lawyer has a baby, some of them take on part-time jobs and that is really not acceptable. In the end it does not work out the way it is suppose to.

This also leads to another question in the interview that asked, “Why is the ideal worker norm so damaging to mothers in our society?” Williams says it is so damaging because, “Most women with children cannot live up to a norm designed around the model of a man without childcare responsibilities.” I agree, the ideal worker norm is set to a man’s standard, not even taking into consideration a woman’s standard and especially not a woman who is a mother. This is also brought up in Gender on Trial. In the book they discuss the norm and how the norm is male, therefore leaving it almost impossible for women to ever fit that norm.