大辩论：女人能内外兼顾吗？

    首先，在上周于伦敦召开的《财富》 最具影响力女性峰会上，切丽•布莱尔（英国前首相托尼•布莱尔的夫人）关于职业女性和母性的评论引起轩然大波。

    随后，《大西洋月刊》（Atlantic）的封面文章出炉：《为何女人依旧无法内外兼顾》（Why Women Still Can't Have It All）。该文作者安妮-玛丽•斯劳特曾担任国务卿希拉里•克林顿的高级顾问，她在文中大声疾呼，雇主应该为像她这样受过良好教育、为事业家庭两头奔忙的职业母亲提供升迁和保持顶级职位的机会。

    现在这个争论席卷了整个互联网世界：到底谁该为公司高层的性别差距负责？斯劳特在她那篇极具煽动性的文章中将之完全归罪于公司和决策者，结果一不小心就站到了谢莉尔•桑德伯格的对立面。

    桑德伯格是Facebook的首席运营官，在过去两年中，她一直鼓吹女性应该为自身的工作家庭平衡问题负责。2009年她为《财富》杂志（Fortune）所写的《真正离开前请别分心》（Don't Leave Before You Leave）一文中，桑德伯格呼唤女性勇敢地接受工作机会。这位两个孩子的母亲在大学和会议上传播她的观点，42岁的她俨然有了第二职业，那就是为有职业抱负的女性奔走呼号。

    桑德伯格的演讲在视频网站YouTube上的观众超过25.7万，她要求女性防止在职业生涯中“退缩不前”。斯劳特不能赞同这个观点，她写道：“虽然用了一些鼓励的措辞，桑德伯格的劝勉更多的带有责备的味道。”

    这是两个有着超级明星地位的女性精英的对决吗？《纽约时报》（the New York Times）显然这样认为，这是她们对日常生活和职业发展的是非判断的对决。而斯劳特的看法是：“我们只是在讨论如何解决我们共同关注的一个问题。”彼时是一个周日的下午，她刚刚把两个儿子中更年幼的一个孩子送到夏令营，在车里用手机接受了我们的采访。斯劳特认为，桑德伯格关注的焦点是女性相对于男性缺乏事业雄心（原话是“如果不能缩小抱负上的差距，我们就无法缩小成就上的差距。”），但是“与我们的社会和政治结构相比，这是个很小很小的问题。”她进一步指出，桑德伯格的观点“并没有考虑到既没有超常能力又不富有的多数女性群体，而谢莉•桑德伯格的能力和财富都超乎寻常。”

    没错，这就是一场对决。桑德伯格拒绝置评，也不愿意与斯劳特交谈。而斯劳特说直到她的文章上周三发表之后，她才试图联系桑德伯格。令人吃惊的是，两人至今从未曾谋面。

    First came Cherie Blair's hot-button commentsabout working women and motherhood, at theFortune Most Powerful Women conference in London last week.

    Then came an Atlantic magazine cover story, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," in which Anne-Marie Slaughter, once a senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, challenges employers to enable well-educated, stressed-out working mothers like her to reach the top and stay there.

    Now a debate is raging across the Internet: Who is to blame for the gender gap at the top? As Slaughter places the blame squarely on companies and policymakers, the unintended consequence of her incendiary article is that she is suddenly being viewed as the anti-Sheryl Sandberg.

    Sandberg is the COO of Facebook (FB) who has, in the past two years, become the leading advocate for women taking responsibility for their own work-life balance problems. In "Don't Leave Before You Leave," an article she wrote for Fortune in 2009, Sandberg called for women to step up bravely to job opportunities. As she has spread her message at colleges and conferences, the 42-year-old mother of two has practically built a second career as an evangelist for aspiring women.

    Even as one of Sandberg's speeches has attracted more that 257,000 views on YouTube, Slaughter has a problem with the Facebook executive's call for women to resist "leaning back" in their careers: "Although couched in terms of encouragement, Sandberg's exhortation contains more than a note of reproach," Slaughter wrote.

    Is this a "face-off,", as the New York Times proclaimed, between two elite, superstar women about what is right or wrong with workaday lives and careers? "It's a debate about how we solve a common problem," Slaughter said Sunday afternoon, talking on her cell phone in her car after dropping off the younger of her two teenage sons at summer camp. Sandberg's focus, women's lagging ambition vs. men ("We will never close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap," she has said), "is a much, much smaller problem than our social and political structures," Slaughter contends. Sandberg's message, she adds, "isn't taking account of the full spectrum of women who are not superhuman and rich. Sheryl Sandberg is both superhuman and rich."

    Yes, this is a face-off. Sandberg declined to comment for this story--or talk to Slaughter, who says she did not try to contact Facebook's No. 2 executive until after her article was published last Wednesday. The two powerful women have never met.