Suzanne Braun Levine
Encore.org

One of the most persistent and misguided assumptions about the relationship of younger and older workers is that they are adversaries – competing for the same jobs and incompatible in work habits. This presumption of intergenerational hostility ignores the productive synergy that happens when their skills and work styles mix and energy meets experience, technological fluency meets accumulated people skills, ambition meets not sweating the small stuff.

The notion of “Having It All” has been with us since the early days of the women’s movement. It was maddening to us at Ms. magazine to see how the empowering-sounding phrase was used against us by the individuals and institutions that had a vested interest in the status quo. By highlighting the impossibility of having it all professionally and personally, the question distracted from the real issue — that women are entitled to have equal access to it all.