Salon.com > Anne-Marie Slaughter

The real reason not to intervene in Syria

Fri, 03 May 2013 17:22:00 +0000

Demands by politicians and pundits for intervention in Syria have become so strong that they now seem to be influencing U.S. policy. But are they right? The most emotionally powerful arguments came from the State Department former policy planning head Anne-Marie Slaughter. The Obama administration is in danger of letting genocide akin to the one in Rwanda in the 1990s occur, she wrote, in the Washington Post. The case of Rwanda haunts Democrats. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called not saving Rwandans her “greatest regret” from her time in office, “something that sits very heavy on all our souls.” U.N. ambassador Susan Rice has similarly expressed agony over U.S. failure to intervene in Rwanda.

Is the gender revolution over?

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:07:00 +0000

Nothing transformed American lives in the last century more than the gender revolution. The empowerment of women redefined courtship, sex, marriage, and child-rearing. Women’s entry into the paid workforce, in particular, upended the bourgeois Victorian family model in which he battles in the marketplace and she nurtures in the home. In 1950 about one in five married women went off to work; in 2000 about three in five did. Now, after decades of such astonishing change, the gender revolution appears over—before its completion.

Last summer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former high-flyer in the State Department, wrote a declaration of dependence, “Why Women Can’t Have it All,” which stirred up blogo-pandemonium. She argued that the gender revolution will never be completely won, because the emotional tug of family on women is too great, and the domestic urge of husbands is too slight. Then Marissa Mayer, the new head of Yahoo, returned to the office only two weeks after giving birth. “The baby’s been way easier than everyone made it out to be,” she proudly announced, signaling, to the outrage of struggling mothers that, for her at least, the revolution had already succeeded.

Anne-Marie Slaughter: “I’m a card-carrying feminist”

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 18:30:00 +0000

Anne Marie Slaughter is, of course, the author of that now famous (or infamous, depending whom you talk to) article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” published in the Atlantic a few months ago to great hullabaloo.

If you’re a follower of online feminism, you’re most likely familiar with the conversation around the article. It dominated conversations both online and off for weeks, sparking debate and dialogue about a number of issues including work-life balance, maternity and paternity leave, privilege in feminism, and the direction of our movement for equality. If you need a refresher, you can read a roundup of responses to the article here.