Heading Home Lib/E: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality

Women in today's advanced capitalist societies are encouraged to "lean in." The media and government champion women's empowerment. In a cultural climate where women can seemingly have it all, why do so many successful professional women--lawyers, financial managers, teachers, engineers, and others--give up their careers after having children and become stay-at-home mothers? How do they feel about their decision and what do their stories tell us about contemporary society? Heading Home reveals the stark gap between the promise of gender equality and women's experience of continued injustice. It draws on in-depth, personal, and profoundly ambivalent interviews with highly educated London women who left paid employment to take care of their children while their husbands continued to work in high-powered jobs. Equipped with the language of feminism, the women Shani Orgad interviews clearly identify the structural forces that produce and maintain gender inequality. Yet they still struggle to articulate their decisions outside the narrow cultural ideals that devalue motherhood and individualize success and failure. Orgad juxtaposes these stories with media and policy depictions of women, work, and family, detailing how these women continue to interpret and judge themselves according to the ideals that are failing them.

About the Author :
Shani Orgad is associate professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of Storytelling Online: Talking Breast Cancer on the Internet, Media Representation and the Global Imagination, and Caring in Crisis?: Humanitarianism, the Public and NGOs (with Irene Bruna Seu). Gabrielle Baker is a highly respected and experienced British voice actor with her own studio at her home in Kent, England. A trained actor, she has become a bestselling audiobook narrator for award-winning authors around the world. Gabrielle has a natural RP British accent and is also experienced with accents such as Dublin, Cork, Scottish, Australian, and most regional British accents. More than anything Gabrielle describes herself as a "storyteller," and her love and passion for audiobooks has seen her rise in the industry over the last few years. She has a strong following of listeners and authors who seek out her work, and she has been described as " . . . an auditory joy!"

Review :

"Orgad argues that if these affluent women find it hard to juggle work, family and childcare, then those with less money must find the struggle so much harder."

"Orgad is at her best when she steps away from her subjects to reflect more broadly on the differences between what was expected of women in decades past and what is expected now and when she explores the roles of media, advertising, public policy, and workplace pressures in shaping the lives of women, particularly mothers."