Apr 30, 2019
Maeve Haran is a best-selling author. She wrote her first book
in 1991 and it scandalised the feminati. "Having It All" told the
story of a top TV exec with a glittering career, a successful
marriage and a happy family. But soon the big job becomes her worst
nightmare as she struggles to balance it all. When she confesses to
her friends she is going to quit, they are scandalized – Liz is
their role model and she is shattering the myth they must all live
by.
The booked mirrored Maeve's own life. She was the first generation
of women trying to have big careers but realising that often meant
denying the existence of family. She decided she would have to
change her job working as a TV producer if she was ever going to
see her before she turned 21!
Have things changed? Maeve isn't sure. She talks about the
continuing need for partnership at home in order to enable a better
work-life balance and calls on us to examine what Sandi Toksvig has
coined #GUDP - that's the Grossly Undervalued Domestic Product -
the caring, support and childcare women do without seeing a
penny.
For more on Maeve:
The book we talk about in the podcast: An Italian
Holiday Springtime in glorious Southern Italy can go to
your head. Especially if you are escaping an overbearing husband,
the embarrassingly public loss of your company, an interfering
mother who still tries to run your life or the pain of a husband's
affair with a girl young enough to be his daughter. The story
follows the fortunes of four different women with very different
problems who unexpectedly meet at a villa in Italy.
And for more books from Maeve: https://amzn.to/2LVIiPt
