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Louise B. Raggio Endowed Lecture Series

Journalist Sue Shellenbarger Has High
Hopes for Today’s College Women

The creator and writer of The Wall Street Journal’s award-winning “Work and Family” column, speaking at the recent Louise B. Raggio Endowed Lecture Series in Women’s Studies, said this generation of women will make greater strides in balancing work, life, and family than any previous generation. 


Journalist Sue Shellenbarger (left) answers a question from students as SMU Law alumna Louise B. Raggio (center) and Professor Carolyn Sargent look on.

“I’m amazed at students’ brainpower,” she said, reflecting on her own technologically savvy, multitasking daughter. “Our true life’s work is transformation, and this generation is living that.”

Shellenbarger, whose column has covered the growing conflict between work and family and its implications for society since 1991, met with students majoring in a range of disciplines before her Nov. 8, 2006, lecture at the Collins Executive Education Center on women finding their life’s work. Pioneering SMU Law alumna Louise B. Raggio and Professor Carolyn Sargent, who leads the Women’s Studies program, also participated in the discussion.

I’m considering a career in law or medicine. What career paths have you found that work best for women and give them the ability to balance family and work?

I hear from doctors who are choosing fields such as dermatology or part-time work, and from lawyers who have left big firms for corporate law or part-time work.

Start with the core. It matters more what you love to do. What does your inner voice say? If the essence of the work pleases you, you will find a way to make it work.

Nancy Pelosi broke the “marble ceiling” this week. What are your thoughts?

These things sneak up on us. Boom, we have a woman Speaker of the House! What a shining example and powerful role model for us.

Watch now for the public and media reaction, and compare all the criticism toward her as if she’d been a man. Can women get away with being more assertive these days?

You wrote a column about students favoring idealism over pay. How do I make the case to my family that I want to do something different, like the Peace Corps?

I interviewed graduates who got out of college and wanted to do something that really energized them, but their parents would say: “I spent $120,000, and you’re going to Teach for America?”

It often took parents a year or two to get over that, but, in the end, they said they were glad their student had followed her inner voice.

When the parents can see how meaningful the work is –– and they often don’t know all the opportunities and networks that blossom out of volunteering and service –– they change their views.

It takes courage, but say to your parents: “I just have to do something that has meaning to me. I have a lifetime to work, but these two years are important to me. I’m going to do it.”

How do I balance my life?

People think I have the answer after 15 years of writing this column, and I do: It depends.

You have to listen to your inner voice. You must get back in touch with what you love doing, and it’s very hard to do this with the demands of today’s workplace.  It can be a dream, a thought that won’t go away, something that gives you joy. The inner voice is the only thing that gives you the drive you need.

You’ll know it’s working when you feel a sense of calm and purpose.

What gets in the way of finding our life’s work?

There are lots of obstacles – finances, health, real life, and stereotypes ­­–– like Rosie the Riveter, who urged women to work during the war years. And then the pendulum swung to the Happy Housewife of the 1950s, and then to the juggling Superwoman of the 1970s and ’80s.

Stereotypes can serve as role models that energize us, but they also can hold us down. My career grew during the ’80s, and I worked very hard. But when I had two babies in the late ’80s, I heard my inner voice. I felt compromised on two fronts: in my job and as a mother.

I walked in and quit my job as bureau chief.  And then I turned around and proposed my column as a free-lancer. As my column grew, my life felt right to me again.

What’s the big challenge young women face today?

The challenge hasn’t changed; the challenge continues to be to bring forth all facets of ourselves into all realms of life in America. We need to find expression in public and private life for the gifts we have to bring – to politics, civic life, philanthropy, business, and academia. 

The biggest challenge lies in not losing our belief that we as women can do it. It worries me that the tone of the dialogue recently has been a bit softer; it hurts me when I see young women turn away from the “feminism” label.

My hope is that women will again take a firmer stance for their right to be active in the workplace ­­–– and not apologize for needing flexibility or a career break, or for the fact that they have a rich and active personal life.

I think we will continue to move ahead. Don’t lose faith.


Sue Shellenbarger, a Wall Street Journal columnist, spoke with students before her lecture on women finding their life's work.

Shellenbarger’s “Work and Family” column has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and has received six major national awards, including “Best General Interest Column” from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Shellenbarger has been named by Working Woman magazine to the “Working Woman 25,” honoring the 25 people who have done the most to help women in the workplace in the past 25 years.

In 1997, Working Mother magazine named her one of America’s “25 Most Influential Working Mothers.” In 2005, she received the Work Life Legacy Award from the Families and Work Institute, honoring extraordinary contributors to the work-life field.

Shellenbarger has been writing or editing for The Wall Street Journal for 26 years. She was the Chicago bureau chief from 1986 to 1989, overseeing a 15-person reporting staff and coverage in a dozen states. She hosted a syndicated national Work and Family talk radio show on The Wall Street Journal Radio Network for two years. She has written two books, most recently The Breaking Point, a nonfiction work about midlife crises in women.

Shellenbarger, who lives near Portland, Ore., is the mother of two teenagers, stepmother of three young adults, and grandmother of two preschoolers.

Previous speakers for the Raggio endowed lecture, which brings role models to SMU to speak on gender and women’s issues, include feminist Gloria Steinem, U.S. Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder, the late Texas Governor Ann Richards, and writer Anna Quindlen.

A champion for women’s rights, Raggio began her legal career after graduating from the SMU School of Law in 1952; she was the only woman in her class, while rearing three young sons. Thanks to her efforts in drafting the Texas Marital Property Act of 1967, a woman has the legal right to own property, secure a bank loan, and start a business without her husband’s consent.  The first female prosecutor in the Dallas district attorney’s office and the first woman director of the State Bar of Texas, she has been awarded the SMU Distinguished Alumni Award, the SMU Distinguished Law Alumni Award, and an SMU honorary doctorate.

Learn more about the Raggio series at www.smu.edu/womens_studies/raggio_lecture_series.htm.

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