By Blossom Ukoha
For generations, society has offered women a familiar formula for success: build a career, get married, have children, care for the family and somehow make everything look effortless.
But that formula is increasingly being questioned.
Across Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas, women are redefining what achievement means. For some, success is a corner office or a thriving business. For others, it is raising a family, achieving financial independence, choosing not to marry, pursuing personal fulfilment or simply having the freedom to decide what kind of life they want.
The bigger question is no longer whether women can “have it all,” but who gets to define what “all” means?
A Global Shift in What Women Want
The numbers tell part of the story.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), 708 million women globally were outside the labour force in 2023 because of unpaid care responsibilities, compared with about 40 million men. This demonstrates how deeply care work continues to shape women’s economic opportunities.
Yet women remain major contributors to economies worldwide.
In Nigeria, for example, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that 96.4% of employed women were in informal employment in the first quarter of 2024. While this reflects significant economic participation, informal work can also mean limited employment protection, unstable income and reduced access to social security.
In South Korea, the challenge takes a different form. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the country’s fertility rate fell to 0.72 children per woman in 2023, while its gender pay gap remained the largest among OECD countries. OECD research has connected women’s employment and fertility decisions with the difficulty of combining careers and family responsibilities, alongside workplace and social pressures.
France presents another model. According to the OECD, female employment is relatively high and France has extensive childcare and parental-support systems. Yet women continue to perform a disproportionate share of unpaid domestic and care work.
These countries are not identical, but together they illustrate a broader global reality: women’s circumstances differ, but the tension between economic ambition, family expectations and personal autonomy crosses borders.
The Pressure to “Have It All”
The phrase “having it all” can itself become a burden.
A woman who prioritises her career may constantly be asked when she plans to marry or have children. A mother who chooses to focus on her family may be questioned about her ambitions. A woman who chooses to remain unmarried or child-free may be treated as though something is missing from her life.
The underlying message is often that there is one acceptable route to fulfilment.
But there isn’t.
Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has challenged the expectations placed on women, famously observing that girls are often taught to “shrink themselves” and make themselves smaller.
French philosopher Her observation speaks to the powerful role society plays in shaping expectations about femininity and women’s roles.
Today, more women are challenging those inherited expectations.
They are asking whether marriage must define adulthood,Simone de Beauvoir, whose work profoundly influenced modern feminist thought, wrote: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” whether motherhood must define womanhood, whether career ambition must come at the expense of family—and whether choosing a different path should require an explanation.
The Invisible Cost of Success
The debate cannot be separated from unpaid care.
Who looks after children when school closes? Who stays home when a child is sick? Who cares for ageing parents? Who manages household responsibilities after returning from work?
According to the ILO, women continue to perform a disproportionate share of unpaid care work globally.
This creates what economists and gender researchers often describe as a “motherhood penalty”—the career and earnings disadvantages women can experience after having children.
The issue is therefore not simply whether women have access to employment. It is whether workplaces and societies are structured in ways that allow women to remain economically active without carrying an unequal burden at home.
This is where men, employers and governments must become part of the conversation.
Parental leave should not be treated exclusively as a women’s issue. Flexible work should not be designed only for mothers. Childcare should not be regarded as a private problem that families must solve alone.
If caregiving sustains society, then caregiving should be recognised as a shared social responsibility.
Success Should Include Choice
A successful woman may be a CEO, entrepreneur, scientist, politician, farmer, artist, lawyer, teacher, mother, caregiver or student.
She may want children—or not.
She may want marriage—or not.
She may want a demanding career—or a quieter life.
She may want all three—career, family and personal freedom—or she may choose a completely different combination.
What connects these choices is agency.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap reports continue to show that significant gaps remain in women’s economic participation and opportunity worldwide. That means telling women they are “free to choose” is not enough when economic and social structures restrict the choices actually available to them.
Real progress requires action: equal pay, access to education and capital, affordable childcare, parental leave, safe workplaces, flexible employment and a more equitable distribution of unpaid care.
A Call to Action
It is time to stop asking women whether they can successfully balance everything and start asking what society can do to make balance less unequal.
Governments must invest in childcare, parental-support systems, women’s economic empowerment and policies that remove structural barriers.
Employers must build workplaces where motherhood does not become a career penalty and where caregiving responsibilities can be shared without damaging professional progression.
Men and families must recognise that care work is not naturally or exclusively a woman’s responsibility.
Women should also be encouraged to define success for themselves rather than measuring their lives against expectations inherited from previous generations.
And society must learn to respect women’s choices—even when those choices do not conform to traditional definitions of success.
The future of women’s empowerment should not be about proving that a woman can carry everything.
It should be about ensuring she has the freedom, resources, support and opportunity to decide what matters to her and pursue it without being punished for her choices.
Perhaps the most meaningful definition of a successful woman is therefore not how much she achieves, how many roles she performs or how perfectly she balances them.
Perhaps it is this:
She has the power to choose her own definition of a meaningful life and the freedom to live it.
The question for all of us is, are we building a world where women can truly choose their definition of success or are we simply asking them to become better at carrying the expectations placed upon them?
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