Before she became a lightning rod for the work/life balance debate, Anne-Marie Slaughter was a below-the-radar Princeton professor and foreign policy wonk. Then last summer she wrote a very personal article in The Atlantic in which she detailed her decision to leave a job at the State Department because, as she put it, “I could no longer be both the parent and the professional I wanted to be—at least not with a child experiencing a rocky adolescence.” That conclusion was neither original nor unique, but her argument, and particularly the article’s title—Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”—was felt both as a betrayal to working mothers (and fathers) and a vindication to those who had compromised careers to raise children. In other words, everyone had a horse in this race, and the subsequent debate raged for weeks. Slaughter has since acknowledged that the phrase “have it all” was somewhat inflammatory and has sworn off using it, which will no doubt make coming up with a title for her subsequent book on the subject to be published next year that much more difficult.
People Who Mattered in 2012
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Full List
People Who Mattered
- Bashar Assad
- Ben Bernanke
- Jeff Bezos
- John Boehner
- Chris Christie
- Hillary Clinton
- Bill Clinton
- Stephen Colbert
- Claire Danes
- Gabby Douglas
- Mario Draghi
- Lena Dunham
- Sandra Fluke
- Roger Goodell
- Klaus Jacob
- E.L. James
- Jay-Z
- Xi Jinping
- Paul Kagame
- Imran Khan
- Christine Lagarde
- Erik Martin and Violentacrez
- Trayvon Martin
- Marissa Mayer
- Angela Merkel
- Khaled Meshal
- Kate Middleton
- Enrique Peña Nieto
- Benjamin Netanyahu
- Frank Ocean
- Michelle Obama
- Larry Page
- Jonah Peretti
- David Petraeus
- Michael Phelps
- Psy
- Pussy Riot
- Susan Rice
- John Roberts
- Mitt Romney
- Paul Ryan
- Thein Sein
- Nate Silver
- Anne-Marie Slaughter
- Jon Stewart
- Aung San Suu Kyi
- Undocumented Immigrants
- Kim Jong Un
- Kate Upton
- Elizabeth Warren