Holly Graham, 25, works for a company that makes online videos. "I work in media, which is good for working women, and tech, which can be tougher. I work a lot more than nine to five, so if I met someone and we wanted a family I wouldn't be uncomfortable with him becoming a househusband, if that suited him too."
Two decades ago Holly's mother, Maeve Haran, 64, wrote Having It All, a novel that tells the story of ambitious Liz Ward, who is successful in television, a profession dominated by men working 14-hour days. She misses her children. The book charts how she gives it all up for family life and to work from home as a novelist.
The book mirrored Haran's own career – we met when we were television researchers – and pressed an international button. It sold well in 26 countries. It didn't matter that Haran was arguing for a better work-life balance, what Latin American readers called equilibrio, the book was viewed as a defeat for feminism, proof that women couldn't have it all. The book has just been republished, and last week avowed "passionate feminist", arts and crafts diva Kirstie Allsopp, gave the question fresh topicality, telling girls to delay university. "At the moment, women have 15 years to … get their career on track, try and buy a home, and have a baby," she said. "That is a hell of a lot to ask someone." Allsopp wasn't blaming female ambition or feminism. "Women are being let down by the system," she said unequivocally.
Unlike the 1990s, women now make up half of the university population and fill half of the professions. "But it's still primarily women who take the day off when the child is sick," says Haran. "Work is still inflexible, a world made by men, for men. Ambition matters, but quality of life has to count too."
"It's a question of control," says Penny Mansfield of the relationship charity One Plus One. "Women have always been subject to the control of others. So mothers in paid work often feel that, rather than having it all, they are doing it all and none of it well. That can be extremely stressful." The workplace is changing, but in the decades since Having It All sparked an international debate why is the pace of progress so haphazard? And is that likely to change?
In 1987 Sylvia Ann Hewlett published A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women's Liberation. Until men did more domestically, she argued, only spinsters would reach the top. Women be warned. In 2012, in Atlantic magazine, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the first female director of policy planning in the US state department and the mother of two teenage boys, wrote about the difficulties she faced in an article headed "Why women still can't have it all". "We have to stop accepting … male choices as a default. We must insist on bending the career track to accommodate our choices too," she said.
Fiona Hathorn, a mother of two, became the youngest head of a global equity desk in the City of London at the age of 32. It was the late 1990s and she was eight months pregnant. "I had a supportive male boss who believed I had something to offer. I married a man whose mother had been the main breadwinner. He did the early shift with the children and I did the late shift and I could afford a nanny."
Hathorn founded Women on Boards two years ago to get more women into senior corporate positions. The group now has 7,000 members. Hathorn gives talks to sixth-formers that begin by showing them the picture of a giant baby. "I say it takes two to make a baby and it takes two to bring it up," she says firmly. "Generation Y understand and embrace the idea that this isn't a woman's issue – but the corporate world doesn't."
Sarah Jackson of the charity Working Families says: "We are seeing a shift in some companies. High-flyers are still working ridiculous hours, but they have more control over when and how they work. Companies such as the National Grid and Ford are saying, 'This is what we want you to do, how you do it is up to you'. So it's easier to fit a career around a family life."
According to figures published last week, four million people are now self-employed. That allows a different shape to the working day, and payment on results, not by the hour. Last year the Agile Future Forum was founded by companies such as BT, Tesco and B&Q to promote "workforce agility". Flexibility, including working from home, which is usually seen as a concession to female employees, is now being recognised as a route to greater productivity, lower recruitment costs and higher retention rates. So "having it all", when relabelled, can apparently make employers happy.
But progress in one area, the right to request flexible working for instance, comes with setbacks in others. Sarah Jackson says what's available to "high value" women does not extend throughout the labour market, where zero-hours contracts and unsocial shifts are increasingly the norm. "A woman's choice in work is still very relative."
A further dent to the idea of "having it all" is the cost of childcare. It takes a third of net household income in the UK compared with an average of 13% in other OECD countries. Half of mothers with school-age children work 20 or fewer hours (compared with 30% in the OECD). It shouldn't be difficult to climb the professional ladder on a three-day week, but it is.
A mother's "choice" is also constrained by what is happening to fathers. They, too, want a family life. "Nobody has it all. Men also have difficult choices, so why aren't they part of the conversation?" asks Bea Campbell, author of End of Equality.
"In the 90s we didn't plead family responsibilities, because we were blazing a trail," Haran says. "But we've raised our daughters to want a more balanced life." A survey of more than 3,200 members of "Generation Y" (those born in the 1980s and 90s) across 122 countries in 2010 found that work-life balance figured highly.
Bryony Gordon is 33, married with a baby, works full-time as a journalist and has just written a very funny book, The Wrong Knickers, about "a decade of chaos" that was her 20s, trying to have it all instantly. "We were told by our baby-boomer working mothers [that] you can be everything you want to be," she says. "But so many women still feel terrible about every choice they make. Enough! We need to have the cojones – thank you, Miriam Clegg – to believe that we really can have it all and not feel bad about the different bits of the jigsaw puzzle when they don't fit into place."
Susanna Abse, of the Tailstock Centre for Couple Relationships, says: "Men have society's permission to go for ambition. But sometimes it's advantageous to have life interrupted by children. It gives a person time for a rethink – and a second wind." A recent survey to mark the 25th anniversary of the UK International Women's Forum found the majority had children and did not feel they had made sacrifices. They had also succeeded not in one but several careers because they had to box and cox.
Next week Haran publishes her latest novel, The Time of Their Lives. It's about four women, friends for 45 years, the survivors of juggling children and careers, and now growing old in an ageist society. But that is another story. "Twenty years on," says Haran, "it's incredible that women are still fighting the same battle." Her daughter Holly is more optimistic. "My generation is reimagining what it means to have it all, and trying to get to a point that works for both men and women. A supportive working environment is what's crucial to progress."
