Women's (Impossible) Quest for Perfection - Interview with Debora Spar

This is a great interview with working mum Debora Spar who has written book Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection. As the title suggests the book explores how far women have come in the struggle for power but also how we now face the tyranny of hyper-perfect images of working mothers and romantic notions of “having it all.”

Spar speaks about the unlikely moment when she realized she had it all, why we need to speak more openly about the tradeoffs of being in a position of prominence and why it’s time to stop telling women, “I don’t know how you do it all.”

A thought provoking quote we plucked from the interview...

"It’s very important for women who are in positions of some prominence to be more honest about the trade-offs they have made, about the mistakes they have made, about the hard times they have had. If we’re all out there selling our perfect lives, we’re really just perpetuating a myth, for the next generation of women."

For the interview transcript click here. Otherwise enjoy the video interview below.

Originally posted 14.1.14 by the Wharton School, Knowledge@Wharton, University of Pennsylvania.