In the early 1960s Betty Friedan wrote the bible of the modern women’s movement, The Feminine Mystique. Her primary purpose was to urge women (especially educated women of a certain class) to realize what she deemed their full potential. How? By getting out of the home – escaping from the suffocating tediousness it implied – and into the workplace.
It would have been difficult for Friedan then to imagine that twenty years later, in her second major book The Second Stage, her argument would be entirely different. By the time it was published Friedan’s concern was not that women were doing too little, but that they were taking on too much. That instead of freeing women, the “superwomanhood” of the 1980s had led to their double enslavement. Still at home and now, additionally, at work.
Since then, the word “superwoman” has come to be part of our lexicon. It’s usually applied to a Western woman who works exceedingly hard to manage and even excel at two apparently incompatible, tasks. The first is to succeed personally, which means running her home, from cooking and cleaning to childcare and elder care. The second is to succeed professionally, which means advancing her career and bringing home some, most, or even all the bacon. Of course, some men now take on more of the domestic chores than they did a half century ago. But even in the United States women still do most of the housework and caregiving. And in most other countries the imbalance between what women and men are responsible for, specifically in the home, is much greater.
The word “superwoman” is sometimes used admiringly, in admiration of a woman who appears to do it all well. And it’s sometimes used disparagingly, in disparagement of a woman who clings to the sadly and badly mistaken idea that it’s possible to do it all well.
The subject regularly comes up in conversations about women and leadership. Can a woman with a child, especially a young child, and especially with more than one child, and especially if she happens to be a single parent, simultaneously be a leader? If yes, what if anything does this say about her as a parent?
Which brings me to the exception that might or might not prove the rule – Ursula von der Leyen. She is one of the most powerful women leaders in the world. She is one of the most powerful leaders in the world – period.
Von der Leyen has been president of the European Commission since 2019. During her tenure she has taken an essentially weak body consisting of a recalcitrant membership to forge the European Union (EU) into a relatively cohesive and forceful global actor. Notwithstanding the crises first of Covid and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and notwithstanding her own aloof and patently ambitious executive leadership, von der Leyen has replaced former German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Europe’s most effective single leader.
To be clear, von der Leyen is not loved by her constituents. Nor is she destined ultimately to succeed in keeping Europe sufficiently united, able to sustain itself as something akin to a single voice. But she has already established the EU as a global actor with which the rest of the world has to reckon. As one member of the European parliament summarized her impact, “People used to ask what Europe’s phone number is. Now we know. She has given Europe a voice and a face.”
Oh, and did I mention that von der Leyen is a physician?
Oh, and did I mention that under Chancellor Merkel von der Leyen was German Defense Minister?
Oh, and did I mention that she and her husband, Heiko von der Leyen, have seven children?