ABSTRACT
That young women today can ‘have it all’ is an idea that had its seeds sown in the 1960s but really took root and established itself in the 1980s. It has turned out to be a particularly seductive and tenacious idea, surviving in the face of strong feminist critique and overwhelming evidence that shows the persistence of gendered inequalities. Nevertheless, from the power-dressed female executive of the 1980s, through the kick-ass and clever ‘girl power’ of the millennial years, modern stories of transformed contemporary femininity have, in some quarters, been unrelentingly celebratory. Discourses of endless possibility for all girls circulate freely, although tempered and regulated by the kind of meritocratic principles that can explain any failure to ‘achieve’ and to ‘have’ as a personal one.
